DISCLAIMER: I am not Nostradamus, nor do I have a time machine (though how good would that be). The predictions below are my own and, well, let’s be honest, predictable. I should also point out that I used AI to do some of the heavy lifting (at least from an analysis perspective).
Look, I’m not going to pretend I have a crystal ball. But after years of helping organisations navigate the wonderful chaos of Microsoft 365 migrations and cloud transformations, I’ve noticed some patterns. The kind of patterns that make you think, “Huh, that’s probably going to be huge next year.”
So here we are—my predictions for the enterprise tech trends that’ll define 2026. Think of this as your friendly heads-up from someone who’s spent way too much time thinking about tenant migrations and collaboration platforms. (Seriously, I dream in PowerShell scripts now. It’s a problem.)
The Trends That’ll Keep You Busy
Like most people, I’m taking a well-earned break over the festive season. However once I’m back on-deck in early January I’ll be diving deep into each of these trends with dedicated posts. For now though, here’s the executive summary the “things you should probably start thinking about now” list:
#1 – Agentic AI Takes the Wheel
Forget chatbots that just answer questions. In 2026, we’re talking about AI that actually does things booking meetings, managing workflows, writing code, and making decisions within defined parameters. These AI “agents” won’t replace your team (despite what the LinkedIn fear-mongers might say), but they will fundamentally change how work gets done. The question isn’t whether to adopt agentic AI, it’s how to deploy it responsibly without creating chaos.
#2 – AI Governance Will Stop Being Optional
Remember when everyone just… started using AI tools without asking IT? Yeah, those days are ending. In 2026, organisations are going to get serious about AI governance not because they want to be the fun police, but because they have to. Think compliance frameworks, usage policies, and data protection strategies that actually make sense.
#3 – Hybrid Work Gets Its Second Act
Plot twist: hybrid work isn’t dead, it’s just evolving. In 2026, we’re moving past the “figuring it out as we go” phase into actually designing workspaces and tech stacks that support true flexibility. Expect to see major investments in collaboration tools that don’t make remote workers feel like second-class citizens.
#4 – The Great Consolidation of SaaS Sprawl
You know that spreadsheet you have listing all your organisation’s SaaS subscriptions? The one that makes you cry a little? 2026 is the year of the great consolidation. Companies are going to start seriously asking, “Do we really need 47 different collaboration tools, or can we make do with, like, five really good ones?”
#5 – Security Will Finally Get User-Friendly
Here’s a radical idea: what if security features were actually easy to use? Wild, I know. But with zero-trust architectures becoming table stakes and passwordless authentication going mainstream, 2026 might finally be the year where security and user experience stop being mortal enemies.
#6 – Migration Strategies Become Business Strategy
Here’s where I get a little biased (occupational hazard). Cloud migrations aren’t just IT projects anymore—they’re business transformation initiatives. In 2026, the organisations that treat migrations as strategic opportunities rather than necessary evils are going to pull ahead. This means proper planning, change management that doesn’t suck, and treating your data like the business asset it actually is.
The Elephant in the Room
Let’s address the elephant in the room, or should I say, the AI-powered, blockchain-enabled, quantum-ready elephant that seventeen vendors emailed me about this morning. Yes, we’re in an AI bubble. A big one. The kind where every software demo starts with “our AI can…” and ends with you wondering if they just renamed their autocomplete feature.
And yes, some of this will crash and burn… hard! But dismissing everything as hype is just as dangerous as buying into all of it. There’s legitimate, transformative technology underneath the nonsense you just have to wade through a lot of vendor marketing to find it. The organisations winning in 2026 won’t be the ones who believed every AI vendor, nor will they be those who flat out refused to touch AI. They’ll be the ones who learned to tell the difference between “AI that actually solves our problems” and “AI that our vendor thinks sounds impressive in a pitch deck.”
Where Insentra Fits In
Look, I’m not going to hit you with a hard sell here. But if you’re reading this and thinking, “Cool trends, but how do I actually implement any of this without my IT team staging a revolt?”—that’s literally what we do at Insentra.
Whether you’re navigating a tenant-to-tenant migration, wrestling with information architecture challenges, modernising your infrastructure, or simply just trying to figure out what “good” looks like in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, we’ve been there. Multiple times. With the battle scars and PowerShell scripts to prove it.
We help organisations move from “this is overwhelming” to “we’ve actually got this” by focusing on three things:
- Technical expertise that doesn’t require a decoder ring to understand
- Real-world experience from hundreds of transnformations (yes, hundreds)
- A genuine commitment to reducing complexity and making your life easier
What’s Coming Next
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be breaking down each of these trends in detail what they mean, why they matter, and most importantly, how you can prepare for them without losing your mind. Each post will dig into the practical stuff: real examples, actionable steps, and maybe a few stories about migrations that went sideways (anonymised, of course we’re not monsters).
Keep an eye out to make sure you don’t miss them. Or don’t I’m not your boss. But if you’re responsible for enterprise tech strategy in 2026, you might want to stick around.
The Bottom Line
2026 is shaping up to be interesting. Not “may you live in interesting times” interesting (hopefully), but definitely the kind of year where being prepared beats scrambling to catch up.
The good news? These trends are predictable. The better news? You’ve still got time to get ahead of them.
If you are looking at these trends and wondering how to turn them into real outcomes without overwhelming your IT team, Insentra can help.
Contact us to discuss how we can support your 2026 technology strategy, from Microsoft 365 optimisation and tenant migrations to AI governance and secure modern workplace design.
Let’s make your next transformation simpler, smarter, and far less painful.
See you in the next post, where we’ll tackle Agentic AI like the slightly overwhelming but absolutely necessary topic it is.
Making enterprise tech transformations slightly less terrifying since… well, for a quite while now!
