For Nadia, Sage Copilot is an essential ally when it comes to tackling a chore most small businesses waste time on – chasing overdue invoices.

Nadia is the volunteer treasurer of a rowing club in Hammersmith, and uses Sage Copilot to automatically detect when invoices are due – and at the click of a button can send automatic payment reminders to chase unpaid invoices.

Every week, Sage Copilot saves her five hours, she estimates – and Sage customers report that using the function gets them paid a week earlier.

Lisa Ewans, Senior Vice President at the Newcastle-based accounting software firm says: ‘Through our AI, Nadia saves hours of admin a week, which is hugely valuable as a volunteer, because it’s not a day job she’s getting paid for so time is her currency.’

‘Sage Copilot automatically runs in the background, and at the click of a button Sage Copilot chases those customers whose payments are overdue and helps to get the payments in.’

Small businesses can customise the tone of their invoice-chasing emails so it sounds like them, giving them control of how the AI works for them.

Sage Copilot helps small business owners stay on top of their finances and in control of cash flow: as well as chasing invoices. It can help business owners spot duplicate payments and other errors in their accounts, a common problem, and spot trends that might affect the business.

From tradespeople to coffee shop owners

Sage Copilot has a huge amount to offer for businesses in many sectors: tradespeople, for example, often spend considerable time chasing late payments.

Tradespeople can use the time saved to focus on finding new customers or delivering for existing ones.

With Sage Copilot, small business owners can stay on top of their finances with confidence. From chasing invoices to catching duplicate payments and errors, it even spots trends that might affect their business—helping them stay one step ahead.

And when it identifies changes, like rising prices, Sage Copilot provides clear, timely alerts so you can act quickly and make confident decisions.

For other business owners such as cafe owners, the ability to easily spot duplicate payments within VAT returns, or payments that have been miscategorised allows business owners to file returns with peace of mind.

Lisa Ewans says: ‘The focus is around identifying errors in the data, so Sage Copilot spots duplicate transactions for example and alerts business owners automatically. It gives business owners the confidence to sign off returns quickly, and saves them time.’

Sage is a British business, born and bred, with its global headquarters in Newcastle—our home for over 40 years. In that time, it has worked closely with businesses across every sector to understand their challenges and develop financial AI that delivers real value to businesses, solving real world challenges. 

Helping with the details

For accountants and bookkeepers, Sage Copilot offers other benefits, helping them deal with both tax returns and ‘Know Your Customer’ (‘KYC’) checks, which are a series of procedures businesses must follow to verify their customers’ identities and check their risk profiles.

Sage’s experts identified the real ‘pain points’ faced by accountants and bookkeepers, who often spend too much time chasing clients for documents such as identity documents and paper copies of receipts.

Instead of chasing clients via phone and email, Sage delivers automatic assistance when it comes to the documents accountants and bookkeepers need for tax returns and KYC processes.

Ewans says: ‘One of the biggest pain points we hear from accountants is that they spend a load of time chasing up documents,transactions that haven’t been submitted properly, and chasing up paper copies of receipts.’

Sage created a workflow specifically designed so that accountants and bookkeepers could spend less time chasing customers for information.

Instead, Sage Copilot automatically reaches out to customers to request information, and customers upload receipts (for example) as images.

This means that accountants have to spend less time chasing customers via email.

Trusting AI

For Sage, it was important that businesses should be able to trust the AI software to deliver securely, privately and effectively. Sage’s AI Trust Label is a direct response to this – it is designed to provide customers with clear, accessible information about the way AI functions across Sage products.

Sage Copilot was made in the UK, and was built from the ground up with the needs of this country’s businesses in mind.

Ewans says: ‘We know that trust is really important to our customers. You don’t have to be a huge Silicon Valley company to deliver for customers.

‘We have 40 years of experience working with small businesses, and 400 UK-based engineers and data scientists building Sage Copilot to deliver an AI copilot that focuses on the real needs of small businesses today.’

Key Points

• The cloud infrastructure space got a jump start thanks to the surge in demand for AI.

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) recently signed a flurry of deals that could take its business to the next level.

• The company is on a path to become one of the world’s largest cloud providers.

