Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations are experiencing a financial reset. After decades of reliance on multimillion-dollar bespoke aircraft and highly specialized payloads, defense ministries are increasingly shifting to lower-cost, semi-disposable drones and modular video systems that can be deployed quickly, lost in theater if necessary, and replaced without crippling budgets.

Telecom operators worldwide are scaling capital investment in AI infrastructure amid surging demand for AI compute capacity and sovereignty requirements that favour local providers and homegrown solutions, according to Omdia’s new report, Telcos’ Strategic Investments in AI Infrastructure. This shift is creating new growth avenues for telcos. National and regional initiatives, such as the EU’s Gigafactories, are creating opportunities for telcos to lead large scale programs rather than cede them to hyperscalers.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens Oracle Cloud and Technology Ecosystem report for Europe finds a growing number of companies view Oracle as a specialist hyperscale cloud provider for data- and AI-intensive workloads. They value its database leadership, cost-efficient AI infrastructure and deep multicloud integration that allows Oracle databases to run seamlessly within rival cloud environments.

The record Q4 performance capped a solid year for distribution, with full-year 2025 revenues rising 6.2%, following flat growth in 2024 and a market contraction in 2023. The results highlight the growing role of distributors as enterprises modernize infrastructure, adopt AI-ready technologies, and rebalance IT spending priorities.

As corporations accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence across operations, a growing chorus of technologists, regulators and risk specialists is warning that governance, accountability and intellectual-property protection are lagging dangerously behind innovation.

The ISG Buyers Guide for Sustainability Management, produced by ISG Research, provides the rankings and ratings of 20 software providers and their products to support environmental sustainability. The research finds that enterprises need to accurately measure and disclose environmental impacts to fulfill their sustainability goals, and sustainability software supports these requirements by enabling organizations to provide transparent, auditable disclosures. The Buyers Guide for Sustainability Emerging Providers ranks and rates 12 innovative providers of sustainability software that may better suit specific enterprise needs or offer a lower total cost of implementation and ownership.

As corporations accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence across operations, a growing chorus of technologists, regulators and risk specialists is warning that governance, accountability and intellectual-property protection are lagging dangerously behind innovation.

BOSTON—Corporate AI investment is growing significantly and will not pull back, with companies planning to double their spending on the technology in 2026, accounting for about 1.7% of revenues, more than twice the increase for 2025. CEOs are rolling up their sleeves and taking the lead as their companies’ main AI decision makers, with trailblazing chief executives now spending more than eight hours per week on their own AI upskilling and investing twice as much as their counterparts in upskilling and capability-building across their organizations.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens Advanced Analytics and AI Services reports for the U.S. find that organizations are responding to the growing complexity of their IT environments by seeking unified data foundations to support predictive analytics and increasingly ambitious AI goals. As the average software portfolios of large enterprises near 2,000 systems, data and application fragmentation has elevated the importance of consistent data integration, governance and lifecycle management. Organizations are partnering with service providers on projects that combine data modernization, analytics and AI.

Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company, has revealed nine future of work trends that chief human resource officers (CHROs) will need to address in 2026 and beyond to ensure their organization achieves its desired talent and business outcomes.

Law enforcement agencies are no longer debating whether data should inform policing decisions; the question now is whether institutions are organized to act on the data they already have. As intelligence-led models move from theory into daily operations, many state and local departments are discovering that success depends less on technology adoption than on leadership alignment, workforce design, and the ability to translate analytical insight into timely operational choices. That shift has raised new questions about how intelligence functions are staffed, funded, and governed as well as whether existing structures are suited to an environment where information arrives continuously and decisions must be made faster than ever.

Cybersecurity leaders from government, enterprise, and the security industry gathered in Baltimore last week for the FutureCon Cybersecurity Conference, outlining a threat landscape defined less by incremental change than by structural disruption.

Data from the ISG Index , which measures commercial outsourcing contracts with annual contract value (ACV) of $5 million or more, show fourth-quarter ACV for the combined global market (both managed services and cloud-based services) at a record $34.3 billion, up 16 percent versus the prior year. It was the sixth consecutive quarter the combined market posted double-digit growth year over year, averaging nearly 18 percent growth in that span. The pace of growth, however, has decelerated somewhat over the last four quarters, slowing from 21 percent year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter last year.

For decades, American policing borrowed a familiar metaphor from mid-20th century television: gather everything, sift later, and let “just the facts” emerge. That dragnet approach made sense when information was scarce and investigations were bounded by paper files, radio calls, and eyewitness accounts. Today, law enforcement agencies face the opposite problem. Data is abundant, continuous, and fragmented across thousands of digital systems.

The cost of unmanaged AI risk is escalating. According to Gartner, by 2030, fragmented AI regulation will quadruple and extend to 75% of the world’s economies, driving $1 billion in total compliance spend.

This regulatory wave is transforming AI governance platforms from nice-to-have to a critical necessity. With spending on AI data governance expected to reach $492 million in 2026 and surpass $1 billion by 2030, organizations are reassessing the tools and strategies needed to stay ahead of both regulatory and operational risk. We spoke with Lauren Kornutick, Director Analyst at Gartner, to understand what organizations must consider as they evaluate and adopt AI governance platforms.

Forrester forecasts that automation and AI will have a real but modest impact on jobs through 2030. While AI could account for 6% of total US job losses, equating to 10.4 million roles, widespread AI-driven job replacement remains unlikely, as labor productivity would need to accelerate significantly for AI to replace human talent at scale. Rather than eliminating roles, Forrester forecasts that AI will augment 20% of jobs over the next five years, making it essential for businesses to invest in employee training and upskilling.

The EMEA ISG Index, which measures commercial outsourcing contracts with annual contract value (ACV) of US $5 million or more, shows fourth-quarter ACV for the combined market (both managed services and cloud-based as-a-service) advanced 27 percent, to a record US $10.9 billion. It was the region’s eighth consecutive quarter of combined market growth, averaging 16 percent in that span.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $793 billion in 2025, an increase of 21% year-over-year (YoY), according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.

According to PwC’s Global CEO Survey, only three-in-ten (30%) CEOs say they are confident about revenue growth over the next 12 months—down from 38% in 2025 and 56% in 2022. The findings suggest that as CEOs navigate a complex operating environment shaped by rapid technological change, geopolitical uncertainty, and economic pressure, many companies have yet to translate investment into consistent financial gains. The survey is based on responses from 4,454 CEOs across 95 countries and territories.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens Power and Utilities Industry — Services and Solutions report for North America finds that utilities across the region are shifting from reactive to predictive and proactive operating models as distributed energy resources (DERs), electric vehicles and customer expectations for digital services increase system complexity. Enterprises are engaged in decades-long technology transformations while navigating ever-evolving regulations, heightened cyber risk and long-term capital constraints.