Xero, a New Zealand company, has taken steps to increase its visibility in the United States. The company, which makes online small business accounting software, said at a March investors day that it was relocating its chief technology officer, Craig Walker, to this country and that a “Xero beachhead” was being established in San Francisco. It also said there would be a strategic update this month. Read more...

Channel sales have grown significantly over the last two years, NetSuite executives said in yesterday’s earnings call for the first quarter ended March 31. Channel bookings have grown from 23 percent of total bookings in 2009 to 32 percent in 2010 to 40 percent in the first quarter. That information was released as the company reported a 13-percent  increase in its loss on a 20.7 percent increase in revenue compared to the first quarter of 2010.

A blog posting by author Leon Tribe followed up on a post by another writer claiming that Sage had neglected the development of Act and SalesLogix since acquiring those products with the purchase of Interact Commerce in 2001. The blog was posted on the Microsoft Dynamics Community website this month. Sage’s response was not to comment directly on the claims, but to state that the information was incomplete and misleading. Read more...

Columbus It Partner the Dynamics reseller and software developer, has named Thomas Honore as of May 1. Honore was most recently VP and CEO of Oracle Denmark and had worked for that company since 2005. He replaces Claus E. Hansen, who held the post for four years. The company has made a lot of changes over the last few years and it didn’t hit me, until interviewing retail specialist AlfaPeople this month that Columbus IT had pulled out of reselling in several markets. AlfaPeople, which just entered the AX, had acquired the VAR operations in Germany, Latin America and other countries.