It's worth noting that Epicor has become more of a niche package that targets the manufacturing industry. I sense a shift in buying from companies looking to "make do" with off-the-shelf to companies wanting to buy industry specific software. Perhaps that is one reason for their confidence (assuming that "things aren't getting worse" is a vote of confidence).

The problem I've always seen with large vars (multi-state) is that you must have larger engagements (measured in weeks - preferably months) and not hours or days. Once a VAR spans states in order to get efficient you must be able to manage the engagements centrally. You cannot manage little 4-hour upgrade engagements from a remote office. At least not efficiently. This is where I've always felt the aspirations of the ePartner type roll-ups fell way short. They took a bunch of little guys and added them all together to create --- a bunch of little guys all added together.... In other words 1+1=2 instead of 3,4 or 5 (meaning they didn't really add much in the way of value with their rolloup).