Zoho Inspire Europe 2026: What Two Days in Tarragona Actually Taught Me

I’ve been to enough conferences to know the ones that matter. They’re not always the biggest or the most polished. They’re the ones where you come home thinking differently, not just about your industry, but about your own business.

Zoho Inspire Europe 2026 was one of those.

I spent two days in Tarragona in June with Zoho partners from across Europe, Zoho’s leadership team, and some sharp external voices including a Director from Deloitte. I came back with a lot of notes. More importantly, I came back with a much clearer view of where things are going.

Here’s what actually stood out.

Thirty years of building something different

Zoho turned 30 this year. That’s worth more than a passing mention.

Thirty years, privately owned, no outside investors, no stock market, no advertising revenue. In a tech industry built around hypergrowth and exit strategies, Zoho has just kept building. Quietly and on their own terms.

That independence turns out to be one of the most important things about them right now.

The market is more unsettled than most people realise

One of the opening sessions didn’t hold back. Major software companies, names everyone recognises, have seen their value fall dramatically over the past twelve months. In some cases by half. The question being asked openly in the room was whether AI is about to make traditional software irrelevant.

The honest answer was: not quite, but the rules have changed. Simply buying good software and expecting it to deliver value on its own isn’t enough anymore. What comes next is more interesting, but it requires more from everyone involved.

Who actually controls your data?

This was the session that stayed with me most.

In February 2025, a US executive order resulted in the International Criminal Court losing access to Microsoft services overnight. No warning. No appeal. No recourse. The ICC subsequently moved away from Microsoft entirely.

That’s not a hypothetical. It happened.

European businesses are now asking, rightly, whether their systems could be switched off by a decision made in Washington that has nothing to do with them. For organisations using US-based platforms, it’s an uncomfortable question.

Zoho’s answer to this is built into how they operate. EU customer data stored in European data centres. No ad-tech model. Privately owned. Full control of their own stack. That’s not a marketing line; it’s how the business is actually built. And right now, it matters more than it ever has.

The AI reality, and what most people are missing

There was plenty of AI content across the two days. But the most useful thing said about it wasn’t a product announcement. It was this:

The model is the commodity. Your customer’s context is the moat.

AI models are getting cheaper and more widely available. What makes the difference isn’t which model you use; it’s the quality of the business data and processes you run it on, and whether you’ve built enough trust to let it act.

I’ve been saying something similar to customers for a while. Software sits above process and data. AI agents can now work at that layer in ways that weren’t possible eighteen months ago, but only if the foundations are solid. An agent running on messy, inconsistent data doesn’t produce average results. It produces wrong ones, confidently. That’s worse than doing nothing.

Zoho’s own Chief Strategy Officer was direct about what this means for partners; those who stick to basic implementation work will find that market shrinking. The opportunity is in the layer above it. Helping customers understand what AI can genuinely do for them. Getting the data right. Building agents that solve real problems. Taking responsibility for outcomes, not just delivery.

That’s a different kind of work. It’s also more valuable.

What this means in practice

The conversation with customers has to change. Not as a pitch, but genuinely.

Businesses don’t just need someone to set up their Zoho. They need someone who can help them work out where AI will actually make a difference, make sure their data is ready for it, and build something that works in the real world, not just in a demo.

The businesses that get moving on this in the next year or so will build something their competitors will find hard to copy. The ones that wait will be catching up.

One last thought

I’ll be honest; I’m sceptical of conferences that promise transformation and deliver slide decks.

This one was different. Not because every session was ground-breaking. Because the combination of what Zoho shared, the conversations with other partners, and the honesty from some of the speakers created something genuinely useful. I came back with more questions than answers. But they were better questions. And we’re already working on them.

If you’re a Zoho customer thinking about what any of this means for your business, that’s exactly the conversation I’d like to have.