About two years ago, a number of Sage VARs turned to QBES or Deltek and several signed up for both, the Deltek crew joining under the siren call of Taylor Macdonald. Since then, the Sage component has been withering at both vendors. When Fitzgerald Group sold its Sage practice to Net@Work recently, it planned to sell the Deltek operations separately. Deltek appears to be moving towards a base of larger regional VARs. I'm told carrying Deltek doesn't disqualify a VAR from the Sage Select program, which rewards VARs for carrying only Sage products. Intuit is still grappling with complaints about channel conflict with its direct sales force and aggressive discounting. I suggested that at Sage’s Insights conference this week we should have a pool to bet on which vendor will lose its Sage base first