A friend recently said he thought Microsoft might show good results for its Dynamics operations for its second quarter ended December 31. In this economy, anything that's not a decrease is good. But I'm not sure that a 1 percent year-over-year increase in Dynamics revenue announced by Microsoft yesterday was what this friend had in mind. Read more...

After Sue Swenson CEO of Sage North America did not appear at the Sage President's Circle, a reseller contacted me and ask my opinion since he believed that was the first time that had happened. My view was Swenson has turned over the operation of the Sage  Business Solutions, the unit that handles mid-market accounting and related products, to its president Jodi Uecker-Rust. He later commented that was the opinion he got from friends at Sage. I suspect Swenson has a bunch of other things on her plate and is happy to have someone who is viewed as highly capable in charge here. Those other things would include the healthcare division, still viewed as a growth area, but still not up to Sage's standards in financial performance, along with payment processing, which is also a key area for the future. And I would suspect as the economy improves, Swenson will be tasked with keeping an eye on acquisition candidates. Anyway, this is the first year the top VARs met in the United States instead of venturing to a resort as a reward for their performance.
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Vision33, an SAP Business One reseller based in Irvine, Calif., has acquired Apollo Consulting, a San Francisco-based Business One reseller. Apollo's more than 10 employees have joined Vision33, which took over its San Francisco office. Apollo's employees in southern California have moved into Vision33's Irvine, Calif., office. Read more...

An Intuit product guy has become a NetSuite product guy as the manufacturer of online applications named Gary Wiessinger, VP of product management. Wiessinger was mostly recently director of product management for Intuit's mid-market group and spent four years with that product line, which includes QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions and the Intuit Enterprise Suite. The official NetSuite announcement that he led product teams whose output included four SaaS offerings and that he was senior product manager for the QuickBooks Contractor Edition. The main thing this got me thinking was how quiet Intuit has been about its mid-market line for the last few months. Read more...