Stephen Elop, who has served as president of the Microsoft Business Division, has fled the software giant to become CEO of Nokia in its drive to compete with Apple. Elop takes over from Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (I don't think the spellchecker works on this), who is said to have presided over a 50-percent drop in Nokia's market value. Elop is notable in this market as he was boss to Kirill Tatarinov whose Microsoft Business Solutions is home to the Dynamics line. Maybe this is why Elop was so quiet about Dynamics at the Worldwide Partner Conference in July. Elop joined Microsoft in January 2008. MBD had revenue of $18.6 billion for the year ended June 30, down from $18.9 billion for FY 2009. However, the division ended the year on a strong note with $5.25 billion in revenue, compared to $4.57 billion a year earlier.

Blytheco, one of Sage North America's largest resellers, has launched bly/Mobile, an application that enables users to access MAS 90 and MAS 200 via iPhone and Blackberry. Macs and PCs running Windows, Linux and other operating systems can also access the Sage products. As outlined by the company's Web page bly/Mobile is a composite of four applications. These include the Web browser-based MAS 90 or MAS 200 that the company says eliminates the need for Citrix or Terminal Services and which provides full system screens and capabilities for remote or travelling users and also provides the multi-platform support.

Intuit has sent forth QuickBooks 2011, its annual new model of the pervasive low-cost accounting product. As for the 2011 vintage, the biggest change for those other than end users came in the renamed product for accountants. What was once the QuickBooks Premier Edition for Accountants is now the QuickBooks Accountant Edition. Among the important changes for QBES and the Accountant Edition is the fact that the application now supports two instances of QuickBooks. Version 11 of QBES also introduced Advanced Inventory, which enables users to track the quantity and value of inventory in multiple locations.

Microsoft makes more noise about beta releases than most companies do about final products and the roll out of Dynamics CRM Online follows that pattern. The beta is available in eight languages and 36 markets and that's excepted to hit 40 markets and 41 markets by year's end. It is available via Microsoft's data centers and is being released for customers and hosting partners for on-premise use as Dynamics CRM 2011. The product has the Office CRM ribbon and role-based users. Read more...