Sage will drop its product brand names over the next two years in North America as it moves to the combination of company name and numbers that are used in the rest of the world to label its applications. That announcement was made this week at the Sage Summit conference by Pascal Houillon, CEO of Sage North America, in his first major speech before the company's channel. "We will be dropping the use of our brand names, Timberline, Peachtree, Accpac and MAS," Read more...

The teacher in my ice skating class last night was asking me what brand of ice skating blades and boots I wore. I said, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” I got a real discount a few years ago and got a discontinued style of boot and discontinued kind of blade that bore a retail price of $750 at a steal. A couple of years ago, I replaced the blades with a style that’s more suited for jumping and I might have to replace the boots. Read more...

Microsoft has announced it latest round of honorees at its Worldwide Partner Conference. Most of the VAR names in the 2011 Inner Circle are well known in the profession, and as usual, it’s a group drawn largely from the biggest revenue producers in the Microsoft Dynamics reseller pool.  InterDyn, which seems to rotate members in and out of the group, had InterDyn BMI and Socius receive the honor and both returned after an absence. Among the accounting world, McGladrey, which usually ranks hanks, and BDO Dunwoody were honored. Also on the list were ePartners, Hitachi Consulting, Tribridge, Tectura, SBS Group, First Tech Direct, Fullscope and Western Computer.

Sales-and-use-tax vendor Avalara has enlarged its staff with a stock of sales reps from rival CCH. According to those familiar with the company, Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based Avalara picked up three of the 12 reps from the competitor's channel sales force. Over the last few months, Avalara has also continued to widen the universe of products for which it provides a sales tax engine. These include I Dev for e-Commerce, Everest, 3D Cart and Shop Visible.