Date

10 March 2026

Venue

The Vineyard Hotel, Newlands, CPT

Attendees

30

Duration

3.5 Hours

With Table Mountain behind them and a room full of business and IT decision-makers in front, Braintree ran a session built around a single premise: cut through the noise and show what AI actually looks like inside a real organisation today.

Gregor Dreyer, VP of Sales and Marketing at Braintree, opened by naming the tension in the room. The AI conversation has been running for two years now. The question is no longer whether it will change how you work. The question is whether you will lead that shift or get dragged into it.

Nobody in that room got to sit back for long.

The Keynote That Challenged the Room

Nicky Verd delivered the headline moment of the afternoon. Her keynote on AI, leadership, and competitive advantage was high-energy and deliberately uncomfortable.

Her argument was straightforward: the organisations seeing real results from AI are not the ones with the most technology. They are the ones that stopped treating AI as an IT project and started treating it as a change management problem. The technology is available to everyone. How you lead the adoption of it is what separates you.

She set the frame for everything that followed.

Surface as a Service: The Device Is Now a Strategic Decision

Lance from Braintree walked the room through Microsoft Surface as a Service, with the latest AI-enabled Surface devices on show including the Surface Pro Copilot+ PC and the Surface Hub 3.

The as-a-Service model removes the capital barrier. Organisations no longer need a large upfront investment to get the right devices into their people’s hands. The model also keeps the hardware current, so teams are always working on something that can actually support what they need to do.

Microsoft Security: The Foundation Before the Innovation

Diketso from Microsoft brought the room back to fundamentals. Her session on Microsoft Security made the case clearly: as organisations move faster on AI adoption, the attack surface grows with it. Security governance and responsible AI use are not optional extras you bolt on later. You build on top of them.

M365 Copilot: Seeing It Work, Live

Raymond from Braintree ran a live showcase of Microsoft 365 Copilot. No slides describing features. The product running, in real time, in front of the room.

Attendees watched Copilot work across Teams, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint simultaneously, summarising meetings, drafting communications, running data analysis and generating presentation content. Some people in the room had seen pieces of this before. Watching it work across the full Microsoft 365 stack in one session gave it a different weight.

The point that landed hardest was not the feature list. It was the framing. Copilot learns the language of your organisation. It picks up on your priorities, the way your team communicates, the way decisions get made. That is what makes it useful over time, not just impressive in a demo.

Copilot for Microsoft Business Applications

Eldon from Braintree moved the Copilot conversation beyond Microsoft 365, introducing Copilot for Microsoft Business Applications across Business Central, Customer Engagement and Finance and Operations.

For organisations running operations on the Microsoft Dynamics stack, this is where AI becomes a business intelligence engine rather than a productivity add-on. It sits inside the platforms where financial decisions, customer interactions and supply chain operations actually happen.

Braintree Managed Services: Officially Launched

The Power Session was also a significant moment for Braintree as a business. Chris and Doug formally launched two new Managed Services offerings to the room:

• M365 Managed Services:

  Ongoing Microsoft 365 ecosystem management, proactive optimisation and strategic guidance from a team embedded in these platforms every day.

• Azure Cloud Managed Services:

  Enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure management for organisations that need the capability without carrying the internal overhead.

Neither offering is a break-fix arrangement. Both are built as long-term commercial partnerships for businesses that want their Microsoft investment actively managed and continuously improved.

Arctic Wolf: Putting an End to Cyber Threats

Delon and Gregg from Arctic Wolf closed the formal programme by tackling cybersecurity head-on. Their Security Operations Centre provides continuous monitoring, rapid threat detection and active response. Most mid-market organisations cannot build that capability internally. Arctic Wolf provides it as a managed service.

After the Room

When the programme closed, the evening opened up.

Live entertainment, snacks and sundowners on the terrace as the sun dropped behind Table Mountain. The kind of venue and setting that gives people a reason to stay, slow down and actually talk. Those peer-to-peer conversations, candid and unhurried, tend to be where the most commercially valuable thinking happens.

The Takeaway

The Braintree Modern Work Power Session was not built to inform passively. It was built to move people from awareness into a position, and from curiosity into a decision.

The organisations that left Cape Town with clarity have a head start. The ones still sitting on the fence are not standing still. They are losing ground, just slowly enough that it does not feel urgent yet.

To continue any of the conversations from the day, whether Managed Services, AI licensing, Surface as a Service or Arctic Wolf security, reach out to the Braintree team.

Key Takeaways from the Session

• Microsoft Copilot is production-ready business automation. It runs across Microsoft 365, Teams and Dynamics 365 and has moved well beyond the chatbot phase.

• AI governance is a competitive advantage, not a blocker. Businesses with clear AI policies are adopting faster and running into fewer compliance problems than those figuring it out as they go.

• Braintree’s Hardware-as-a-Service model makes Copilot-ready device upgrades accessible without large capital outlay. For most organisations, endpoint readiness is one of the first barriers to AI adoption. HaaS removes it.

• Change management is where the real work happens. The technology is the straightforward part. Organisations that invest in training, communication and cultural readiness are seeing significantly better Copilot adoption rates within the first 90 days.

Photo Gallery

Moments from the Afternoon

A look back at an inspiring few hours with South Africa's business community.

Aftermovie

Relive the Experience

Watch the official aftermovie and share the highlights with your network.

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