Enterprise AI is moving into a more complicated phase. The first wave of adoption largely centered on tools that could generate text, summarize documents, answer questions, or assist employees with individual tasks. The next phase is increasingly about connecting those capabilities to the systems where businesses store information and run their operations.
That shift is reflected in Microsoft’s latest recognition of Sonata Software, which has received the 2026–2027 Microsoft AI Business Solutions Inner Circle award for the sixth time. The recognition places Sonata among the top tier of Microsoft’s global AI Business Solutions partner network.
The announcement comes as Sonata expands its focus on AI-led modernization, AI-ready data, AI operations, and agentic AI. The company has worked with Microsoft for more than three decades and currently builds capabilities across Dynamics 365, Azure, Microsoft Fabric, Power Platform, and Copilot.
“The ability to embrace AI to deliver value and enterprise velocity will differentiate organizations in an AI-led era,” said Anthony Lange, Chief Revenue Officer at Sonata Software. He said the sixth Inner Circle recognition reflects the engineering capabilities Sonata brings to enterprise AI deployments, adding that the company and Microsoft are helping organizations “move from systems of record to systems capable of autonomous action.”
Enterprise AI is becoming an infrastructure problem
The challenge with deploying AI inside an enterprise is increasingly less about whether a model can generate a useful response and more about whether the surrounding technology can provide the information and access required to act on it.
Customer information may sit inside a CRM, financial data inside an ERP, and operational information across other applications. Legacy systems may continue to support critical workflows even as newer cloud services and AI tools are introduced around them.
An AI assistant that only summarizes information can operate within a relatively narrow environment. An AI system expected to determine what should happen next and execute that action needs access to multiple systems, defined permissions and a way to operate within existing business processes.
Sonata is positioning its technology around that broader environment. Through Sonata Harmoni.AI, the company brings together capabilities spanning AI-led modernization, AI-ready data, resilient AI operations, and AI-led service delivery, with the stated goal of helping enterprises move from AI experimentation toward business impact at scale.
That approach also connects with Microsoft’s broader enterprise technology stack. Sonata’s capabilities span Dynamics 365, Azure, Microsoft Fabric, Power Platform and Copilot, covering business applications, cloud infrastructure, data platforms, automation and AI assistants.
The technical requirements change when an AI system is allowed to take action. A generative AI application might analyze a customer request and produce a response. An agentic system could potentially analyze the same request, retrieve information from an enterprise system, determine which workflow applies and initiate the next step.
This creates new requirements around permissions, data access, security and oversight. The more systems an AI agent can interact with, the more important it becomes for companies to understand what the agent can access and which actions it is allowed to perform.
Sonata has recently joined Microsoft’s Copilot Agents & Platform Engineering Depth Partners program and become a Microsoft Frontier Partner. According to the company, these developments deepen its engagement with Microsoft’s Engineering and Product teams around advancing and scaling agentic AI.
Microsoft’s AI partner ecosystem is evolving
The Inner Circle recognition also highlights the role of partners as Microsoft expands its AI Business Solutions ecosystem. Niels Jensen, Microsoft AI Business Solutions ERP Lead in Enterprise Partner Solutions, said Inner Circle partners represent Microsoft’s top-selling partners worldwide.
“But it is more than a sales recognition; it’s a community of industry leaders who work closely with Microsoft to accelerate innovation, share experience and shape the future of AI-powered business transformation,” Jensen said.
Jensen added that the collaboration and commitment to customer success demonstrated by the community helps Microsoft advance its AI Business Solutions partner ecosystem and deliver business outcomes at scale.
For Sonata, the recognition adds to a relationship with Microsoft that has lasted more than 30 years. The company’s current AI strategy combines modernization engineering with data, cloud infrastructure and business applications, while its recent involvement in Microsoft’s agentic AI initiatives points toward the next stage of that strategy.
According to Sonata, the company has more than 6,400 AI engineers and operates across multiple global markets using its Platformation™ modernization framework.
As enterprise AI moves toward systems capable of taking actions rather than simply generating responses, the technology challenge is expanding with it. The quality of the underlying model remains important, but so do the data, applications, infrastructure and engineering that determine where that model can operate and what it can actually do.
