Enterprise data is the lifeblood of business. No endeavor, whether a simple order-to-cash process or a complex, agentic  AI solution, can survive without timely access to accurate, high-quality, secure, and governed data. As we move into 2026,  the market is pivoting from experimentation to engineering, demanding a stack that is not just “AI-ready” but explicitly architected to accelerate AI.  

This shift is reshaping the four pillars of Futurum’s market coverage: 

• Data Foundation & Storage: The market is witnessing the end of blind, deaf, and dumb storage. The convergence of database systems and the demand for high-throughput object storage are turning this layer into the high-performance  memory tier required to feed hungry GPU clusters and agentic systems. 
• Data Processing & Orchestration: The era of the monolithic platform is fracturing into a composable, open lakehouse architecture. Most notably, the semantic layer has graduated from a BI feature to a critical, standalone infrastructure  component that translates business context for AI agents. 
• Data Analysis & Intelligence: The data professional is evolving into an “AI Shepherd.” Consequently, Futurum is tracking  the reinvention of Business Intelligence into “Generative BI,” where natural language replaces code, and the focus moves  from building dashboards to managing the lifecycle of AI models and agents. 
• Data Management & Trust: Governance is no longer a passive activity. It is now an active defense system. Futurum  tracks how data observability and FinOps are together becoming a “radar” for the modern stack, enforcing  accountability through data contracts to prevent model hallucinations and spiraling compute costs. 

When working on strategy, product, marketing, and sales initiatives, consider intelligence from our expert analysts – planned deliverables for 2026 include:

• Market Data – bi-annual market sizing & five-year forecast  
• Decision-Maker Survey – bi-annual IT Decision Maker survey  
• Analyst Insight Report – a report on critical issues in the industry  
• State of the Market Report – a report on technology, markets, products, and vendors
• Futurum Signal Report Access – any Signal Report published in the relevant practice area