Microsoft has previewed Project Madeira, Office 365-based accounting. This company held a conference call this week on the project, which appears to offer QuickBooks Online-level accounting, conducted by Errol Schoenfish, director of product marketing. Microsoft describes the software this way, "Project Madeira offers an embedded experience within Office 365 so you can create customers, vendors, quotes, and invoices without leaving Outlook."

Avalara has certified a connection to Rockton Connect, an accounting application built on Dynamics CRM. Built by Rockton Software, Connect is designed for the QuickBooks-level financial software user. The certification from sales-and-use tax vendor Avalara means those who use the Rockton product can utilize Avalara's cloud-based software engine to perform sales tax calculations.

SugarCRM has hired Richard Green as chief product officer. In the job, he will lead the company's SugarCRM's engineering and product management teams, The Cupertino, Calf.-based cloud CRM vendor says Green brings expertise in enterprise software, predictive analytics, mobile application design and open source technology. Green was most recently senior sales executive/premium domain broker for Afternic/GoDaddy where he had worked since July 2010.

Unit4 has demonstrated a Digital Assistant at Connect, its user conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Unit4 Digital Assistant is scheduled for availability next year. Built on the company's People Platform Premium Edition, the new product combines information from a variety of sources and performs activities on its own initiative and can be configured based on user preference.