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News and Analysis

News and Analysis (15669)

NETBOOKS BECOMES WORKINGPOINT

Wednesday, 02 September 2009
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A couple of years ago, Ridgely Evers, who had modest success by writing a program called QuickBooks, decided to see if he could write another hit. He produced NetBooks. But unfortunately, that term has been taken over by the hardware set. Evers left a few months ago and during the summer the company announced it had spent much of the last year rewriting the package, whose goal is still to provide online billing and invoicing, giving it a new interface. However, until the last two or so weeks, the company was still called NetBooks and its URL was www.netbooks.net. Now, WorkingPoint is both the company and product name and the simple URL is www.workingpoint.com. Pricing also changed with the Web site declaring "Your First User Is Free Forever". I'm not quite sure how much money there is to be made at what seems like dot-com-era pricing. Two users are $10 per month and the highest level, 10 users, is priced at $80 monthly for the lot. But the company promises there are no hidden extra fees. Still, what I hear ringing in my head is the oft-repeated statement by Intuit CEO Brad Smith that "Free isn't Free." Hmmm. Read more...
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ALL QUIET ON THE VENDOR FRONT

Wednesday, 02 September 2009
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Nothing says watching your costs more than major vendors passing on major shows. In this case, it was the Illinois CPA Society's Midwest Accounting and Financial Showcase last week. Microsoft was a no show and Sage pulled its booth. Generally at these shows mid-market vendors' booths are stocked by local resellers but they had something.

 

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NET@WORK JOINS TEXAS FRAY

Wednesday, 02 September 2009
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Attention any Sage reseller who would like to move into the Texas market: please act now before the doors close. New York's Net@Work became the latest dealer to enter, trying to capitalize on the demise of the MIS Group. Last month there were reports that seven VARs had formed from the debris. While I can't account for all of those, Alex and Ed Solomon's New York operation and Steve Blythe's California-based Blytheco are the two largest remaining Sage resellers (not counting some large CPA firms still hanging around) and both set up offices in Texas, although both had Texas accounts prior to the MIS Group's implosion. Obviously, the Solomons have more plans for Net@Work because they referred to the new Dallas office as a hub. Eddie Provencio, previously director of support, training, and optimization services for the MIS Group is running the Dallas operations with the title consulting manager.

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EX-SAGE EXEC LANDS AT NEAT

Wednesday, 02 September 2009
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Jim Foster, who was briefly the first chief technology officer at Sage North America, has landed the job as CEO of The Neat Co., a Philadelphia-based organization which makes scanners to organize receipts, business cards and other documents. Foster takes over the job from co-founder Les Spero who will serve as chairman. Foster was one of four executives of what was then called Sage Software who were dismissed by the parent company Sage Group in October 2007. The others were then CEO Ron Verni, CFO Jim Eckstaedt and Taylor Macdonald, who had headed the channel program. Foster was the last one to land another job, although Verni's stint as CEO of Corrigo, which started in February 2008, lasted only five months. Macdonald spent most of 2008 as the channel VP at Deltek, then moved on to the role of VP of channels for educational software vendor Promethean. Eckstaedt got the job of CFO at management consulting firm SM&A (and is still there.) Since leaving Corrigo, Verni's Linkedin page has described him as a consultant. However, he is also a board member for iLumen and CraneWare Read more...
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DELTEK BACKER BUYS STOCK

Wednesday, 02 September 2009
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New Mountain Investments, a private equity firm that helped transform Deltek from a family-owned business to a publicly held company, has been picking up shares of the Herndon, Va.-based software company again. On May 27, New Mountain exercised options and purchased 11.4 million shares at $3 per share, for a total cost of $34.5 million. On June 2, it exercised options on 4.1 million shares, again at $3 per share for a cost of $12.4 million. Those are by far the largest transactions since the investment firm sold $3.9 million shares at $18 per share for $69.8 million on Nov. 6, 2007 following Deltek’s initial public offering. New Mountain acquired a majority ownership position in Deltek in April 2005 from the DeLaski family, in a recapitalization that occurred prior to the IPO. New Mountain’s Web site notes that it is supporting Deltek management’s growth strategy. Maybe New Mountain thinks the stock is a good deal. It closed at $7.14 per share yesterday, up from $6.33 a couple of weeks ago as it got an upgrade in the recommendation from a stock analyst at Barclay's Capital. The reasoning reported for analyst Israel Hernandez's recommendation was that Delkek's business, with a major portion in serving architects and engineers, will rise as part of a cyclical economic recovery. Read more...
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NETSUITE'S CASH FOR CLUNKERS

