Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Roger Haney, CDW‘s Chief Architect for Software-Defined Infrastructure
As 2025 winds down, there’s a noticeable shift in how enterprise IT leaders are talking to us about their environments. Hybrid cloud sprawl has reached a breaking point, AI expectations have outpaced operational readiness, and CIOs are facing sharper questions from CEOs about rising costs and increasingly fragmented infrastructure teams. And for the first time in several years, the pressure isn’t just technological. It’s economic. It’s organizational. It’s cultural.
New data backs this up, too. According to CDW’s 2025 Modern Workplace Report, 95% of organizations say they are struggling with digital friction: slow applications, device issues, and scattered access experiences that directly impact productivity.
After numerous conversations with CIOs, a clear pattern has emerged: 2025 was the year they realized the operating model they built over the last decade can’t support what’s coming next. They’re not just evaluating new platforms. They’re rethinking governance, consolidation, cost structures, and the long-term future of their IT organizations with a sense of urgency.
That’s the real story heading into the new year. Any single breakthrough won’t define next year, but a convergence of business pressure, architectural clarity, and software maturity will force enterprises to modernize with intention.
Here are three forces that will reshape IT infrastructure in 2026.
1. CIOs shift from incrementalism to reinvention
If 2025 was the year of awareness, 2026 is the year of action. Enterprise IT organizations have accumulated layers of siloed responsibility: a team for each cloud, a team for on-prem virtualization, a container platform team, and now an emerging AI operations function. Each group has its own tooling, governance rules, and operational norms. Each solves problems differently, and each contributes to rising complexity and cost. It’s no surprise, then, that 88% of IT leaders now say the digital employee experience directly influences retention, making infrastructure strategy a business issue, not just a technical one.
That model is now under direct scrutiny. CEOs want to know why five infrastructure teams exist to support the same business, why governance is inconsistent across platforms, and why costs keep rising despite advances in automation. CIOs are being pushed to collapse duplicative structures and move toward unified, pipeline-driven operational models.
Economic uncertainty is accelerating the urgency. When budgets tighten, organizations become far more willing to make architectural changes that deliver meaningful cost savings – often investing 10 to 20% to save 50%.
The same dynamic is playing out in AI. What started as experimentation has become an ROI conversation. Enterprises aren’t simply buying GPUs; they’re implementing scheduling software, sharing expensive hardware across teams, and integrating AI operations into their core governance pipelines.
In 2026, CIOs will put forward long-term modernization strategies, overhaul governance and architectural debt, and align compensation to transformation outcomes rather than siloed responsibilities. This isn’t incremental tuning, it is reinvention driven by business reality.
2. Architecture diverges: container-first vs. VM-first
Underneath that organizational shift is the architectural decision that will define the next decade: whether an enterprise becomes container-first or remains VM-first.
A container-first model brings everything – applications, services, and increasingly even VMs – into a Kubernetes environment. This creates a single, consistent model for networking, security, storage, and RBAC across clouds and on-prem. With AI and data pipelines already running overwhelmingly in containers, container-first becomes the natural next step for many organizations seeking standardization.
That shift also aligns with workforce expectations: CDW’s research shows that 73% of employees believe greater automation and self-service – core strengths of Kubernetes-focused ecosystems – would improve their day-to-day experience.
At the same time, VM-first strategies aren’t disappearing. In fact, OpenStack is enjoying a resurgence among enterprises seeking predictable costs, vendor flexibility, and a mature operational model that doesn’t require a complete refactoring of their compute approach. Supported by multiple enterprise vendors, OpenStack has become a pragmatic VM platform for customers who need stability without cloud cost volatility.
Hybrid cloud itself is entering a new phase, which we’re calling the “4th Cloud.” Enterprises are pulling steady-state workloads back on-prem for economic predictability, while borrowing cloud-native automation, governance, and self-service patterns. It’s not a retreat from the cloud; it’s a recalibration of where each workload makes the most sense.
In 2026, architectural clarity will be paramount. The path an organization chooses – whether to be container-first or remain VM-first – will not only determine its platform selection and operational design but also shape its long-term modernization strategy. This is not just a choice, but a strategic decision that will define the future of IT infrastructure.
3. Kubernetes becomes the universal control plane
If architecture defines where workloads run, software defines how they run. And in 2026, Kubernetes will quietly become the universal control plane for the modern datacenter.
Several forces are pushing Kubernetes into that role. Enterprise software vendors are beginning to ship new versions of COTS software as containerized, Kubernetes-native packages. AI workloads, now central to most IT plans, run in containers by default. And operations teams are seeking a consistent governance and automation layer across public cloud, colocation, and on-prem environments.
Kubernetes answers all of those needs. It standardizes networking, security, RBAC, and deployment patterns across environments. It integrates naturally with platform engineering practices, where governance policies are codified into pipelines rather than managed manually. It enables automated generation of audit evidence and creates a single operational model that spans multicloud, private cloud, and emerging container-based AI stacks.
Even analysts’ forecasts may now be conservative. Gartner has predicted that 50% of workloads would run on Kubernetes by 2029, yet many enterprises appear poised to reach that milestone far earlier, driven by vendor roadmaps and AI workload consolidation. Infrastructure vendors are already rewriting storage, networking, and observability products to integrate directly with Kubernetes, accelerating enterprise adoption.
By the end of 2026, Kubernetes won’t just be part of the modern datacenter; it will become the backbone that unifies it.
The bottom line
2026 will be defined by convergence: business pressure compelling CIOs to rethink their operating models, architectural decisions that shape the next decade of hybrid cloud, and a software layer that finally brings consistency to environments long plagued by fragmentation. This convergence presents a unique opportunity for transformation and progress.
The organizations that seize this moment won’t just modernize their infrastructure; they’ll reinvent how they run their businesses, inspiring a new era of innovation and efficiency.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roger Haney is CDW’s Chief Architect for Software-Defined Infrastructure, where he leads technical strategy for the “4th Cloud”. He guides customers through modernizing architecture, adopting container-first strategies, engineering hybrid cloud platforms, and implementing automated operations using platform engineering.
