Last week's report that Fred Studer, GM of Microsoft Dynamics since May 2011, has moved to NetSuite to become chief marketing officer has been confirmed. Studer updated his LinkedIn page to reflect the new job. And NetSuite issued a press release in which NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson termed him a marketer with "creative and innovative flair. Tweets last week showed dismay from many. One prominent reseller emailed this comment: "This is horrible news.

Xero has abolished the position of chief revenue officer. The company attributed the decision to the hiring of a chief marketing officer who has responsibility for online sales and marketing, and the growth in regional capabilities. As a result, Stuart McLean, who held the position, is joining Trade Me, a New Zealand-based online market place, as a senior executive. McLean joined Xero, which makes low-cost cloud accounting applications, in March 2013, after serving as head of Google's enterprise operations in Australia and New Zealand.

Infor has started the Infor CloudSuite Academy, a training program for the company's channel. Infor said the program is designed to help customers select and implement Infor applications in the cloud. The products involved are Infor CloudSuite Industrial and Infor CloudSuite Business, which are available on Amazon's Web Services' cloud. The Academy will provide hands-on instruction on marketing, demonstrating, licensing and deploying applications. Live, virtual and self-paced learning are available.

Apax Partners has begun its all-cash tender offer for the shares of Exact Holding. The tender period ends on February 15 and is being conducted at 32 euro per share. At the current exchange rate—and with 22,816,661 shares outstanding—the deal is worth about $900.5 million. But the most interesting part of the offering memorandum is the strategy outline from Apax and that can be summed up as "cloud". Apax wrote that the buyout is "An opportunity to pursue an optimal cloud strategy." It explained the economics of a cloud transition might be understood or mis-valued by public investors so the company is better off in private hands while it makes the leap and that includes increasing R&D spending to 15 percent of Exact revenue. The buyers expect to invest aggressively in an international expansion for Exact's Cloud Solution division and notes their history of investment in pure-play cloud vendors, such as RealPage and Plex Systems, as giving themt the ability to handle the needs. Apax will support "accretive M&A" and said it could aid in considering acquisition targets. The most interesting phrase was it could help in "the contemplated disposal of certain U.S. assets and other strategic M&A transactions." I don't know if that means disposal under discussion or that might arise as the company has indicated it will utilize the channels of its Macola and JobBoss lines for building the American market for Exact Online. Max is sold direct so it does not seem to fit that strategy. Exact believes it can achieve annual organic growth of 4 percent to 7 percent and expects Cloud Solutions revenue to rise by 30 percent to 50 percent annually.