2026 is set to be the year in which the evolutionary changes hinted in the past 12 months become established within the data landscape, according to expert predictions. Artificial intelligence will mature into the game-changing innovation it has promised for years and private markets, whose growth in importance in the past few years has been breath taking, will be better served by the most sophisticated data processing.
Data Management Insight spoke to some of the leading figures within the data ecosystem to get their take on what they see in the pipeline for the next 12 months.
AI Maturity
Delivering enterprise ROI with Agentic AI – AI usage will turn into a reality for enterprise use case applications, demonstrating productivity ROI through the use of AI agents. However due to regulatory regimes especially for financial services, we still expect to always have a “user in the loop”.
Akber Jaffer, CEO, Smartstream
Applications, Automation and Analytics
We will see a step change in interconnectivity of enterprise workflows through new protocols. Building open API based interconnectivity and the emergence of MCP (Model Context Protocol) we expect enterprises to enhance dynamic workflow connectivity Unlocking the dynamic data insights – enterprises will increasingly use technology to supplement current static management information to more real-time dynamic data insights, through natural language interface.
Akber Jaffer, CEO, Smartstream
