Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Rohan Gupta, VP, Cloud, Security & DevOps at R Systems
As enterprises navigate increasingly complex digital environments, technology is no longer just a support function; it’s central to business strategy, operational efficiency, and customer experience. Organizations today are managing multi-cloud infrastructures, AI-driven workflows, and sophisticated security requirements while striving to stay agile and competitive, making the way they approach cloud, DevOps, platform engineering, and user interactions more critical than ever.
In the race for continuous innovation and to meet shifting customer demands, five key trends are poised to emerge:
Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Will Become a Strategic Architecture, Not a Choice
Most enterprise organizations are already using more than one hyperscaler, driven by a deliberate strategy to avoid vendor lock-in and negotiate discounted rates on bulk service mapping. In the next year, multi-cloud and hybrid environments will become architectural necessities. Businesses will strategically place critical components in the public cloud for scalability and high availability, use private cloud for data security and cheaper hardware for AI initiatives, and rely on specialized clouds for AI and compliance workloads. This diversification will define cloud strategy through the next year.
DevOps Will Evolve from Automation to Autonomous Operations
DevOps will move into AI-embedded, intelligence-driven adaptive ecosystems. For example, CI/CD pipelines will become self-governing systems that dynamically adjust based on telemetry, security, and compliance data. AI-powered code generation, infrastructure-as-code creation, and automated root cause analysis will become default components of DevOps workflows. DevSecOps will be adopted as the default framework with zero-trust integrated in the design phase, and automated scans, secret detection, and runtime protection will become foundational elements. This evolution will significantly improve uptime, speed, and operational efficiency.
AI-Driven DevOps and AIOps Will Redefine Operational Efficiency and Governance
With increasing adoption of AIOps, predictive monitoring, and self-healing systems, operations will become more autonomous and proactive. AI-driven insights will detect anomalies, predict incidents, and remediate issues before users are impacted, fundamentally improving operational reliability. Governance will evolve as well, with policy-as-code and compliance-as-code becoming core principles. Continuous compliance monitoring will replace the old model of periodic audit readiness, while governance co-pilots will automate policy enforcement. Security will become proactive and predictive through AI-driven security pipelines that identify threats before impact.
Platform Engineering Will Become the Backbone of Multi-Cloud and DevOps Success
As cloud and DevOps mature into central components of business operations, the industry will see a surge in demand for multi-cloud engineers, platform engineers, AIOps and intelligent automation engineers, DevSecOps and cloud security engineers, site reliability engineers, and FinOps analysts. Soon, organizations will be operating across multi-cloud, hybrid, and edge-native environments that are too complex for manual or siloed DevOps teams. The most impactful investment will be hybrid-cloud capability building supported by platform engineering, which will hide infrastructure complexity while enforcing security, compliance, and cost controls automatically.
Dark Patterns Will Become AI-Driven and Hyper-Personalized
Dark patterns will evolve into highly sophisticated, AI-driven mechanisms that adapt to individual user behavior, emotions, and decision patterns in real time, shifting from simple visual tricks to psychological, data-driven manipulation, exploiting sentiment, context, and behavioral cues to influence user choices without their awareness. Consent flows will increasingly use GenAI-generated summaries that minimize perceived risks, while “security theater” UI elements create a false sense of protection.
Subscription and cancellation journeys will become more manipulative through intelligent personalization, and applications will subtly coerce users into enabling AI-related features by making non-AI options inconvenient or hidden. New threats such as deepfake-style system prompts, confusing MFA layouts, and persuasive AI chatbots will further blur the line between legitimate and deceptive interactions.
Final Thoughts
The technology landscape in 2026 will demand that organizations think strategically, act autonomously, and innovate responsibly. Multi-cloud and hybrid architectures will underpin resilience and flexibility, AI-driven DevOps and AIOps will redefine operational excellence, and platform engineering will be the linchpin for managing complexity at scale. At the same time, AI-enabled dark patterns will challenge companies to prioritize ethics and transparency in user experiences. Ultimately, these changes will shape the next wave of enterprise modernization – driving smarter architectures, stronger operations, and more transparent user experiences.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rohan Gupta is a cloud and DevSecOps leader who blends start-up agility with enterprise-grade rigor. As VP – Cloud, Security & DevOps at R Systems, he spearheads multi-cloud transformation programs, embeds FinOps culture, and mentors globally distributed engineering teams. Before joining R Systems he founded and scaled ScaleWorx, a managed-services start-up that delivered secure, automated cloud platforms to clients across finance, healthcare, and media. Earlier, Rohan served as Technical Lead, Tools & Orchestration at A.P. Moller – Maersk, where he owned observability and automation for 245 ships, architected air-gapped CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps, and hardened Azure environments around role-based access and compliance. His track record also includes senior engineering roles at Velotio Technologies and IBM SevOne, designing database automation, cross-cloud smoke-testing, and high-performance monitoring stacks.
