Xero has named Anna Curzon as its first chief partner officer. Curzon, who had served as managing director for New Zealand for the last year, moved into the global role this month. In blog post on Xero's website, Curzon gave a general outline of her duties in the new job.

AccountMate has decided not to hold its roundtable discussions this year, but to focus on its new AccountMate Enterprise 2017 line. In the last few years, the company had alternated having a full annual reseller conference with the roundtable discussions.

Interesting to hear H&R Block's advertisements promoting the use of IBM's Watson computer to process tax returns. I hear there's an underground version of the Block advertisement. "My name is Watson. Why am I wasting my computing power on a bunch of penny-ante tax returns?

Acumatica has introduced two industry editions of its cloud-based financial suite. The latest is the Acumatica Commerce edition, which integrates with Magento via the Kensium Connector. Ray Rebello, the company's director of product marketing, described the new edition as addressing a large market.