CEO George Klaus has spent most of his conference calls over the two years touting Epicor as a direct-sales only organization. But he did an about face in this week’s first-quarter conference call.  “We are investing in investing, supporting and development our channel a particular focus on some of the larger systems integrators,” Klaus said. He linked channel growth to Epicor’s winning “larger and larger deals” as the company said Epicor 9 continued to fuel demand.  Read more...

How far Microsoft plans to go in shrinking its channel got definition this week from Jeff Edwards, director of partner strategy. During an interview at this week’s Convergence user conference in Atlanta, Edwards said there are about 950 United States partners and the company “needs 300 to 400.” Microsoft has spent the last year signaling it wants to drive business to larger VARs, the midsize ones to grow and the smaller ones to combine. Read more...

This issue wasn’t supposed to exist because my family and I were supposed to leave for Amsterdam on April 15 and be in Paris today. But, well … you know. We’ve gotten a full refund on airfare and are filing claims for cancellation insurance and hope to use that money again. So the missing issue, one of the four not published annually, will be missing another Friday, probably in June, so we can spend that money to get to Europe. Next week should be full of informaton as I will be attending Convergence in Atlanta. However, I'm paying attention to any reports of active volcanos in Georgia.
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The Corporate Renaissance Group has released Project Accounting Cubes for Dynamics GP Project Accounting. The company said the cubes enable users to complete detailed reporting and analytics within Project Accounting in a drag-and-drop environment. The cubes work with Excel and other analytical packages. CRG also introduced a Universal Data Connector to enable users to import data from any external source into Cost Allocator. Read more...