The CTO job has been vacant almost as much of the time it has been filled since October 2007 when Jim Foster, the first occupant, was ushered out the door in a management purge, after having two different Sage stints with that title. The job was empty until Motasim Najeeb was hired early in 2009 and he left by May 2011. That's three people in five years in a company that many think has been sadly lacking in technology direction. Smith's new position sounds very similar to the title, chief customer officer, held by another long-time Sage employee, Doug Meyer, who exited after holding the position from 2009 through 2011. The position did not seem to get firmly defined. Palsule was most recently EVP and GM of products and marketing, a title he held from May 2009 until the new job. He joined Sage in 1997 and in that time he has done a lot of product development, product management and marketing stuff. Before that, he spent four years with Open Systems where he was VP and GM of products and technology. Brad Smith, not to be confused with the Intuit CEO or the Microsoft general counsel of the same name, held a similar title to his Sage job at Yahoo starting in January and had been global VP of support experience there from 2009 through January 2012.