Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Nick Burling, Chief Product Officer at Nasuni
In today’s data-saturated world, enterprises are sitting on a goldmine of information they can’t fully use. The challenge isn’t collecting more data, it’s organizing what they already have. Unstructured data remains largely untapped because it’s scattered, inconsistent, and difficult to interpret. In 2026, success will depend on an organization’s ability to bring order to this chaos, turning disorganized data into a structured, intelligent foundation for decision-making. Organizations that master the discipline of data organization and governance will gain faster insights, stronger resilience, and a true competitive edge.
Unstructured Data Will Be the Backbone of AI Innovation
In 2026, unstructured data will emerge as the backbone of AI innovation, redefining how enterprises harness intelligence across their organizations. As AI continues to advance, the availability of high-quality structured data is reaching its limits, creating what many analysts call a “data ceiling”. However, with an estimated 80-90% of enterprise data existing in unstructured forms, from documents and emails to images, videos, and design files, the potential to unlock its value has never been greater. This vast, often underutilized data holds the key to deeper insights, smarter automation, and more contextually aware AI systems.
The next wave of AI progress will depend on how effectively organizations can access, govern, and activate their unstructured data. Doing so will require a strategic shift; one that prioritizes data quality, context, and security in equal measure. Unstructured data is the next iteration of data for AI. In 2026, having a comprehensive strategy for enterprise unstructured data is no longer considered “being a step ahead”, but vital for AI success.
The Casino Approach to Risk and Competitive Advantage
Organizations that truly embrace risk in 2026 as part of their wider operating strategy will strengthen their cybersecurity and boost their competitive advantage. By taking a scientific approach to understanding, measuring and monitoring risk – right across a business, from competitive strategy to security posture – cybersecurity will become an asset, delivering wider benefits and a stronger market position.
Take the example of the casino industry: casinos are in the business of managing and monitoring risk all day long, in every aspect of operations, from the buffets to the card tables, yet there’s the understood concept that “the house always wins.” The secret lies in the casino industry’s risk thinking, which involves taking a systematic approach to measuring the benefits and costs of risk, so they know exactly when they’re willing to deploy resources across their operations to achieve a high financial reward, and more importantly, exactly where they are not.
This year, CISOs must apply this rigorous casino thinking to cybersecurity operations to strengthen their organization’s ability to innovate, when external risks are increasing but funding resources may be limited or declining. For example, while the benefits of dedicated security system access for the company’s C-level team may carry high costs, risk profiling shows that enhanced company-wide security access controls can maximize risk reduction across the business, while also unleashing more individual contributors’ productivity. It’s the CISO’s responsibility to ensure that in these operating areas where there’s a very clear value-add to the wider organization, these game-changing opportunities don’t go begging.
AI as a Simplifier, Not Just an Accelerator
Next year, AI won’t just power business growth; it will simplify it. We’re entering an era where AI becomes the foundation for consolidating tech stacks, automating intelligently, and unlocking the value hidden in unstructured data. The smartest organizations won’t be the ones with the most tools, but the ones that know how to connect them. CIOs will use AI to streamline operations, drive smarter, faster decisions, and build hybrid infrastructures that scale efficiently while keeping spend in check. The result is a leaner, more agile enterprise, and one that learns, adapts, and innovates continuously.
The CIO’s role will evolve from technology custodian to business catalyst. As AI and automation reshape how work gets done, CIOs will be at the center of driving both innovation and accountability-embedding governance, resilience, and security into the very fabric of transformation. The modern CIO will act less as an enforcer and more as an enabler, helping the business move faster without losing control. In 2026, the most effective technology leaders will be those who can balance speed with stewardship. They will use AI not just to optimize systems, but to drive business outcomes, culture, and trust across the enterprise.
The Rise of Unstructured Data: From Archive to Intelligence
The era of AI is presenting enormous challenges and opportunities. Unstructured data is perhaps the biggest frontier for enterprises. It is vast, dispersed across multiple silos, and difficult to access and manage efficiently. Businesses that can unlock the full value of their unstructured data repositories and gather insights from that data are the ones that will gain the biggest competitive advantage in 2026.
Organizations will need powerful data management tools to classify, curate, and clean data at scale, ensuring high-quality inputs for AI models. Moving to the cloud is an incredible foundational piece of the puzzle; it offers infinite scalability, global accessibility, and high performance. For the first time, we have cloud infrastructure that is equal to the scale of the challenge of unstructured data. Organizations can go from many hard to reach silos to having unified access to all of their unstructured data. At that point, seamless integration with multiple machine learning and large language models through standardized interface protocols (such as MCPs) enables ongoing insights and flexibility. Metadata-rich architectures will become the norm, providing the structure and automation needed to transform raw, unstructured data into a strategic enterprise asset.
With this approach, unstructured data will no longer be a passive archive but an active, intelligent layer of enterprise decision-making and innovation.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nick Burling is the Chief Product Officer at Nasuni where he is responsible for defining and executing on the roadmap for Nasuni’s portfolio of innovative hybrid cloud storage offerings, and for developing an ecosystem around those offerings to maximize Nasuni’s value for our customers. Nick’s background includes broad experience building and leading winning product teams with Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft and IBM, and in leading startups from launch to successful exit.
