The CIS Consulting Group, which was a chairman’s circle Sage reseller this year, has sold its assets to three different companies as the company draws an end to its independent existence.It was something like Austria, Russia and Prussia partitioning Poland in the late 1700s as the Timberline VAR sold its East Coast Sage practice to the Aktion Group of Maumee, Ohio, and the West Coast Sage business to Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based Alliance Systems Group. Professional services and sales and marketing resources were acquired by Viewpoint Construction Software of Portland, Ore.

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NetSuite is planning an all-in-one conference, SuiteWorld which will be for channel, users and developers of all of the company’s products, including OpenAir. The conference will be held May 11-15 in San Francisco and is equally notable in that it’s the first time I remember NetSuite announcing a date for a conference more than two months before the event. In its usual laid-back way, NetSuite said attendees will Experience five extraordinary days that will bring together the full complement of NetSuite Nation—including customers, partners and developers from around the world—for the first time ever.” The full list of products involved are NetSuite, NetSuite CRM, NetSuite OpenAir and NetSuite OneWorld. The biggest change is probably the involvement of OpenAir, the NetSuite subsidiary that markets professional service automation products. Read more...

It’s hard to tell if this is a serious plan or a trial balloon. But in a recent interview with “Managing Automation,” Robert Enslin, president of SAP U.S., was quoted as saying the telephone companies might become resellers of the web-based Business By Design. The statement attributed to Enslin didn’t go much beyond the possibility that he could see that happening. My initial reaction was, “OMG, don’t?” Telcos (and banks) don’t have a great track record in selling B2B applications that aren’t telecommunications related and I can see BBD becoming a loss leader. This sounds like a plan to construct channel conflict and make VARs who are being enlisted in the sales effort pretty unhappy pretty quickly.

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Interdyn AKA, a New York-based Dynamics resellers, has hired Jim Bretschneider as EVP of sales and marketing. Bretschneider had served as managing director for Columbus IT Partner U.S.A., the American arm of the Copenhagen-based Dynamics VAR, and had been there since July 1998. Before that, he held managerial jobs at Columbus IT starting in 1991. For Interdyn AKA, it’s part of a continuing effort to move responsibilities away from founders Alan Kahn and Jack Ades. Read more...