There will be no newsletter mailed on Friday, November 27. Items will continue to be posted to www.bobscottsinsights.com as dictated by events. In the meantime, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. And remember not to drop your unthawed turkey into a deep fryer filled with oil. But if you do, send us the pictures.

Authorities have concluded they have found the perfect punishment for executives involved in the recent scandal at Volkswagen. They will be forced to write 10,000 times, "I will not lie about emissions." ... After reading all the LinkedIn tag lines such as "Dynamic Creative Executive", I've decided mine will be "Success through Pure Dumb Luck." ... I'm tired of announcements constantly someone who is excited to launch a product. I'm waiting for a company willing to say, "This is a dull boring product, but it's going to save you a ton of money.

The hottest topic in the mid-market right now is Dynamics AX with Microsoft officially announcing this week the product will be available in the cloud in the first quarter. Since resellers are already live with early customers, this hardly seems like a surprise for much of the channel and the ongoing consolidation of the AX VAR market suggests players have been readying themselves. "We have invested in early access programs that have the service in the hands of hundreds of partners and have a record number of ISV solutions ready to go with the new Dynamics AX at launch," wrote Mike Ehrenberg, chief technology officer for Microsoft Business Solutions.

SAP Business One has been sold to 50,000 customers, the software company said earlier this month. The announcement was made at the recent SME Business Summit but did not detail any geographic breakdown. (I attended the prior two Summits but this conflicted with the Intacct conference). SAP also said partners and customers can now run the B1 Cloud application, powered by its Hana platform, at SAP-run data centers.