SAP hasn't been modest in its earnings calls in the last couple of years and generally, it's got the numbers to back that up. The company said its cloud run-rate is about $1.5 billion. So this week's first quarter webcast had executives touting SAP as the top cloud company. "We are not only growing cloud faster than our nearest competitor," said co-CEO Bill McDermott, "We help [customers] run their entire businesses in the cloud which our competitors just don't do."

Exact has partnered with WiSys to provide warehouse management capabilities for users of Exact Macola. Beyond the simple announcement, this marks another change for Exact because if it has had alliances with third party vendors in this country, it has been a long time since any have been announced. It also is part of a declared best-of-breed strategy for Exact Macola. WiSys was founded by Macola founder, Bruce Hollinger, and the fact that the company mentioned this in a press release also represents a difference approach to doing things.

Sage North America has re-architected pricing tiers for its midmarket products. The company says that it has dramatically reduced the number of tiers. "We are trying to simplify from a ten-tier structure," says Donald Deshaies, VP of channel management. Many of the tiers are left from the company's purchases of products years ago. He notes there will be a tier remaining that is unique to the construction and real estate applications.

Sage veteran Walter Goodfield has moved to RKL eSolutions after spending slightly more than two years in Infor’s channel program. Goodfield this month took a job as VP of sales and marketing at RKL eSolutions, a Lancaster, Pa.-based reseller that handles the Sage line, including Sage 100, 500 and X3. Goodfield was director, global partner recruiting and on boarding at Infor from February 2012 until he accepted the new position this month and earlier was director of field sales for Sage from May 2009 through June 2011.