The promise of AI in the finance function, and challenges in obtaining the required digital talent, are driving leading CFOs to concentrate hiring efforts and development resources on employees with the necessary aptitude and attitude to meet the function’s digital skills targets. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 20% of finance organizations will stop hiring and developing nondigitally literate talent and allocate all talent-related investments toward advanced digital capabilities.

The 2026 ISG Provider Lens global Snowflake Ecosystem Partners report finds that Snowflake is evolving from a cloud-native data warehouse into an enterprise environment for AI operationalization. Enterprises increasingly view it as a tool to support trusted data use across distributed environments while addressing architectural complexity, interoperability requirements and the need for AI-ready data foundations. As organizations pursue measurable outcomes from data investments, Snowflake is becoming a key part of broader modernization strategies focused on operational effectiveness and business value.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping public safety intelligence operations, but perhaps not in the way many anticipated. Rather than pursuing fully autonomous investigative systems, state and local agencies are increasingly focused on using AI to help intelligence professionals process larger volumes of information, strengthen collaboration across jurisdictions and accelerate operational decision-making while preserving transparency, accountability and public trust.

Agentic AI is set to disrupt enterprise software revenue models, with up to $234 billion of enterprise application spending exposed to agentic arbitrage between now and 2030, according to Gartner, Inc, a business and technology insights company. By 2030, this will account for roughly 20% of enterprise application software-as-a-service (SaaS) spending.

State and local public safety agencies are entering a new phase of artificial intelligence adoption in which success depends less on automating investigations than on helping intelligence professionals process growing volumes of information while preserving governance, transparency and public trust. That evolution is reshaping how agencies think about intelligence sharing, analyst training and investment priorities across law enforcement, corrections, probation and other public-sector organizations.

The 2026 ISG Provider Lens global Palantir Ecosystem Partners report finds that organizations are redirecting technology investments toward operational intelligence as macroeconomic uncertainty, accelerating AI deployment and emerging regulatory frameworks reshape enterprise priorities. Companies are increasingly selecting Palantir platforms to combine data, analytics and operational workflows within secure environments that provide trusted AI, faster decision-making and greater operational resilience.

As AI automates routine engineering and administrative work, organizations are increasingly replacing – or supplementing – large permanent technical staff with leaner core teams supported by specialized consultants engaged for specific projects. “The shift reflects broader changes in both technology and labor markets,” said Sara Wilkison, CEO of Solo Workforce, in an executive vidcast interview with BizTechReports.   

According to Forrester’s The State Of AI Inside US Marketing Agencies, 2026, a new report released today in partnership with 4As, AI is now pervasive across US marketing agencies: Nine in 10 agencies use generative AI, and half use agentic AI for marketing execution. Yet rapid adoption, combined with an industrywide focus on productivity and cost efficiency, is undermining marketing effectiveness, creativity, and long-term brand growth.

By 2030, neocloud providers will capture 20% of the $267 billion AI cloud market, according to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company. “Neocloud” refers to cloud providers built specifically for AI and high-performance workloads.

The rapid growth of GenAI is creating unprecedented demand for GPU-intensive computing, accelerating investment in localized, high-performance infrastructure and exposing the limitations in traditional cloud models. Neoclouds are challenging the dominance of hyperscalers by focusing on AI-optimized infrastructure.

The 2026 ISG Provider Lens® global Cloudera Ecosystem Partners report finds that companies are adopting Cloudera to unify data across on-premises infrastructure and multiple cloud environments as hybrid architectures become more complex. Organizations are also embedding policy enforcement, metadata management and data lineage into platform architectures to address increasing regulatory requirements and support secure AI initiatives.

The global smartphone market shrank 6.7% year-on-year to 277.5 million units in the second quarter of 2026 (2Q26), according to the preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, The memory crisis continues to disrupt the smartphone market with unprecedented costs and strained supply, with Q2 2026 marking the second quarter of consecutive year-on-year decline.

By 2028, AI coding costs will overtake the average developer’s salary due to rising large language model (LLM) token consumption and the shift to consumption-based licensing models, according to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.

The ISG Market Lens 2026 Cybersecurity Report, published today, draws on survey data and adoption patterns observed in ISG advisory engagements that show organizations see AI as their biggest security threat and believe they are not spending enough to address AI-related risks.

Gartner predicts that by 2028, over 80% of companies will make significant changes to their company’s identity, such as mission, brand and culture, to keep pace with the impact of AI on markets. As AI accelerates commoditization and fuels disinformation, brand is one of the few remaining levers companies can use to claim a distinctive and trustworthy position in their markets.

Worldwide PC shipments fell 4.9% year over year in Q2 2026 to 68.2 million units, according to IDC — the first decline after nine consecutive quarters of growth. A persistent memory chip shortage drove the reversal, pushing vendors to pull inventory forward as far as possible.

The 2026 ISG Buyers Guides™ for Talent provide the rankings and ratings of 31 software providers and their products for recruiting and employee performance management. The research finds that enterprises increasingly expect talent management software to deliver better business outcomes and improved candidate and employee experiences while reducing operational friction.

End-user spending on public cloud services in India is forecast to grow 28.1% to total $17.5 billion in 2026, up from $13.7 billion in 2025, according to Gartner, Inc, a business and technology insights company.

“Strong enterprise demand for AI-ready cloud infrastructure is redefining cloud investment priorities in India, driving the next phase of public cloud spending growth,” said Ashish Banerjee, Sr Principal Analyst at Gartner. “This is further fueled by rising demand for application modernization, digital sovereignty, digital service delivery and more scalable, consumption-based IT models, as organizations move toward more advanced and strategic cloud use cases.”

Cumulative global data center investment is forecast to approach $1.6 trillion by 2030, while leading technology enterprises will collectively deploy over $600 billion in AI infrastructure capex in 2026 alone. This capital expenditure indicates that the AI Factory market has crossed an irreversible threshold, evolving into a new form of industrial organization characterized by ultra-high capital intensity, strong geopolitical attributes, and complex engineering barriers.

Technology executives from across the New York metropolitan area gathered July 16 at Convene, One Liberty Plaza, for CIO 100 Leadership Live New York, a full day of roundtables and panel discussions on enterprise AI investment, governance and organizational change.

Worldwide data center power demand is expected to rise 27% in 2026 and reach 132 gigawatts (GW), up from 104GW in 2025. It is estimated to attain 290GW by 2030, which reflects the unprecedented scale and pace of GenAI boosting demand.

AI-optimized servers continue to fuel the increase in data center power consumption. Gartner estimates AI-optimized server adoption will account for 31% of data center power consumption in 2026, and that by 2027 their power consumption will surpass that of conventional servers.