Gartner highlights several trends that will impact IT leaders for the next 18 months.
AI governance and agentic AI have been named as some of the emerging trends that will impact infrastructure and operation leaders over the next 12 to 18 months.
Jeffrey Hewitt, VP analyst at Gartner explained that infrastructure and operation leaders must be aware of all of these trends and prepare to act on the ones that are most likely to impact their organisations.
“So that they’ll be able to adapt, respond effectively, and drive innovation,” he said.
“By understanding the full impact of these emerging trends, enterprises can implement effective tactics to respond, get ahead of the curve, and maximise the value of their infrastructure and operations in 2026.”
According to Gartner, AI governance platforms oversee and manage AI systems by incorporating responsible AI practices.
As more partners and end users implement AI, more governance is needed.
These platforms also address potential compliance and business risks, including bias, lack of transparency, data protection and privacy issues, model evaluation and validation, and security threats.
In terms of agentic AI, Hewitt said AI is one of the top three priorities for CIO’s, and agentic AI is a very beneficial subset of that.
“Agentic AI provides a significant opportunity for infrastructure and operation leaders in that it enables performance gains through time savings, which will increase over time as systems evolve,” he said.
“It can support infrastructure and operations by quickly analysing complex datasets, identifying patterns and acting autonomously.”
Other trends to impact leaders include, hybrid computing, energy efficient computing, disinformation security and geopatriation.
Hybrid Computing
Hybrid computing is an emergent style that orchestrates across diverse, and sometimes incompatible, compute, storage, and network mechanisms.
Hewitt explained, “Hybrid computing will force infrastructure and operation leaders to adopt composable business and technology architecture as part of a long-term strategy for building systems and applications.”
Energy-Efficient Computing
As a sort of subset of hybrid computing, energy-efficient computing is a package of technologies and practices to reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint of IT systems.
Gartner noted that energy-efficient computing enables leaders to significantly impact power and environmental aspects in a sustainable way.
For example, Gartner explained that infrastructure and operation leaders can create positive business outcomes by implementing tailored long-term strategies using novel and emerging technologies, such as optical computing and neuromorphic systems.
Disinformation security
Disinformation security is a suite of technologies that can address disinformation to help enterprises discern trust, protect their brand and secure their online presence.
And according to Gartner, it represents an expanding category of technologies and practices, covering deepfake detection, impersonation prevention and reputation protection.
Hewitt explained, “Given the evolving technology landscape, disinformation security will enable leaders to ensure trust in communications, identity and reputation.”
Geopatriation
Geopatriation is the relocation of workloads and applications from global cloud hyperscalers to regional or national alternatives due to geopolitical uncertainty.
A trend that has been recognised by partners in 2025.
Hewitt said, “Geopatriation is an extension of a previous trend called ‘nationalism versus globalism.
“Arguably, it goes beyond cloud from just data sovereignty to operational sovereignty to technical sovereignty. Geopatriation empowers infrastructure and operations to reduce geopolitical risks and address specific sovereignty requirements.
He ended, “It also enables infrastructure leaders to support and increase the independence of domestic economies.”