Greetings from Atlanta!
Thirty years ago, this city welcomed the world to the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. This fall, it welcomed the Sage partner community to Sage Future for Partners. The comparison is not as far-fetched as it sounds.
There was the same sense of energy, a crowd gathered from many places, and a shared goal of going further, faster.
The Olympic legacy is still easy to spot downtown. Centennial Olympic Park sits only a few blocks from the Centennial Yards, the new district where Sage hosted its partner event at Cosm. If you have not been to Cosm, picture a giant 87-foot LED dome that wraps around you so completely that you forget you are not in the stadium. We watched the Baltimore Ravens take on the Jacksonville Jaguars from what felt like the sidelines. It was a fun night, and a fitting one.
The technology was immersive, but the game itself was still the point. That proved to sum up the whole conference.
Here are our four key takeaways:
1. AI is central to Sage's strategy, with trust and control at its core
Sage is building its AI story around three principles: Confidence, Control and Accountability. This glassbox AI message continues from earlier Sage Future conferences.
In practice, that means AI that is explainable, verifiable and transparent. Humans stay in the loop. Guardrails are part of the design, not an afterthought. For an accounting platform, this matters a great deal. A suggestion that cannot be traced or checked has no place near the general ledger.
The message for partners was clear. AI should deliver practical business value, and it must do so without putting customer trust at risk.
2. Sage AI opens new doors for partners and developers
The Sage AI Gateway and Sage Agent Builder aim to connect AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Gemini with Sage applications, using MCP servers and modern APIs.
Why does that matter? Because it turns Sage data and processes into something an intelligent agent can work with safely. Partners can build agents and applications that extend Sage functionality, automate workflows and tackle the specific problems their customers face every day.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Sage is supporting an ecosystem where partners can provide specialized intelligence within Sage Copilot.
In other words, the expertise partners have built over the years could soon show up right where users are already asking questions.
3. Core financials and real-world problems still matter
AI got the headlines, but Sage has not stopped investing in the fundamentals.
Sage Intacct continues to add capabilities and improve financial workflows.
Sage's advice to partners was to "solve for the long tail." AI makes it possible and cost-effective to tackle specific problems that were too hard to address before. Standard software rarely covers every requirement of every business, industry and region. That gap is where the partner ecosystem earns its place, with specialized solutions and deep industry knowledge.
4. Customer expectations are changing
Customers expect more, and they expect it sooner. Long projects with benefits promised somewhere down the road are a harder sell than they used to be. Time to value has become a critical measure of success, and so have measurable business outcomes: hours saved at month-end, faster payment runs, fewer manual errors.
For partners, this means delivering results early and being able to prove them:
A solution that fixes a real problem in weeks will win over one that simply offers more features.
What this means for Orchid and our partners
The long tail and delivering solid business outcomes is familiar territory for us. Orchid has spent years building add-ons for Sage 300 and Sage Intacct that handle the specific needs core software leaves open.
Think EFT payment formats for different banks and the many workflows that make a business unique.
Sage's direction creates real opportunities for partners who can combine three things: AI innovation, deep accounting expertise, and specialized applications.
Put them together, and you can solve practical customer problems in ways that were not possible a few years ago.
We left Atlanta with plenty of ideas and a lot of enthusiasm. Let's see what FY27 brings us.
Wish you were here!
The Orchid team
