Sage One Accounting has been introduced in several markets in sub Saharan Africa. The cloud-based package is being made available through a deal between Sage Pastel Accounting and MTN Business. I bring this up because we don't hear a lot about Sage One in the United States and this is a worldwide product. Given the dominance of Intuit in this market and the fact Xero is the fast-growing second banana, it will probably take a different approach for the low-cost Sage product to have much impact here.

Armanino has been named Adaptive Insights' Partner of the Year for 2014. The San Ramon, Calif.-based accounting firm only picked up the line in April so that's a pretty good record. My impression is that, especially on the technology consulting side, whatever Armanino decides to do it ramps up quickly and does extremely well. Palo Alto Calif.-based Adaptive also named Intuitive Tek as Partner of the Region for North America.

Five ISVs have adopted the Acumatica Cloud xRP platform as the engine for developing new applications. Acumatica says there are now more than 50 ISVs and OEMs in the program. One of the more notable members of the effort is Australia's MYOB, which made a $13 million investment in Acumatica last year. The down-under company utilized Acumatica as the engine for its recently introduced online MYOB Advanced, designed for the mid-market.

An intriguing question was asked during this week's Epicor earnings webcast. An analyst queried Epicor CFO Kathy Crusco about whether the company's current capital structure "is IPO dependent." Crusco replied, "It is not IPO dependent." Epicor is widely believed to be on the block, presumably private equity group Apax Partners wants to cash out.