In TBR’s opinion, the decision to pursue a more embedded services posture with FDEs suggests two things: Agentic AI technology has reached a point where vendors are willing to raise the stakes and work directly with customers to enable hands-on adoption support, and AI value remains very hard to deliver. By putting boots on the ground, vendors are betting that the right FDE paired with the customer’s technical talent can identify the opportunities for agentic automation that overcome these adoption hurdles, expand usage, and convert AI experimentation into repeatable commercial value.

KPMG appears to be attempting to move the competitive battleground from implementation speed to governed operations. If the market evolves in this direction, partners and competitors will need to clarify their roles and demonstrate credibility in an environment where agentic transformation is treated less as a discrete project and more as a continuously governed system.

In 2025 no conversation is complete without recognizing the platform implications of agentic workflows. Behind the scenes, Sage is preparing for an agent-first architecture by integrating emerging frameworks, such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) or Agent 2 Agent (A2A), directly into its platforms. The long-term goal is to coordinate these through super agents and plug into the broader agent ecosystem (Salesforce, Microsoft, Google), but this is still only part of the long-term road map.