No one can say he didn’t have a good – if eventful – innings, but even so I was a little surprised to see that Andy Makeham, CEO at Microsoft platform mid-market ERP VAR K3 Business Technology Group has chosen now to hand over the captaincy to long-time CFO David Bolton after 14 years in the top job. Bolton – who actually owns a little more of K3’s stock than Makeham – has himself been 15 years looking after the books at K3 and takes over with immediate effect.
I have always enjoyed my many chats with Makeham who I felt was one of the first SME players to have ‘got it’ about how to approach the mid-market with a ‘cloud’ proposition. Basically, he sold customers the software first and then offered to host it. Voila – the customer is now ‘in the cloud’! Nonetheless, when I spoke to Makeham this morning he said that selling ‘cloud’ to the low-end mid-market has been a bit of a ‘slow burn’, but of late all their deals in the manufacturing sector (second string to K3’s retail focus) have been hosted from the get-go.
As for K3, well it’s hard to think that Bolton would change much in the play book, though whether non-exec director and near-20% top stakeholder PJ Claesson would look again at buying out (see Claesson baulks at K3 buy) or even selling out is to be seen.