Digital Transformation

IT leaders are unhappy with their productivity current setup and are forced to manage an average of over nine different tools. This is why, according to a new study, 87 percent of IT leaders will consider changing from their current productivity suite to adopt a more unified and secure platform.

The research from JumpCloud in collaboration with Google Workspace is based on a survey of 250 US IT leaders from enterprise organizations. Its findings show that IT teams are urgently searching for a new platform to make work simpler and more secure.

Enterprises are rushing to embrace AI copilots and browser-based assistants, but most struggle with governing how employees actually use them. Sensitive data gets uploaded, prompts leak strategy, and risky extensions run unchecked, all outside the reach of traditional network or app-layer controls.

We spoke to Michael Leland, field CTO at Island, to discuss why the UI surface is becoming the most strategic security layer as SaaS and AI copilots flood enterprise workflows.

Silos, you might think, are bit of a niche issue. They arise when old practices become entrenched, or when tools are only used by one part of the organization.

But Shannon Mason, chief strategy officer of Tempo Software, argues silos are actually a major roadblock to growth, agility, and strategic alignment. We spoke to her to find out about the hidden cost of silos and the concrete steps teams can take to break them down.

Work AI specialist Glean has today announced the launch of the Work AI Institute, a first-of-its-kind research initiative dedicated to decoding what actually drives results when companies commit to operating with AI projects at the core of their businesses.

The Work AI Institute brings together leading researchers from Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Notre Dame, University College London, Emory, and UNC Charlotte to answer the pressing question: What’s really working with AI at work? The Institute blends academic rigor with real-world data, experimentation, and end user insights to help enterprises separate signals from noise and accelerate meaningful AI impact.

Many companies are still heavily reliant on legacy systems, which can lead to high maintenance costs, limited flexibility, and increased security risks. All of which can hold back AI integration.

We spoke to Jorge Lopez, CEO of Jalasoft, about the critical role legacy systems play in today’s rapidly evolving AI landscape and how organizations can modernize strategically without disrupting core operations.

Digital employee experience, or DEX, is about how employees engage with the technology and services they use every day: everything from laptops, apps, collaboration tools to networks.

We spoke to Dean Fernandes, CTO of NWN.ai to find out more about the importance of DEX and how it’s changing the world of IT.

A new survey of 750 senior cyber security professionals across the US, UK and Australia, carried out by Opinion Matters for ThreatQuotient, finds 97 percent now regard automation, increasingly powered by AI technologies, as essential to business operations.

However, despite 49 percent of respondents obtaining net new budget allocation for cybersecurity automation this year -- up from 39 percent last year -- 96 percent still face persistent challenges, particularly around technology limitations, lack of trust in the outcomes of automated processes, and insufficient time to implement solutions.

A survey of over 2,000 IT and security decision-makers finds that 71 percent of in-house IT builds are eventually abandoned. In heavily regulated industries like manufacturing and finance this rises to 83 percent, which underscores how complexity and compliance pressures make homegrown systems difficult to sustain.

The study from Exclaimer calls this ‘The DIY Mirage’, a false sense of control and efficiency that fades as maintenance demands, compliance risks, and long-term costs grow.

According to recent research nearly half of FTSE 100 companies now have a Chief AI Officer (CAIO) -- with 42 percent of those hires made in just the past year.

Companies are clearly rushing to signal their AI credentials at board level, but is this a meaningful shift, or simply another wave of hype-led decision making? We spoke to Francisco Mateo-Sidron, SVP and head of EMEA at Cloudera, who believes that a CAIO alone can’t drive real results if enterprises don’t have data that’s built on solid foundations.

Agentic AI is rapidly moving from concept to reality, prompting organizations globally to rethink how they integrate these technologies into their business operations. The use of AI agents in daily workflows is set to rise dramatically in the coming years, raising questions over what organizations need to do to manage them effectively, and what might happen if they fail to do so.

We spoke with Ann Maya, EMEA CTO at Boomi, about the evolution of AI agents, the steps businesses should be taking ahead of deployment, and why the principles of human workforce management may hold the key to responsible use.

Artificial intelligence has redefined what it means to lead in IT, with 63 percent of IT leaders
reporting that their roles have evolved due to advances in AI.

A study, from IT management platform Atera, finds today’s IT leaders are increasingly responsible for driving business value. 49 percent cite business value leadership -- shaping strategy and translating AI into revenue and growth – as the top area of increased importance, and 47 percent point to orchestrating human-AI collaboration as a key change in their roles.

Although 74 percent of IT leaders expect budgets to rise in 2026 more than half say they still lack the internal resources to fix issues quickly or drive innovation.

A new report from DataStrike also finds 60 percent of organizations now rely on MSPs to manage data infrastructure, more than double the rate reported last year. This highlights a growing dependence on external expertise as teams tackle modernization and technical debt.

A new survey of more than 830 global IT decision makers finds that 94 percent are looking for ways to integrate AI into their technology stack, with 33 percent naming it a top priority. However, only 19 percent say that demonstrating AI usage and effectiveness is a top priority for next year.

The study from Flexera also shows that 80 percent of IT leaders report increased spending on AI applications and over a third believe they’re overspending. Additionally, 73 percent say their SaaS and cloud infrastructure costs have risen, with 67 percent stating that cloud expenses weigh heavily on their IT budgets.

Operational technology and IT have historically tended to follow separate paths. But in recent times the spread of Internet of Things devices has seen the two moving closer together.

We spoke to David Montoya, Paessler global business development manager OT/IoT, to discuss how the OT landscape has evolved and why businesses need to be on top of the change.

New research finds that business trust in autonomous AI is growing, with 57 percent of organizations saying they’re ‘very confident’ in the technology’s reliability in core business processes.

Yet, despite this increasing trust, implementation is lagging. The survey from Insight Enterprises shows that six in 10 organizations are stuck in pilot or experimental phases. Most are deploying AI in low-risk, narrowly defined areas, with only 24 percent using it in production for clearly scoped use cases.