Taylor Macdonald, who ran the reseller program for Sage North America for several years, has left Infor, an enterprise software company for which he was building a global reseller program. Confirmation of his departure coincided with a press release by Infor stating it had enlisted 25 new channel partners and declaring its program a success. The released a statement saying that "Taylor devoted his full energy to an evaluation of our current channel program, including extensive travel to visit partners around the globe."
Macdonald could not be reached for comment and Infor gave no reason for the development, other than the typical statement that he had left to pursue other interests.
Privately held, Infor has grown rapidly since 2002 to an estimated $2.8 billion in revenue by acquisition of companies such as Systems Union. Along with acquiring a variety of products, it also had a bevy of different reseller programs that Macdonald had hoped to make more uniform. Infor has provided little information on that effort but was working at press time to set up an interview with a senior executive about the reseller program.
Macdonald was an executive at Sage for several years and was ousted, along with three other top executives, in October 2007. During 2008, he was at Deltek, a Herndon, Va.-based vendor that makes software for project-oriented companies. After just under a year there, he assumed a similar role at Atlanta-based Promethean, an educational software company.
Infor is planning on releasing more information about its channel program via an April 29 Webinar being held by chief strategy officer, Bruce Richardson. While the company has not described the type of channel organizations it sought, those businesses whose Web sites show they resell Infor products tend to be larger than the average VAR that sells Microsoft or Sage products and operate in several regions of the United States and also tend to have international operations.
Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards. Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that. A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind
