Blackbaud turned in a strong performance for the second quarter ended June 30 as revenue grew by 13.9 percent and the company bounced back from a year-earlier loss. The Charleston, S.C.-based nonprofit software vendor had net income of $6.6 million, compared to a loss of $2.3 million in last year's corresponding period. The results exceeded the company's guidance. "We exceeded high end of our guidance in both the top and bottom lines," CEO Marc Chardon said in an earnings webcast. The company got more CRM customers in the enterprise space brought a record number live during the most recently ended period. He also pleased with the rapid growth of subscription revenue, with those deals outnumbering license sales five to one. Part of the improvement stemmed from digesting last year's purchase of Convio. However, Chardon noted he expects the trend of modest growth in charitable giving would continue. "We are not anticipating a material change one way or another in the near term," he said. Executives did not discuss specific future products, but said investment in the cloud will increase. "You won't see R&D going down," said Chardon, adding that there would be some SaaS investments "That might move it gently in the other direction." The company also plans to hire more aggressively in the second half.

Infor executives ended fiscal 2013 very happy with their new product direction and promising to spend more on their software lines. That comment should address concerns I've heard that Infor is just mining the companies it bought. Still the company has a lot of work to do as interest expense remains a drag on earnings, although it has been refinancing and cutting that cost.

Serenic's loss grew by 76.4 percent on an 11.7-percent slide in revenue for the first quarter ended May 31. The Canada-based company said as a result it had re-organized its marketing department, hiked fees for support for customers who purchase its products directly and hired a new product manager for its human capital management products.

Bob Scott's Insights is published 48 times a year. Friday, August 2, is not one of those days. The wife and I will be in Alaska, somewhere down near Seward as the trip winds up next Friday. So unless there's really good Wi-Fi in Denali, the Kenai Peninsula and points in between, it is very unlikely that emails will be answered. The regular schedule will resume on August 9 as we head into a new round of conferences in August and September, including Acumatica, the Midwest Accounting Show, an Intuit get together and AccountMate roundtables.