Exact continues to clean house with the announcement it will sell Lohn, its Germany-based payroll business to Sage. I said earlier this month that I would be surprised, after the company had decided to dump Longview, if it sold its manufacturing packages but that "Lohn is another story." Lohn just didn’t fit with the its other packages in the Specialized Solutions division, which are three American Manufacturing packages, Macola, Max and JobBoss.

Microsoft says it is integrating into cloud technology into the partner channel, including Dynamics. (And oh yeah, there is that thing about laying off 18,000 people. But until it affects Dynamics, it’s only something to view from afar). This included some steps disclosed at this week’s Worldwide Partner Conference. Laying aside Microsoft’s enthusiasm about its own moves, I’m not sensing a wave of excitement among resellers. But maybe that will change. Among the changes are enhancements to the Readiness Partner Program that Microsoft says it is making to  “increase partner capability, address partner capacity and bring down the cost of training.”

Vertex is paying resellers 25-percent commission on sales for the life of those clients that sign up for the Vertex SMB sales tax application. The company, which had been a quiet player in the market until recently, is busy recruiting a channel and aims to use a pay-as-you-go model with no upfront cost to reach small and mid-market businesses. “We are looking at the partners and VAR community as a our primary distribution channel, looking to pay them recurring revenue in perpetuity as clients come  board,” says Bradd Wildstein, director of channel sales. The company had previously announced the signing of McGladrey and Cargas Systems.

Exact Holdings has said it has been approached by parties that want to buy all outstanding shares of the ERP software company that is based in Delft, The Netherlands. The company said the prices offered range between 30 to 35 euros per share. The company says it is in engaged in preliminary discussions. There’s not much more that we are likely to learn from Exact until something does, or officially doesn’t happen, with any of the bids. But given the continuing activity of private equity firms, it’s not surprising.