Net@Work Expands Sage Market Presence With Acquisition, Vertex Deal

Solution provider Net@Work continues to expand its business within the Sage Software arena, recently acquiring another Sage reseller and striking a deal with Vertex to bring that developer's sales tax applications to the Sage market.

The moves extend Net@Work's already significant presence in the Sage arena. Last week, Net@Work (No. 406 on the CRN 2014 Solution Provider 500 list) was demonstrating its ConnectPoint integration software for Sage applications at the Sage Summit conference in Las Vegas.

Through the deal with Vertex, Net@Work will provide the Vertex SMB Tax Central sales and use tax cloud applications to Net@Work's own growing roster of solution providers. "We believe that Vertex SMB will be a game-changer for our business and for all partners that embrace it," said Alex Solomon, Net@Work co-founder and co-president, in an interview.

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Vertex's applications are used by businesses to calculate, manage and report city, county and state sales and use taxes. In May, the company launched Vertex SMB, a pay-as-you-go cloud applications specifically for small and midsize businesses.

Under its alliance with Vertex, Net@Work is integrating Vertex SMB with Sage's ERP and CRM application portfolio, including the Sage 100 ERP, Sage 300 ERP and Sage X3 ERP application sets. Net@Work is also reselling the applications to its customers, as well as making the cloud applications available to its own channel partners in the Net@Work Partner Alliance program.

Vertex sees Net@Work as "a leader in the Sage ecosystem," said Bradd Wildstein, Vertex director of channel sales, in an interview. Allying with Net@Work for go-to-market activities and relying on the New York-based solution provider to tackle the job of integrating the tax applications with Sage software was a natural move for Vertex, he said.

Vertex is paying channel partners a commission of 25 percent of Vertex SMB Tax Central recurring revenue for the life of the customer, Wildstein said.

The Software Solutions acquisition is the latest of a series of Net@Work acquisitions, including solution provider Huckstep & Associates in April 2013, as well as the nonprofit practices of ADSS Global in June and Blytheco in September.

Net@Work bought Software Solutions' HRMS practice in 2010, a move that should help with the transition for customers as the company integrates the rest of the solution provider with Net@Work's business. Richmond, Va.-based Software Solutions is a consultant and reseller of Sage 100 ERP, Sage 500 ERP and Sage CRM applications, primarily in Virginia and Maryland.

The Software Solutions team will continue to work out of the Richmond office, Net@Work said.

PUBLISHED AUG. 4, 2014