Xero has scheduled a road show to provide free training for accountants and bookkeepers. The 20-city tour kicks off on October 21 in Baltimore and ends on November 21 in Honolulu with six of those stops in California from San Diego through the home city of San Francisco and inland to Sacramento. The tour is touted as providing a sneak peak at Xero Payroll.

You can understand why Infor would want to talk non-GAAP numbers. For its first quarter ended August 31, there was a 1-percent rise in revenue accompanied by a 1-percent hike in operating expenses. Yawn. The company did post $23.1 million in net income, a rebound from a loss of $33.3 million in last year's corresponding period.

Applications are now being accepted for candidates for Bob Scott's VAR Stars 2013. The selection will be made by year's end and announced via this site and its accompanying newsletter. This is a selection of 100 mid-market reselling organizations. The selection is based on quality, not quantity, so firms of all sizes are eligible.

SugarCRM is debuting the next version of its open source CRM application this week. The preview is being made at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo. Sugar bills the system as "user empowerment-focused vision for next-generation CRM". However that gets defined, the new features include advanced social capabilities.