Microsoft is happy with the attendance for its upcoming Envision conference and expects from 6,000 to 6,500 people. These numbers were provided in a recent conference call with the channel by Duncan Garside, head of experiential marketing for Microsoft. Garside said new registrations were averaging 150 to 200 per day mid month. It looks like sometime in the last month, Microsoft tilted the conference back more towards the Convergence model.

The call for entries for Bob Scott's Top 100 VARs is open for the 2016 selection. And what themes are we likely to see this year? The continuing move to the cloud seems like the obvious major trends. We continued to see desktop VARs taking on products from Acumatica, Intacct and NetSuite Also notable is the growing bifurcation of the Dynamics market between large Dynamics AX vendors and Dynamics GP, NAV and SL, which Microsoft labels as its SMB products.

Manufacturing Information Systems (MISys) has expanded its software development team to work on the next generation of its MISys Inventory Manager. The Woodstock, Ver.-based company has named Daniel Orcutt as director of development to lead the development team and manage outside development efforts. His Linkedin page shows he started in November. Orcutt worked at Woburn, Mass.-based Monotype from August 2007 until returning to his home town.

SAP is taking steps to help startup companies in India. CEO Bill McDermott said this week the Germany-based software company is making its code available to such businesses so they can build on SAP's in-memory company platform Hana. SAP said it is already working closely with more than 400 startups in the subcontinent and said that 16 percent of its startup engagements are in India where it is adding about 100 such engagements each year.