Sage abandoned the practice having one large annual conference this year. But the buzz in the channel is there will be two in 2019−East Coast and West Coast events. Whether this goes beyond talk coming from the channel is yet to be seen.

Alan Laing, who held key roles with Sage, has become managing director for the United Kingdom and Ireland for IFS. The job is a new position which reflects the importance IFS places in the region, Laing said in a prepared statement.  

The big push at this week’s Advantage conference is for Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning. Introduced in limited release in September, the cloud-based product was given a big push in the eternal quest to convince businesses to use something better than an Excel spreadsheet for these functions.