Epicor expects sales of its Epicor Manufacturing Express Edition, the cloud version of Epicor 9, are going to expand significantly over the next two years. Speaking this week at the 1st Annual Signal Hill Technology Conference, CEO George Klaus said there were about 150,000 small and medium manufacturers “that we can sell our SaaS solution into.” The company had about 40 customers last year following the product's introduction and Klaus predicted user growth will boom.

Comments this year by NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson that Dynamics GP had disappeared from his company’s view as a competitor got me thinking that maybe the product is showing its age. A talk with a friend whose company uses GP produced an earful. He complained that the payroll provided for only vacation and holidays – for personal days the company had to buy Advanced Payroll, and generally, that the need to buy additional functions was pain and that Microsoft had been pumping out upgrades with little change in functionality. Read more...

Tectura, which seems to be reshaping itself, has sold its 51-percent interest in Tectura Berlin to Uwe Bergmann. Tectura Berlin also owns a majority of Tectura Dresden and the operations are expected to adopt new names by the end of May. Terms were not released. This follows on the departure of founder and former CEO Terry Petrzelka early this year. His position was filled by Duane Bell, previously CFO. Read more...

Nonprofit vendor Serenic is continuing to build its international channel. It hadn’t issued a press release about a new VAR since May last year when it added the Touchstone Group in the United Kingdom. But it has already made two such announcements in 2011 with the enlistment of another U.K. dealer Probitas, and Cherry-T in the Netherlands. Read more...