IT Budget stories

UK vows Cyber Action Plan with GBP £210m for public-sector defences, as tech leaders warn success hinges on long-term reform and culture.

Telcos race ahead on AI-first observability as New Relic links faster AI monitoring uptake to higher returns and fewer costly outages.

UK learning platform HowNow backs domain-specific AI agents to join teams as ‘colleagues’ by 2026, reshaping workflows and competition.

Hapax unveils a free AI certification for bankers as lenders ramp up AI spending and face tougher scrutiny from regulators and boards.

Rimini Street launches AI Agentic UX layer to automate Oracle and SAP ERP workflows, promising faster delivery without costly migrations.

In 2026, agentic AI, digital twins and AR wearables shift from hype to daily tools, reshaping how security risks are detected and managed.

DoiT wins top-tier AWS managed service partner status, backing its AI-led FinOps and CloudOps platform ahead of 2026 programme revamp.

Tech Data tips AI, cybersecurity and services as key drivers of Asia Pacific’s channel growth through 2026, despite mounting skills shortages.

ANZ executives are shifting spend from costly ERP upgrades to agentic AI and automation as talent shortages and ROI pressure intensify.

Australian CIOs face 2026 ‘bill shock’ as labour scrutiny intensifies and cloud-first strategies give way to cost-driven hybrid models.

GitHub tips Australian public sector AI agents to surge from 2026, as a National AI Plan and new Chief AI Officers reshape adoption.

Gartner says six trends from hybrid computing to geopatriation will redefine IT infrastructure, operations and risk planning by 2026.

Cyber chiefs warn a widening gap between cyber plans and real resilience as boards eye 2026 with only marginal spend increases.

Service-first IT, agentic automation and real-time data platforms are set to dominate 2026 enterprise tech strategies and infrastructure spend.

Cloud marketplaces and SaaS are set to transform global IT spend, with Omdia forecasting USD $163 billion marketplace sales by 2030.

Snowflake doubles AWS Marketplace sales to top USD $2 billion in 2025, underscoring surging enterprise demand for integrated data and AI tools.

AI is set to end SaaS dominance by 2026 as firms pay for domain-specific agents and governed cloud usage instead of per-seat software.

Cloudera forecasts Australia’s AI shift from pilots to industrial-scale, privacy-first deployments by 2026 as tech spend tops AUD $172 billion.

Over half of government CIOs expect IT budgets to rise in 2026, prioritising AI, cybersecurity and cloud tech despite fiscal constraints, says Gartner research.

Birmingham City Council's £123 million ERP failure triggered bankruptcy, revealing how better process management software might have averted this costly disaster.