Harnessing the power of ICT to propel your enterprise forward: Five key trends you need to be across in 2026

Technology continues to evolve at bewildering speed and businesses that want to stay ahead of the pack must adopt and adapt apace.

We're racing towards another brand-new year and, in common with the last few, it's likely to be marked by volatility and challenge.

In the face of significant domestic challenges and persistent international pressures, 'uncertain', 'tense' and 'risky' are the adjectives selected by senior Commonwealth Bank economists to describe Australia's outlook for 2026.  

"We simply do not know the full impact of these trade tensions between the US and China and the flow-on impacts to the rest of the world," the Bank's Head of FX, International and Geoeconomics, Joseph Capurso noted in an analysis of the country's economic future released in October 2025.

Judicious adoption of new business practices and programs may help your business maintain and improve productivity and profitability, despite difficult conditions.

Here are some of the IT developments it will pay to be across in 2026, as you navigate whatever uncertain waters lie ahead.

The rise of agentic AI

Can it really be only three years since ChatGPT was unleashed to the world? Since its November 2022 launch, artificial intelligence has morphed from science fiction concept to everyday tool, for tens of millions of users. But while ChatGPT and other platforms like it may be upending industries and occupations at unsettling speed, this generative AI technology is merely stage one of a trend that has a long way to run yet. 

Over the next 12 months, we'll see the rise and rise of agentic AI: AI agents that can plan, reason and execute complex, multi-step tasks across systems and applications. That means human employees in multiple spheres will find themselves joined and supported by a host of 'virtual co-workers'. If you're not actively looking for ways to augment productivity by using everyday tools and enterprise software featuring embedded AI, you risk falling behind faster moving competitors.

Cybersecurity to the fore

In today's times, cyber attacks have become everyday occurrences, and expensive ones too. The Australian Signals Directorate's Annual Cyber Threat Report for 2024-25 revealed an 11 per cent increase in cybersecurity incidents, year on year. The average cost of responding has risen too: up 55 per cent to $97,200 for medium sized businesses and up 219 per cent to $202,700 for large companies.

Against that backdrop, we'll see businesses seeking to mitigate risk by leveraging AI and machine learning for real time threat detection, anomaly scoring and automated incident response. Expect a widespread shift towards 'zero trust' architecture which requires identity verification for every connection and request to access resources.

Edge computing on the up

Over the past decade, there's been an extraordinary shift from on-premises to centralised cloud computing. Now we're starting to see the pendulum swing back a smidgen. Enterprises are looking to deploy edge infrastructure to enable immediate decision making for latency sensitive applications – think industrial IoT, smart manufacturing and connected vehicles.

The end game for those that take this tack in 2026? The creation of massive, intelligent and highly strategic connected eco-systems that combine high speed, low latency 5G networks with IoT devices.

Connectivity convergence

We live in ultra-connected times. So much so that the corporate network has become critical infrastructure for businesses of all stripes and sizes – and the subject of ongoing investment to ensure it's ultra fast, ultra reliable and ultra secure. To this end, expect to see increased use of AI to automatically optimise network performance, predict and prevent faults and minimise the need for manual intervention by IT teams. The push to step up security will result in the embedding of security policies within the fabric of the network to ensure rigorous end-to-end protection.  

Sustainability surge

With AI usage soaring, we're seeing an extraordinary demand for computing power, with some research suggesting Australia will need up to 175 new data centres by 2030. The demand for electricity to power those centres will ensure the issue of environmental and social responsibility stays squarely on state and federal government agendas next year and every one after that.

Businesses will increasingly be expected to do some heavy lifting: finding ways to reduce the carbon footprint of IT workloads; utilising carbon aware scheduling; deploying digital twin technology to simulate and optimise energy consumption across physical assets, supply chains and operational environments; and reducing e-waste via more rigorous re-use and recycling campaigns.