As 2025 comes to a close, one thing is clear. Technology strategy is no longer about keeping pace. It is about building the foundation for what comes next. Across industries, organizations moved beyond experimentation and began operationalizing AI, modernizing infrastructure with intent, and rethinking how people, platforms, and processes work together.
At NRI, our leaders work shoulder to shoulder with clients across a variety of services including data, AI, managed services, infrastructure, enterprise IT, and more. We asked them for their perspectives on the shifts that mattered most in 2025 and the trends poised to shape 2026 – here is what they had to say.
2025 in Review: From Experimentation to Execution
AI Becomes Operational, Not Optional
In 2025, generative AI crossed a critical threshold. What began as generalized chat tools quickly became trusted analysis engines embedded into daily workflows. As confidence grew, organizations shifted the conversation from whether AI belonged in the enterprise to how it could drive measurable outcomes.
This shift was especially visible in the rise of AI agents. Enterprises began seeing tangible ROI at scale, reframing AI not as a tool, but as a digital workforce that must be onboarded, governed, and managed alongside human teams. At the same time, AI-driven automation and natural-language interfaces pushed data and analytics directly into the hands of business users, transforming analytics into a true enterprise capability.
Modernization Becomes Strategic and Integrated
2025 marked a move away from siloed migrations and point solutions toward integrated modernization strategies. Rapid AI adoption exposed gaps in identity, permissions, information architecture, and governance, forcing organizations to strengthen foundational capabilities they could no longer postpone.
Platform sprawl and fragmented cloud environments added pressure, accelerating tenant consolidation and governance initiatives designed to reduce complexity while improving collaboration, operations, and AI readiness. Success increasingly depended on aligning platforms, policies, and people under a unified strategy.
Infrastructure Evolves to Support AI and Security
Infrastructure investments in 2025 focused on readiness. Organizations modernized networks to strengthen security posture, support AI pilots, and enable ongoing cloud transformation. Rather than chasing trends, leading organizations invested in infrastructure that could scale, adapt, and secure increasingly intelligent workloads.
At the same time, operational maturity improved through automation, with early adoption of AIOps, event correlation, and intelligent monitoring reducing detection and resolution times without losing the human element that remains essential to service delivery.
Managed Services Shift Toward Outcomes
Managed services in 2025 began a quiet but important evolution. Providers started embedding AI-enabled processes behind the scenes while preserving the people-driven experience clients value. AIOps and event correlation improved responsiveness and reliability, but just as important was a shift in how success was measured.
Instead of metrics defining success after the fact, leading organizations began defining success criteria first and letting metrics serve that outcome. This mindset change laid the groundwork for a more strategic managed services model.
Looking Ahead: The Trends That Will Define 2026
The Rise of the Multi-Agent Enterprise
In 2026, AI maturity will accelerate quickly. Organizations will move from individual AI agents to coordinated teams of specialized agents collaborating autonomously across complex workflows. New standards and architectures will enable this shift, but technology alone will not be enough.
The organizations that succeed will be those investing now in governance, human-in-the-loop oversight, and operational frameworks that allow AI agents to scale safely and responsibly. Those still running isolated pilots without an enterprise strategy risk falling years behind.
Platform Consolidation Takes Center Stage
Platform consolidation will become a top priority in 2026. Organizations will look to streamline collaboration, eliminate overlapping tools, and reduce friction that slows AI adoption. Unified ecosystems will be critical not just for cost control, but for governance, performance, and user experience.
Simpler, more cohesive environments will enable faster innovation while reducing operational and security risk.
AI-Ready Infrastructure and Intelligent Operations
As AI use cases move from pilot to production, demand for AI-ready infrastructure will surge. Many organizations will need to expand or upgrade compute, storage, and networking to support AI at scale.
2026 will also bring deeper adoption of intelligent operations, blending RPA, AI, and automation to improve resiliency, security response, and uptime. With growing threats to critical infrastructure, organizations will increasingly rely on intelligent systems to augment human oversight.
Convergence of Managed Services and Security
The line between MSP and MSSP will continue to blur in 2026. Clients will expect a unified service experience that combines observability, security, AIOps, and performance management under a single platform.
This convergence will redefine managed services around outcomes, aligning service delivery with the business results clients care about most.
What This Means for the Year Ahead
The themes shaping 2026 are clear. AI is becoming a workforce, data is becoming a shared enterprise asset, infrastructure is becoming intelligent by design, and service models are becoming outcome-driven.
Organizations that invest now in foundations, governance, and integration will be positioned to move faster and with more confidence. At NRI, we are helping clients turn these trends into practical, scalable strategies that deliver real business value.
As we step into 2026, the conversation is no longer about transformation. It is about execution, maturity, and sustained advantage.