Wednesday, 02 September 2009
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NetSuite has followed in the footsteps of the federal Cash for Clunkers program (or should we say in the tire tracks?) As the press release declares "All New NetSuite Customers That Shut Down On-Premise Servers and/or Trade Their Legacy Software receive $500 Off Every $5K Invested in NetSuite." Legacy systems are what NetSuite so kindly refers to as Stone-Age software. This offer emerged on August 19 when I was still somewhat in publishing limbo and trying to figure out what I was doing (whether I've figured it out is still subject to some debate.) But I couldn't help but wonder if the deal applies to software from Oracle, whose chairman Mr. Ellison, is NetSuite's major shareholder? Read more...
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TAMLIN BUYS THREE VARS

Tuesday, 01 September 2009
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Dallas-based Tamlin Software Developers, an AccountMate reseller that specializes in accounting and manufacturing software, has acquired three AccountMate VARs in the Los Angeles area. These are Charterhouse Software, Albany Business Systems and TaskMan Industrial Consulting. John Kane, owner of ABS, has been named as COO of the Los Angeles area. Peter Kuhne of Charterhouse and Keith Weber of TaskMan will also be based in that office. Tamlin President and CEO Linda Bryan said her company has northern California locations, along with offices in Washington D.C. and the Dallas headquarters. Tamlin, which markets the Tamlin Manufacturing Conductor application, also acquired Charterhouse’s Levinson Lyon software line. Tamlin has found a strong market in the food processing market in which traceability is a requirement. Read more...
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Sage Pushing Accpac?

Tuesday, 01 September 2009
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Early this year, Sage said Accpac, along with SageCRM, SalesLogix and X-3 were global products. Not hard to figure out the direction and I said two or three years ago they should put their bets on Accpac. Reports say there's a September 3 meeting the MAS 500 Business Partner Advisory Committee and others in Dallas. The first item on the Day 1 agenda is "Why Accpac?" There is also reportedly a committee to push Sage Pro (the old SBT line) dealers to Accpac. Remember that SageCRM was also a product from Accpac International. Read more...
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QBES DID WELL IN 2009

Tuesday, 01 September 2009
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QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions fared well for Intuit's year ended July 31 as the number of active users, 37,000 at the end of fiscal 2009, was up from 33,000 a year earlier. The 12-percent increase is less than registered in the prior year. But it's a lot better than traditional mid-market vendors, for example, Microsoft, which saw a 13 percent-drop in Dynamics billings for its fourth quarter. And in the rest of the QuickBooks family, the number of units sold increased to 1.84 million, up 2 percent, while the dollars generated fell 2 percent to $578.8 million. Other than the number of active users, no other QBES figures are provided by Intuit in its financial statements. But I would think that in this economy a lot of companies that might consider buying more-expensive ERP packages might consider QBES or Sage's Peachtree Quantum. Read more...
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MICROSOFT PLANNING REPORTING CHANGES

Tuesday, 01 September 2009
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Normally I don't promote financial calls planned by publicly held companies. But this one for Microsoft, scheduled for September 22 at 11 a.m. ET, sounds like it could be very interesting, although not directly relevant to this market. The title of the call is “Segment Reporting Changes for Fiscal Year 2010.” The last time Microsoft changed reporting of interest to accounting software VARs was when it buried the operations of Microsoft Business Solutions in the larger Microsoft Business Division so that all that the company reveals is usually the percentage change in Dynamics billings. This call doesn’t look like it will affect Dynamics as one of the two executives on the call will be Tami Reller, CFO and corporate VP of the Windows Business Group. But as a graduate of the Great Plains school of business, Reller is of interest to the channel. Also on the call will be Frank Brod, the company’s chief accounting officer and corporate VP. And who knows? Maybe somebody will say something about Dynamics. Read more...
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