1. Cost pressure won’t ease - and scrutiny will increase

Cloud services, licensing, security tools, and support costs continue to rise. At the same time, finance teams are asking harder questions about value and return. Heading into 2026, many IT teams are focusing on:

• Understanding where spend is genuinely delivering value
• Identifying tools, licences, or services that aren’t being fully used
• Moving away from one-off cost cutting towards ongoing optimisation

Cost management is no longer a yearly exercise. It’s becoming part of everyday IT decision-making.

2. AI will spread faster than organisations can control it

AI isn’t arriving through a single project or transformation programme. It’s being introduced quietly through software updates, embedded features, and tools people already use.

By 2026, most organisations will be using AI in some way or another, but often with a clear strategy or view of:

• Where it’s being used and by who
• What data it touches (and the governance surrounding it)
• How outputs are generated or decisions are influenced

The question for IT teams isn’t whether to adopt AI. But how to introduce visibility, governance, and sensible boundaries for something that’s already in motion – and control the risk of uncontrolled AI.

3. Cyber security expectations will continue to rise

Next year is the year to up your game when it comes to managing cyber threats and preventing attacks. As 2026 approaches, many organisations are seeing:

• Greater scrutiny from insurers, auditors, and regulators
• More focus on resilience and recovery, not just prevention
• An increase in attacks that target people rather than infrastructure

Security planning increasingly needs to be built into day-to-day operations, rather than treated as a separate workstream.

4. Adoption will remain the biggest barrier to value

While technologies like AI spread quickly in the background, many intentional technology changes still struggle to land. Across IT teams, common challenges include:

• Tools being technically available but poorly adopted
• Workarounds replacing agreed processes
• Users feeling overwhelmed by constant change

This creates a familiar tension: technology moves quickly, but people don’t always move with it.

Heading into 2026, IT strategies that work tend to focus less on introducing more tools, and more on helping people use what’s already there - clearly, confidently, and consistently.

5. Resilience will matter more than uptime alone

Uptime will always matter, but it doesn’t tell the full story. Looking ahead, resilience increasingly means:

• Systems that can flex as the organisation changes
• Clear ownership across services and suppliers
• The ability to recover quickly when things don’t go to plan

Resilience is built through visibility, accountability, and continuous improvement - not just infrastructure choices.

6. Insight will matter more than reporting

Most IT teams already have access to plenty of data: service desk trends, incident patterns, usage metrics. What’s changing is how that data is used. In 2026, the focus is shifting towards:

• Spotting patterns rather than tracking individual metrics
• Using insight to guide prioritisation and investment
• Turning service data into small, meaningful improvements

Better decisions tend to come from clearer insight, not more dashboards.

IT recommendations for 2026

Pressure will feel different depending on the sector you operate in - but similar themes tend to surface. Here’s how those challenges often show up, and what’s worth focusing on next.

Financial, legal, and other regulated sectors

In regulated environments, IT decisions are often judged on confidence as much as capability. Common priorities heading into 2026 include:

• Clear ownership of security, risk, and compliance
• Reducing unnecessary complexity across tools and suppliers
• Making sure controls and documentation are audit-ready, not reactive

The focus is usually on stability and assurance - without slowing people down.

Organisations with complex or specialist requirements

When systems and services are specialised, the challenge is rarely how modern the technology is – think in advanced engineering or pioneering energy programmes. It’s whether everything is configured, secured, and supported in a way that reflects how the organisation actually operates – in sometimes complete unknown territories.

Heading into 2026, priorities often include:

• Making sure services and systems are configured around real workflows, not generic defaults
• Understanding how specialist platforms, integrations, and dependencies affect risk and resilience
• Ensuring responsibility for critical services is clear, particularly where suppliers or technologies overlap

Progress in these environments tends to come from alignment - between technology, operational reality, and risk management - rather than wholesale change.

Public sector organisations and arm’s-length bodies

Public sector IT teams are under constant pressure to deliver reliable services while working within tight governance and budget constraints. As 2026 approaches, common areas of focus include:

• Strengthening resilience and service continuity
• Getting more value from existing platforms and contracts
• Demonstrating progress without large, high-risk transformation programmes

In many cases, steady improvement delivers more value than rapid change.

A practical way to think about 2026

Preparing for 2026 doesn’t require a perfect roadmap. What matters is understanding where pressure is building, where effort isn’t paying off, and where small, focused changes could have the biggest impact.

Clarity tends to come from looking honestly at how IT is supporting people today - and what needs to change to support them better tomorrow.

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