Exact, which markets the Macola, Synergy and Globe applications in the United States, is raising maintenance fees. While this does not affect American users, it comes at a time when Exact is trying to fix a litany of woes outlined earlier this month by its new CEO Martijn Janmaat. The company is likely to pull back from many countries to concentrate on five key ones, including the U.S. And almost two weeks ago, the following was posted on its website: “As of January 1, 2011 the maintenance fees for Exact software will be raised. Read more...

Microsoft is ramping up the noise for next month’s official launch of CRM Online, well, this is like one of those build ups for a movie that you think it’s been out for a month and it has yet to open. The launch is January 20, but many resellers have been offering sneak peeks this month so the message is that they assume growth is coming from CRM in the clouds. Read more...

It must be the thing to do. Just after Epicor said it was buying HR specialist Spectrum, a deal completed this week, Lawson Software said it will buy Enwisen, which markets SaaS-based HR products. Lawson is paying $70 million in cash and said the Enwisen HR Service Delivery Suite  will become the Lawson Human Capital Management (HCM) System. This is a higher-end system, with Enwisen reportedly having about 260 customers, with many of them in the Fortune 1000. But it looks like ERP vendors have concluded that bulking up on HR is necessary to compete in this market.

The last edition of this newsletter referred to the new Open Systems channel program. It turns out that there aren’t a lot of changes to the program itself. But what has sparked the company to make more noise is the attraction of the .Net architecture of its Traverse software. “We’ve tweaked some minor things. What’s new is that people are interested in working with us because of that technology,” said Linda Shillingburg, whose promotion to vice president of channel development had been announced at the same time.