Channel consolidation is hardly new. But there is a new scale. The acquisition of Edgewater Technology by Alithya this month follows December’s merger of Socius and the SBS Group as Velosio.Alithya becomes a more than $200-million player in the Dynamics channel. Velosio has already passed $89 million. Add to that the June 2017 purchase of Tribridge by DXC Technology, which when combined with the former UXC operations produced a $180-million firm, a revenue figure surprisingly disclosed by Tribridge founder Tony DiBenedetto. The last year also saw France-based Prodware with annual revenue of roughly $207 million, enter the U.S. Dynamics market. [It carries Sage in Europe]. Then there’s Columbus’ January purchase of iStone which will push it over $300 million. This is being driven by the cloud, which enables businesses to span geographies and provides clients with the ability to deal with fewer vendors, Scale, scale, scale. This should be worrisome for Sage as Microsoft widens the gap between its top dealers and the Sage channel. Velosio carries Sage because Socius did—the rest don’t. The consolidating VARs aren’t all Dynamics loyalists—Aliithya sells Dynamics AX/365 and Oracle while Tribridge handles Dynamics and Oracle NetSuite. But Microsoft is pushing upmarket because that’s where the big money is. On the bottom, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions has to be exerting great pressure because Intuit says the software is doing so well it helped grow desktop QB units sales despite rapid migration to QuickBooks Online. Another factor would seem to be that the cloud changes the selling formula and VARs must go vertical. Industry-expertise and deep industry focus are phrases around. These factors show why Sage had to buy Intacct, which, but which is nowhere near the scale seen in Dynamics.