When someone commented about what they saw as Sage's difficulties in being successful for the future, I responded half-jokingly, "What do you expect from a bunch of accountants?" And there's something to be said about the way Sage has operated as one of those accountants prepares to leave his job as CEO.

Last year ended with some VARs questioning if the channel could survive. This year, reseller recruiting continues to pick up, with Exact the latest company to cast its pole into the reseller waters, which is interesting since the company spent the prior few years buying its top VARs and encouraging others to get together. That, executives say, has come to a stop.

Before Sage held two events for the global launch of the new version of its X3 product, I knew that the application competed with Dynamics AX, Epicor and the like, that it was targeted for process manufacturing and that a handful of VARs that have been recruited haven't yet sold any installations.