• 10 stocks we like better than Oracle ›

The advent of modern cloud computing is largely attributed to Amazon, which pioneered cloud infrastructure services with the introduction of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2002. The industry has evolved over time, but the basics remain the same: Providers offer on-demand, scalable computing, software, data storage, and networking capabilities to any business with an internet connection.

After a period of slower growth, the cloud infrastructure space got a jump start thanks to recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). However, the large language models that underpin the technology require a great deal of computational horsepower, which typically isn’t available outside a data center. As a result, the demand for cloud infrastructure services has skyrocketed in recent years, and it’s expected only to grow from here.

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Recent developments suggest there could be a big shakeup coming to the cloud infrastructure space, led by technology stalwart Oracle (NYSE: ORCL).

Image source: Getty Images.

Skyrocketing demand for Oracle Cloud

While the company is primarily known for its flagship Oracle Database, it offers customers a growing suite of enterprise software, integrated cloud applications, and cloud infrastructure services.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has long trailed the Big Three cloud providers. To close out the calendar second quarter, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Alphabet‘s Google Cloud controlled 30%, 20%, and 13% of the market, respectively, according to data compiled by Statista. Oracle ran a distant fifth with 3% of the market.

Yet, recent developments suggest a paradigm shift in the status quo. When Oracle released the results of its fiscal 2026 first quarter (ended Aug. 31), the headline numbers were largely business as usual. Total revenue grew 11% year over year to $14.9 billion, while its adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.47 grew 6%.

However, investors were taken aback by the magnitude of Oracle’s backlog, as its remaining performance obligation (RPO) — or contractual obligations not yet included in revenue — surged 359% year over year to $455 billion. Perhaps more impressive is the $317 billion in contracts signed during the first quarter alone.

Oracle’s position as a trusted partner to enterprise made it “the go-to place for AI workloads,” according to CEO Safra Catz. If that wasn’t enough, she went on to say, “We expect to sign-up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers and RPO is likely to exceed half-a-trillion dollars.”

Breaking down that backlog shows that Oracle will be reaping the benefit of those deals for years to come:

• Fiscal 2026 cloud revenue of $18 billion, up 77%
• Fiscal 2027 cloud revenue of $32 billion, up 78%
• Fiscal 2028 cloud revenue of $73 billion, up 128%
• Fiscal 2029 cloud revenue of $114 billion, up 56%
• Fiscal 2030 cloud revenue of $144 billion, up 26%

The company notes that the majority of the revenue in this outlook is already booked in RPO, so there are contracts backing these forecasts. If Oracle is able to reach these lofty benchmarks, and that’s still a big if, OCI will join the big leagues of cloud infrastructure and could potentially unseat one or more of the Big Three.

A changing of the guard?

As previously stated, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google top the list of cloud infrastructure providers, so it helps to see where they stand. During the first six months of 2025, AWS generated revenue of $60.1 billion, up 17%, suggesting a run rate of $120 billion. During the same period, Google Cloud’s revenue came in at $25.9 billion, up 30%, suggesting a run rate of about $51.8 billion. Microsoft doesn’t generally break out Azure’s revenue, but it recently revealed that for fiscal 2025 (ended June 30), Azure surpassed $75 billion in revenue, up 34%.

Given the limitations, this is obviously not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it provides us with a starting point. Taking these extrapolated figures and applying their most recent growth rates over the coming four years, here’s where the Big Three would stand by the end of calendar 2029 compared to Oracle:

• AWS: $225 billion
• Azure: $241 billion
• Google Cloud: $157 billion
• Oracle: $144 billion

Using our imperfect information and assuming Oracle can turn its RPO into cloud revenue, this exercise shows a path for OCI to mount a challenge to the Big Three over the next five years.

To be clear, this is fun with numbers, and life doesn’t occur in a vacuum. All of our cloud infrastructure providers will likely grow more quickly or more slowly than our examples suggest. One of the upstart neocloud providers could capture an outsize portion of the market. There are plenty of other examples of what could go very right or very wrong, but you get the idea.

To buy or not to buy?

The recent surge in Oracle’s stock price has had a commensurate impact on its valuation, which appears lofty at first glance. The stock is selling for 38 times next year’s earnings, which is certainly a premium. However, using the more appropriate forward price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio, which accounts for the company’s growth trajectory, the multiple comes in at 0.8, when any number less than 1 is the standard for an undervalued stock.

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Danny Vena has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.