University of Kwazulu-Natal

Gartner Calls 2026 A Pivotal Year As Ai Automation And Digital

Bonisiwe Shabane
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gartner calls 2026 a pivotal year as ai automation and digital

ORLANDO, Fla., November 3, 2025 — Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company, today revealed its top strategic predictions for 2026 and beyond. Gartner’s top predictions span three categories: talent in the AI age, sovereignty and insidious AI. “The risks and opportunities of rapid technology change are increasingly affecting human behavior and choices,” said Daryl Plummer, VP, Distinguished Analyst, Gartner Fellow and Chief of AI Research for the Gartner High Tech Leaders... “To properly prepare for the future, CIOs and executive leaders should prioritize behavioral changes alongside technological changes as first-order priorities.” Gartner’s top 10 strategic predictions for 2026 and beyond include: Through 2027, GenAI and AI agent use will create the first true challenge to mainstream productivity tools in 30 years, prompting a $58 billion market shakeup

GenAI changes will allow organizations to prioritize requirements to GenAI innovations that accelerate work completion. Legacy formats and compatibility will decline in importance, reducing barriers to entry and resulting in new competition from a wide array of vendors. Gartner calls 2026 a "pivotal year" as AI, automation, and digital trust drive unprecedented technological change. Research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc. has released its highly anticipated list of top strategic technology trends for 2026, highlighting the intense acceleration and convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and digital trust. According to Gene Alvarez, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, technology leaders are facing a period where "disruption, innovation, and risk are expanding at unprecedented speed." The 2026 trends are deeply interconnected, reflecting an AI-powered,...

Tori Paulman, VP Analyst at Gartner, emphasized the speed of change: "What feels different this year is the pace. We’ve seen more innovations emerge in a single year than ever before." Paulman stressed that this is not a distant future; organizations that embrace these trends now will be the ones to "shape their... Gartner's 2026 trends define the critical investment areas for IT leaders: To no one’s surprise, AI took center stage at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo going on this week in Orlando, Fla., where the research firm made its annual presentation of the core technology trends set... “Enterprises need a dedicated AI leader,” said keynote speaker Daryl Plummer, distinguished vice president analyst, chief of research and Gartner Fellow. “Technology leaders face a pivotal year in 2026, where disruption, innovation, and risk are expanding at unprecedented speed,” said Gene Alvarez, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner.

“The top strategic technology trends identified for 2026 are tightly interwoven and reflect the realities of an AI-powered, hyperconnected world where organizations must drive responsible innovation, operational excellence, and digital trust.” “What feels different this year is the pace. We’ve seen more innovations emerge in a single year than ever before,” said Tori Paulman, vice president analyst at Gartner. Here are Gartner’s top strategic technology trends for 2026: Gartner, a leader in business and technology insights, has unveiled its Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2026, highlighting how AI, cybersecurity, and sovereignty will redefine enterprise strategy in the years ahead. The announcement was made during the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2025, held in Orlando from October 20–23.

“Technology leaders face a pivotal year in 2026, where disruption, innovation, and risk are expanding at unprecedented speed,” said Gene Alvarez, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “These trends reflect the realities of an AI-powered, hyperconnected world where organizations must drive responsible innovation, operational excellence, and digital trust.” “What feels different this year is the pace,” added Tori Paulman, VP Analyst at Gartner. “We’ve seen more innovation emerge in a single year than ever before. Organizations that act now will shape their industries for decades to come.” Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2026

AI supercomputing platforms combine CPUs, GPUs, AI ASICs, and neuromorphic processors to handle massive workloads in machine learning, simulation, and analytics. These platforms are revolutionizing industries such as healthcare, finance, and energy, cutting drug development and risk modeling times dramatically.Gartner predicts that by 2028, over 40 percent of leading enterprises will integrate hybrid computing architectures... Gartner’s Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2026 spotlight how AI, automation, and digital trust will reshape global enterprises. Gartner has unveiled its Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2026, underscoring a future shaped by artificial intelligence, automation, and digital trust. The trends reveal how technology leaders must navigate an AI-powered, hyperconnected landscape while balancing innovation, governance, and resilience. Leading the list is AI Supercomputing, integrating CPUs, GPUs, and neuromorphic systems to accelerate breakthroughs across industries—from drug discovery to financial risk modeling.

Multiagent Systems and Domain-Specific Language Models (DSLMs) are redefining how humans and AI collaborate, enabling contextual, industry-specific intelligence. The rise of AI Security Platforms signals a shift toward unified protection against emerging AI-driven risks, while AI-Native Development Platforms promise to transform software creation by empowering small, agile teams with generative AI capabilities. Confidential Computing ensures sensitive workloads remain protected even in untrusted environments, addressing compliance and geopolitical concerns. Gartner also highlights Preemptive Cybersecurity, a move from reactive defense to predictive protection, and Digital Provenance, which authenticates software and data origins to combat misinformation and supply chain risks. Meanwhile, Physical AI brings intelligence to machines and robotics, and Geopatriation—the migration of workloads to sovereign or local clouds—emerges as a response to global instability. Dec 16, 2025 | !

Homepage Slider, ! Recent Industry News, Artificial Intelligence, Breaking News, Gartner, Technology, Trends | 0 | AI is no longer a future-facing concept. It’s already embedded in the systems, decisions and strategies that shape business. Yet many leaders still underestimate how quickly and subtly these shifts are unfolding. The Gartner top strategic predictions for 2026 and beyond spotlight the undercurrents of AI-driven transformation.

First presented at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo™ 2025, these predictions offer a forward-looking view of how AI is influencing business decisions, operations and strategy — and why leaders need a sharper lens to see what’s... These aren’t just trends — they’re inflection points. The challenge is to be aware they are happening, and then to know which to lean into and which to guard against. Gartner clients have access to insights around all 10 predictions. A sampling of five are here. Prediction: Through 2026, atrophy of critical-thinking skills, due to GenAI use, will push 50% of global organizations to require “AI-free” skills assessments.

<img decoding="async" src="https://solutionsreview.com/identity-management/files/2023/07/9.gif" alt="Ad Image" /> <img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium_large wp-image-54796" src="https://solutionsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2026-Predictions-artificial-intelligence-768x384.jpg" alt="AI and Enterprise Technology Predictions from Industry Experts for 2026" width="768" height="384" srcset="https://solutionsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2026-Predictions-artificial-intelligence-768x384.jpg 768w, https://solutionsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2026-Predictions-artificial-intelligence-300x150.jpg 300w, https://solutionsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2026-Predictions-artificial-intelligence-400x200.jpg 400w, https://solutionsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2026-Predictions-artificial-intelligence.jpg 800w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /> As part of the 7th Annual Insight Jam LIVE event, the Solutions Review editors have compiled a list of predictions for 2026 from some of the most experienced professionals across the Artificial Intelligence (AI)... As part of Solutions Review’s annual Insight Jam LIVE event, we called for the industry’s best and brightest to share their enterprise technology predictions for 2026 and beyond. The experts featured represent some of the top solution providers, consultants, and thought-leaders with experience in these marketplaces. Each projection has been vetted for relevance and its ability to add business value.

Solving the AI-Readiness Gap Will Become the Primary Investment Priority for Data Leaders.

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