Sage's organic revenue growth was 6.5 percent for the third quarter ended June 30. That was part of the trading update for the quarter issued this week and generally drowned out by the company's announced purchase of Intacct.

Vertex has announced what it says is a signification expansion of the capabilities and reach of its cloud platform. The King of Prussia, Pa.-based vendor has also renamed its Vertex SMB line as the Vertex Cloud and apparently changed titles of personnel who have been involved with the SMB unit.

Until this week, the question seemed to be who would run out of runway first, Sage or Intacct. Sage needed to fill a gap between Sage Live and X-3; Intacct, a lot more revenue. Sage CEO Stephen Kelly said during this week's third-quarter trading update the parties had been talking for a year, reporting Sage convinced Intacct not to go public.

Directions, which has been the Dynamics NAV conference for years, is striving to be the Dynamics SMB channel show. The new goal comes as Microsoft has clearly recognized that the Dynamics partners generally don't fit Inspire (formerly the Worldwide Partner Conference.