Sage North America will offer Sage SalesLogix CRM Suiteto North American users via the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)infrastructure by June 2010, after which it will be expanded to other regionsworldwide.

Global business consulting and internal audit firmProtiviti Inc. released a new version of its Governance Portal for InternalAudit, adding a synchronization management engine that allows auditors to workeven when they are disconnected from the network.

Xcentric, a technology consultingconcern for CPA firms has rebranded its Gray Matter hosting services offeringto Xcentric Cloud Network.

CCH has improved the exemption management features in thelatest version of its CorpSystem Sales Tax Office software.

Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting has agreed to acquirethe tax compliance software products Tax Integrator, Fringe Benefits TaxOrganiser and Global Integrator from Ernst & Young Australia.

IMGCAP(1)]Is all of the recent talk about virtualization just hype? We don’t think so.

Cougar Mountain Software has released Version 2.9 of its Denali accounting software, which includes, among other things, the ability to import any payroll service provider and view an at-a-glance financial dashboard.

Cloud accounting software vendor FinancialForce.com has extended its functionality by adding electronic processing of bank payments to its online accounting offering.

The Boston Red Sox has to deal with some unusual challenges, including conquering a Green Monster of an accounting system.

Corporate performance management software developer Prophix Software has partnered with XBRL software solutions vendor Semansys Technologies to create Prophix XBRL Reporting to automate complex internal and external financial reporting processes.

Microsoft plans to integrate the Web-based version of its customer relationship management product, Dynamics CRM Online, with its enterprise resource planning and accounting software, Dynamics GP, formerly known as Great Plains Dynamics.

Business optimization provider b-pack Corp. has released the newest Software-as-a-Service version of its purchase-to-pay and e-procurement lifecycle management software suite for businesses in North America and Europe.

Cloud-based enterprise resource planning software maker Acumatica has released Acumatica 1.4, which includes dozens of new features designed to help midsized businesses with complex requirements automate their business processes.

Intuit has teamed up with a nonprofit group on Earth Day to promote a free online forum where employees can share and re-use unneeded items, such as office furniture and computer screens, instead of dumping them in the trash.

Accounting and customer relationship management application integration provider DBSync LLC is expanding its support for cloud computing by offering integration with QuickBooks Online Edition, and by extending its support of QuickBooks Desktop adapters.

While companies are increasingly making use of cloud computing for their accounting software and other applications, they’re not completely ditching their enterprise resource planning software either.

Microsoft said it plans to officially release Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 on May 1, adding enhanced business intelligence functions to the latest version of one of its top enterprise resource planning systems.

Net@Work, a major New York-based Sage reseller and document management service provider, has acquired Boston-based MAS 90 and MAS 200 reseller Fitzgerald Group, giving the firm a much larger Northeast presence and over 700 new customers.

Technology is the accelerator for improving performance and meeting client requirements in today's economy. You can do more with less, but reducing investments in training and technology (as some have done this past year) only results in making your business less competitive.

Ben Franklin is credited with saying that the only sure things in life are death and taxes, so there's probably not going to be a way to make the payroll application pleasant. But the right software or service provider can make a big difference in both your clients' experience and your practice. There's no big secret - it's just a matter of helping your clients match their needs with the cost and capabilities of the available solutions.