Sage has heralded its metamorphosis into a cloud computing business, announcing that services delivered from the cloud that made virtually no money three years ago returned £300 million last year. For Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Britain’s second-biggest listed technology company, the results vindicated its strategy, announced in 2015, to move customers to subscription-based payments from the traditional model of upfront licensing fees. In the year ending September 30, software subscriptions accounted for 37 per cent of total revenue. “The job is done, the model is established, the platform is in place,” Mr Kelly said as the Newcastle-based group reported a 10 per cent rise in organic operating profit to £475 million, on the back of a 6.6 per cent increase in organic revenue to…

Source: The Times November 23, 2017 00:00 UTC