Our History
The Sage Group plc is a remarkable local and global success story. Founded in 1981 in North East England, we’ve grown to become a world-leading provider of business management software and services. We employ more than 13,400 people in a global operation that, in the year ended 30th September 2009, generated revenues of £1,439.3m.
Like the city of Newcastle Upon Tyne in which we were established, Sage is fresh-thinking, dynamic, friendly and professional. The business has been built around innovation. We started in a local printing works on Newcastle’s Quayside when entrepreneur, David Goldman, was seeking to automate the print estimating process in his business. He worked with a team of Newcastle University students who, as part of a wider project, developed software to manage both print estimating and basic accounting. David realised other companies like his own would benefit from the software and formed a company to begin selling it. As desktop PCs became widespread so the Sage range grew and our business went from strength to strength. We floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and in 1999 we entered the FTSE 100 where we remain.
Today 6.1 million businesses worldwide rely on Sage to help them manage their key business processes. We are still heavily focused on innovation and entrepreneurship in our people. We have a locally-focused strategy to ensure local ownership and empowered decisionmaking relevant to our customers in each marketplace in which we operate.