Australia-based UXC Eclipse is Dynamics Industry Partner of the Year and mcaConnect is the Dynamics ERP Partner of the year for 2015. The awards were announced in the build up to the Worldwide Partner Conference being held next month. The Finalists in the Industry category were Edgewater Fullscope, Hitachi Solutions and VeriPark. The ERP finalists are Azzure IT, Columbus and Tribridge. mcaConnect, headed by Claude Watson, was No. 11 on this year's Bob Scott's Top 100 VARs list with $42 million in revenue.

The numbers are less interesting the counterprogramming. This week, Xero said during its Xerocon conference in Denver it has reached 500,000 subscribers. But the next day, Intuit released its announcement that it had  1 million subscribers for QuickBooks Online. There was no surprise in that—I pointed out in an article based on the 965,000 for April 30, the end of the last quarter, that it was highly unlikely QBO would not cross the threshold.

Saw a police vehicle in my hometown of Madison, Ind., that had two advertisements on the exterior. I quickly realized, it was a van for the anti-drug program, D.A.R.E., not a patrol unit. But that suggested that communities are missing revenue opportunities. Imagine you've just been arrested and dumped into the back seat of a police car. You are greeted with a cheery "Your arrest is brought to you by First National Bank. If you need a personal loan to post bail, use that phone call to contact one of our friendly customer service employees."

Xero will build tax rates integration to work with Avalara's AvaTax system, the companies said at this week's Xerocon conference. That will enable Xero users to have access to regular updates of changes in tax rates and tax boundaries and let them calculate sales tax rates in invoices. Avalara also plans to integrate its TrustFile tax return software with Xero.