However serious the bumps were, and comments from the podium indicated there were serious issues, Sage adopted some suggestions for handling this process. Among the changes was putting a single person in charge of the partner portal, according to Tom Miller, VP of channel management. That person has been selected, but the name has not been made public. The company also selected a business partner advisory council for this effort. At the root of Sage’s problems is that its CRM application, Vantive, is an orphan. A description of Vantive on Wikipedia article captures Sage’s problem: “Since currently no vendor supports Vantive software, few alternatives for companies running Vantive today exist: continue using Vantive or convert data and implement another CRM solution”. Sage’s replacement choice was SAP, which is being implemented under the “Atlas” code name. It has been rolled out for the construction and real estate area and is currently being made available to Accpac VARs and Simply Accounting. The Peachtree business is next to be followed by the MAS business.