NetSuite has named Mike Arntz as sales SVP for the Americas. Arntz was most recently EVP of worldwide sales for Kenandy from September 2103 through November 2014. But like many important NetSuite hires, he comes from the mothership—he worked with Oracle from June 1994 through September 2013. In his last three years, four months with Oracle, Arntz was group VP of North American application sales, and mid-market accounts.

Pascal Houillon is leaving his job as CEO of Sage's America's operation. The move, effective this week, is said by Sage to be a matter of leaving the business to broaden his career outside of Sage." Don't you love the phrase? Anyway, Sage made the announcement with the release of results for the half end March 31. The company says it is looking for a permanent president of Sage North America, which you may notice is not the same title.

FinancialForce.com is going after cloud vendors that pitch a patchwork of applications. The company, whose ERP system is built on the Salesforce 1 platform, launched what it called an education initiative to raise awareness about the "FrankenCloud". It is an attack on vendors that FinancialForce said have bought their way into the cloud. It was primarily aimed at SAP and Oracle, but FinancialForce seemed happy to extend the definition to NetSuite.

Watched a group of out-of-town high school students in Manhattan. I concluded that, especially the girls with their wildly or partially shaved and colored hair, the tourists now look more bizarre than the street people. ... I am happy to see New  Yorkers are proud of their heritage. I saw plaque stating “On this day in 1663, in what was the New Amsterdam, the first known pan handler asked someone for change to get back to New Jersey.” Unfortunately, the panhandler spoke in English and the other person Dutch.… When somebody told me the state was having a sales tax holiday.