Infor has kicked off its annual partner summit in San Diego. But I'm sitting here in New Jersey writing about it. Because after an unexpected invitation to last year's show, this year's is a media blackout. (Not that I could have made it since we're heading for Alaska tomorrow.) In fact, Infor did not respond to questions about whether there was a show and official notification only arrived yesterday.

Epicor has named former Dell executive Donna Troy as EVP vice president and general manager for ERP in the Americas. She was most recently Dell's VP and GM enterprise solutions, public large enterprise worldwide from February 2011 through 2012. She had been with the troubled hardware company in VP jobs since January 2008. Before that, she was EVP of Global SME Indirect Channels at SAP from July 2004 through April 2007 and served as SVP of global SMB for that company from July 2004 through April 2007. She spent 23 years at IBM from 1978 through 2001 and held a VP title.

Someone asked the night before the official opening of Sage Summit if I thought there would be excitement. "I hope not," I replied. "Haven't we had enough change over the last two years?" There were no revolutionary announcements and generally, shows shouldn't produce shocks and surprises for attendees. No, the most important statement from the stage, made by Pascal Houillon, CEO of Sage North America, and reiterated by Guy Berruyer, CEO of that Sage Group was this: "We said what we are going to do and we have done it."

There's nothing new about the thought that Apple has done well with mobile devices. But sometimes seeing it displayed in day-to-day life is still jarring. For example, during one keynote presentation at Sage Summit there was one MacBook and at least one iPad used during stage demonstrations. Five years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine that the day would come with Apple products would make it into that arena.