The January acquisition of Interdyn BMI lifted results for Danish reseller Columbus for the first half ended March 31. The purchase of the Minneapolis, Minn.-based Dynamics VAR boosted Columbus' consulting business worldwide and had a significant impact on its operations in the United States. Worldwide, revenue rose 16 percent to about $35 million. EBIDTA for the most recently ended year was about $2 million, an increase of 9 percent over the year earlier half. Two months of BMI results were included, but by itself that boosted U.S. revenue by 88 percent over the prior year.

Xero grew fast and spent faster for the year ended March 31. The company said its subscription revenue was up for 81 percent for the year just ended. But the loss for the cloud accounting software company rose by 96 percent and increased from 56 percent of operating revenue for fiscal 2015, compared to 51 percent for 2014. Revenue for the recently ended year hit about $81.5 million while its loss rose to roughly $54 million. New Zealand-based Xero said it ended 2015 with 475,000 paying customers, 67 percent higher than a year earlier.

The channel for analytics specialist Qlik Technology chipped in 65 percent of license and first-year maintenance revenue for the first quarter ended March 31. The company said during this week's earnings webcast that was up from 57 percent of the same segments a year ago. This is more from systems integrators than resellers, judging from the comments, and the total was affected by a multimillion dollar sale. Overall, Qlik reported a net loss of $30.3 million for the most recently ended period, compared to red ink of $25.9 million in last year's corresponding quarter.

Avalara has named Mehrdad Talaifar as VP of its EMEA operations. Talaifar, based in London, England, is another link in the sales and use tax company's plans for global expansion. Well, they have to spend that $100-million investment somewhere, don't they? Talaifar has strong credentials in the indirect tax area. He was principal of global tax technology services for Ryan from August 2013 until last month. Before that, he was senior director of strategic relations for EMEA for Thomson Reuters from January 2011 through August 2013.