I finally broke the umbilical cord with SunSystems in 1993 with my first 'independent' consulting gig.

Bill Goodhew, then CEO of Peachtree, read my February 1993 article in DBMS magazine (my first paid-for article, yippee) entitled Client/Server Accounting: Accounting Systems Based on Client/Server Architectures Increase Productivity and asked me to come on down to Atlanta to tell them about it.

No doubt he was intrigued by whether I could prove the tag line the DBMS editor David Kalman had helpfully added to my blockbuster article title. I couldn't.

In fact I think Peachtree knew more about C/S than I did - after all they subscribed to Gartner and other analyst services and I had to think for myself - but they were happy to spend time with a wacky Brit to see if they could learn something.

Thank you Bill for setting me off on the road to minor ERP-gurudom (Bombay: Failed).

At the time, Bill was struggling with his own innovative proposition which was whether or not to do a deal to resell an unknown (in the USA) Danish accounting system called Navision (or was it still Navigator then?). That connection started a decade-long, on-off link I had with Navision in both the USA and Denmark, which led to the most innovative project I was ever involved in, thanks largely to the enthusiasm of Rene Stockner and the vision of Torben Wind (more later).