Sage's chief revenue officer Rich Spring spent time in a channel briefing call this week apologizing. According to participants, he promised an open-door policy. As reported by an attendee, Spring said, "There is not a version of a successful future that does not include Sage working with partners/VARs in a positive way." There are a lot of things that need to be recovered from. Some of these steps, one source said, were a change in channel policies and was "almost certainly a big clue why Joe Langner isn't here any longer."

SWK Technologies has purchased ProductiveTech, a managed service provider based in Westfield, N.J. While terms were not disclosed, SWK's parent, SilverSun Technologies, said the acquired company would add $1.7 million in annualized revenue, $930,000 of that recurring subscription revenue. The deal is expected to close in the current quarter. Founded in 1984, by president John McPoyle, PTI serves Southern New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, and Northern Delaware.

A lot of pundits are debating the impact of Sage's launch of Life, the all-in-one cloud product, that is based on the SalesForce1 platform. I should say, going to be based on that platform as the evidence is it is not a real product yet. Let us remember that Salesforce is a minority investor (but I remember it as a big chunk) in FinancialForce.com, a cloud-based financial system The majority owner is Unit4. FinancialForce.com is also based on the Salesforce1 platform.

The debate over who has the closest connection to Microsoft isn't new. In this round, is NetSuite's endorsement of Microsoft's Azure's versus Acumatica's support of the OData standard in order to support Power BI. NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson was invited to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Acumatica was invited to present a content package for Power BI at the Microsoft Build conference on April 30.