The hottest topic in the mid-market right now is Dynamics AX with Microsoft officially announcing this week the product will be available in the cloud in the first quarter. Since resellers are already live with early customers, this hardly seems like a surprise for much of the channel and the ongoing consolidation of the AX VAR market suggests players have been readying themselves. "We have invested in early access programs that have the service in the hands of hundreds of partners and have a record number of ISV solutions ready to go with the new Dynamics AX at launch," wrote Mike Ehrenberg, chief technology officer for Microsoft Business Solutions.

SAP Business One has been sold to 50,000 customers, the software company said earlier this month. The announcement was made at the recent SME Business Summit but did not detail any geographic breakdown. (I attended the prior two Summits but this conflicted with the Intacct conference). SAP also said partners and customers can now run the B1 Cloud application, powered by its Hana platform, at SAP-run data centers.

Ameri100 and Lone Star Value Investors, which are bidding for Edgewater Technology, this week spelled out the timeline in talks between the companies. In documents filed with the SEC, the investor group outlined their approaches to the software company in what has become a hostile takeover attempt. The documents reports  that Lone Star managing partner Jeff Eberwein had a telephone conversation with Edgewater CFO Timothy Oakes on June 11.

RSM (until recently known as McGladrey) has ballooned as a presence in the Dynamics AX market with the purchase of Junction Solutions. The deal  adds $50 million to the $174 million in annual revenue reported by the accounting firm's IT consulting business. "This one really gives us a huge uplift in capacity," says Steve Ems, RSM principal and national business applications leader about the week's announcement of the purchase.