According to Forrester's 2026 European Predictions, unveiled at Forrester's Technology & Innovation Summit EMEA in London, while European firms will intensify the quest to reduce their dependence on global resources and achieve sovereignty over their technology stack and digital platforms, no European enterprise will shift entirely from US hyperscalers in 2026.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens Future of Work Services report for Switzerland finds that enterprises are expanding the use of AI, including autonomous agentic systems, to enhance efficiency, agility and decision-making. They are also developing comprehensive, transparent frameworks for responsible AI to foster employee trust and ensure sustainable productivity.

According to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker , global smartphone shipments increased 2.6% year-over-year (YoY) to 322.7 million units in the third quarter of 2025. The smartphone market continued its recovery, fueled by the premium segment as consumers upgraded to the latest devices, attracted by innovative form factors and more affordable AI-enabled smartphones.

Worldwide IT spending is expected to total $6.08 trillion in 2026, an increase of 9.8% from 2025, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.

According to Forrester’s 2026 B2C marketing, customer experience, and digital business predictions, the rapid adoption of generative AI is exposing fragmented vendor ecosystems and increasing consumer skepticism. In 2026, a third of companies will harm experiences with frustrating AI self-service.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens Future of Work Services report for Germany finds that economic stagnation and demographic pressures have combined to create a structural labor shortage that is reshaping corporate policy and accelerating the adoption of AI-enabled work models. Enterprises are also expanding international recruitment and reskilling programs, treating global talent acquisition as a long-term strategic necessity to fill domestic skill gaps.

As the quantum era draws closer, the cybersecurity conversation is shifting from technology to trust. What was once a matter of internal encryption policy has become a test of how effectively companies can coordinate across entire ecosystems. The arrival of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) will not simply change how organizations secure data—it will redefine how they work together.

As the anticipated “Q-Day” approaches—the moment when quantum computers will render traditional encryption obsolete—executives are beginning to recognize that quantum risk management has evolved into a shared value-chain imperative, not a narrow cybersecurity exercise within individual organizations.

Mid-market companies find themselves navigating an increasingly treacherous cybersecurity environment. With more than 3,000 enterprise security solutions on the market, tool sprawl is no longer just an operational inconvenience — it is becoming a systemic risk. For organizations with 500 to 5,000 employees, the challenge is especially acute. These firms are often large enough to attract attackers but lack the dedicated CISOs, SOCs, and integration teams available to Fortune 500 enterprises.

Leading in the era of AI requires a fundamental shift in mindset — from experimenting with isolated tools to orchestrating intelligence across the enterprise. Success will depend on how effectively organizations institutionalize AIOps, redefine systems of record, establish meaningful success metrics, and move beyond pilots into scaled production.

Enterprises are confronting a new operational paradox. Technologies that promise speed and scale are also amplifying complexity and risk. As artificial intelligence becomes interwoven with core business processes, CIOs, CISOs, and their line of business peers are realizing that cloud modernization, data architecture, and governance can no longer function as separate initiatives.

For mid-sized businesses, cybersecurity is increasingly defined by a paradox: the more tools they deploy, the more vulnerable they may become. Industry analysts estimate that more than 3,000 enterprise security solutions are now available. While large enterprises often have the staff and governance structures to integrate disparate tools, companies with 500 to 5,000 employees typically do not. The result is a patchwork of overlapping products that create blind spots, inflate costs, and complicate risk management.

The enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market grew 13.2% in the second quarter of 2025 (2Q25) compared to 2Q24 to reach $2.6 billion, building on the market’s growth momentum from the previous quarter, according to results published in the International Data Corporation ( IDC) Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker.

Border security sits at the intersection of policy, technology, and public trust. Agencies face an unrelenting flow of structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data — from shipping manifests and sensor feeds to social media intelligence — while operating under intense scrutiny. Traditional, siloed approaches to analysis cannot keep pace with the scale, diversity, and velocity of information.

IDC, Unified AI & Agentic AI Platforms in Asia: Solution Insights for Technology Leaders , finds that ongoing market uncertainty is pushing Asia/Pacific organizations to prioritize enterprise-wide efficiency and favor platform-based approaches to AI. IDC data shows that, on average, only 23% of AI apps have gone from proof of concept (PoC) to production for Asia/Pacific. As AI capabilities evolve rapidly and more providers launch end-to-end platforms, selecting the right AI platform requires a clear view of each vendor’s approach and how well the system aligns with current and future requirements.

Marketing leaders are entering an era where ambition and architecture are colliding. Artificial intelligence is forcing a new level of transparency inside the marketing technology stack — revealing how years of rapid digital investment have left many organizations with systems that are powerful in isolation but fragile in combination. For Tony Byrne, founder and CEO of The Real Story Group, this moment represents a turning point: AI isn’t simply adding capability to marketing, it’s demanding coherence.

U.S. border security agencies are under pressure to adapt to a new intelligence reality: an environment where data volumes are exploding, threats are increasingly sophisticated, and public expectations demand both security and accountability. According to Zach Beus, national security lead at i2 Group, a Harris Computer company, the solution lies in harnessing artificial intelligence, data integration, and shared analytic standards to shift from reactive to proactive operations.

The worldwide Ethernet switch market recorded $14.5 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2025 (2Q25), a 42.1% year-over-year (YoY) increase, fueled by strong growth in the datacenter portion of the market as hyperscalers and cloud service providers race to build infrastructure capacity for the AI era. The total worldwide enterprise and service provider (SP) router market increased 12.5% YoY to $3.6B in 2Q25. These findings are detailed in the latest editions of the International Data Corporation ( IDC) Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and IDC Quarterly Router Tracker.

Seventy percent of large-scale organizations will adopt AI-based forecasting to predict future demand by 2030, according to Gartner, Inc., a business technology and insights company.

Achieving touchless forecasting that eliminates the need for frequent manual inputs and regular human interventions provides a unique scalable automation opportunity within demand planning.

Gartner predicts that by 2030, over 80% of enterprises will deploy industry-specific AI agents in support of critical business objectives, up from less than 10% today, and more than 60% will conduct intensive AI model activity across multiple clouds.