Boardrooms are telling technology leaders to put generative AI and autonomous agents into daily operations now, and companies are moving. According to Futurum Research’s 1H 2026 Data Intelligence, Analytics, and Infrastructure Decision Maker Survey Report, 74.2% of large enterprise technology leaders already have a well-formed plan for how agentic AI can achieve measurable operational efficiencies. But as organizations shift from isolated conversational pilots to production-grade autonomous systems, physical data infrastructure is becoming a major obstacle.
Modern AI agents need rich, real-time context to reason accurately, yet most enterprise data remains split across operational databases, SaaS platforms, and analytical lakehouse environments. Bridging that divide by continuously copying data into external compute clusters adds cost, latency, and security risk. The organizations closing the gap are moving analytical and AI workloads directly onto natively integrated, serverless data platforms that let agents reason against live enterprise data instead of stale, replicated copies.
In this thought leadership report, Escaping Data Gravity and Infrastructure Debt: Why the AI Era Demands an Agentic Data Cloud, completed in partnership with Google Cloud, Futurum Research examines how decoupled data architectures are driving up costs and burning out engineering teams, and how enterprises are re-architecting around a serverless, natively integrated data cloud to support agentic AI at scale.
In this report, you will learn:
- How data gravity and infrastructure debt are eroding the return on enterprise AI investments
- Why decoupled, third-party compute layers drive up total cost of ownership, security exposure, and engineering overhead
- How enterprises migrating to a natively integrated, serverless data platform are cutting total cost of ownership and operational overhead
- Tactical steps for auditing data movement costs, automating legacy migrations, and reallocating engineering talent to higher-value work
If you are interested in learning more, be sure to download your copy of Escaping Data Gravity and Infrastructure Debt: Why the AI Era Demands an Agentic Data Cloud today.
Author Information
Brad Shimmin is Vice President and Practice Lead, Data Intelligence, Analytics, & Infrastructure at Futurum. He provides strategic direction and market analysis to help organizations maximize their investments in data and analytics. Currently, Brad is focused on helping companies establish an AI-first data strategy.
With over 30 years of experience in enterprise IT and emerging technologies, Brad is a distinguished thought leader specializing in data, analytics, artificial intelligence, and enterprise software development. Consulting with Fortune 100 vendors, Brad specializes in industry thought leadership, worldwide market analysis, client development, and strategic advisory services.
Brad earned his Bachelor of Arts from Utah State University, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. Brad lives in Longmeadow, MA, with his beautiful wife and far too many LEGO sets.
