Never shy at pummeling an opponent, NetSuite this week welcomed Sage chief executive Stephen Kelly in his first week on the job in its own way. It placed an advertisement in the Metro and the Financial Times London that contained a faux map of the London Underground with the headline "All Sage Lines Terminate Here". Instead of having a destination name, each train route was given the name of a Sage product—50, 100, 200, 1000—with all routes converging on NetSuite.

Infor has introduced Launchpad, a program that provides training to its channel from Infor representatives. The in-person sessions are being offered this month and next in locations that include Mexico City, Mexico; Barcelona, Spain; and Minneapolis. The software company says that it "has created a specialized set of tools for each session intended to help partners grow a more profitable and sustainable business around Infor applications and suites."

The October QuickBooks Connect conference left me with conflicted feelings. On one hand, Intuit dominates its market and there doesn't seem to be any competition that can threaten it. On the other, the conference felt chaotic—not from the get-people-to meals-and-the-exhibit floor way, but in terms of messaging. At all levels, Intuit employees did not seem to have all the information you'd expect, very siloed.

Intacct has struck a deal with American Express that portends a much broader relationship in the payments arena. Payment service via Intacct's cloud-based accounting software starts with the Intacct Check Delivery. Business can send check payments to suppliers and GL automatically updates, as they always say, with the click of a button. Amex will write and mail the paper checks. But it is the promised additional "card- and non-card payment solutions" that the partners said are coming soon that interested attendees at this week's Intacct Advantage conference.