Exact Macola has outlined a five-point plan in what it calls a high-level strategy to change its approach to the channel. The plan was detailed by Gayle Prokop, director of alliances and channel development, at this week's Exact Macola Edge 2015, its channel conference. The first was a general plan of "evolving" the Unity Partner Program that was launched in February. More specific is the intent to develop "a structured, certification-based enablement program" and to add employees to the channel organization.

Xtuple, which markets an open source ERP System, says named Charles Schley, managing partner of the ERP Implementation Consulting Group, as Partner of the Year award. That award has been renamed "Partner of the Year—Dan Means Memorial Award", after Dan Means, an xTuple reseller who died in February 2014. The company also named two resellers who made its Elite Partner status for the first time this year.

The SBS Group has acquired the Dynamics practice of Aztec Systems, a Dallas, Texas-based reseller. It's not surprising as Aztec, which was once a significant player, had largely disappeared from public view. An SBS press release says has Aztec had more than 200 Dynamics customers and six offices in Texas and Oklahoma. The Aztec website shows the VAR carries Dynamics GP and NAV. It also handles (or handled) Sage 100. In its VAR Stars submission in the fall of 2013, it claimed 45 employees and $14 million revenue.  That year, Aztec, founded in 1991, and Toutatis, a Brazilian company, merged to form TAS.

On the heels of hitting its lowest stock price in three years recently, Xero CEO Rod Drury cheerily told a radio interviewer that the company is executing well in the U.S. The stock hit $13 per share early this month, down from its all time high of $45 (New Zealand) in March 2014. Drury told RadioLive interviewer Andrew Patterson on September 6 the company will get to well over the $100 million U.S. when the year ends March 31. That's the threshold viewed as necessary for an American IPO.