After a banner year for the “promise of progress” on AI ambitions, deepening CX fatigue, and ongoing economic volatility, Forrester is predicting 2026 will bring a year of reckoning.
According to Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester, “Navigating the coming year will take some mindset shifts: from lofty ambition to pragmatism, from experimentation to accountability, from surface-level engagement to meaningful connection.”
As tech spend grows faster than inflation due to AI, cloud, and security costs, the C-suite will force tech leaders to focus on value. CIOs will need to adopt IT finance frameworks such as technology business management to map total tech spend to business capabilities and practices such as FinOps to attribute variable costs such as cloud, said Mark Moccia, VP, research director, at Forrester.
Given the high payback expectations from AI investments now, Forrester believes that CEOs will pull more CFOs into AI decisions, leading enterprises to delay 25% of their planned spend into 2027. The disconnect between the inflated promises of AI vendors and the value created for enterprises will force market correction.
The increasing adoption of AI-driven analytics, cloud, rising data volumes from Internet of Things devices, and the demand for real-time business insights is contributing to an even larger demand for big data.
As per Market Data Forecast, the global big data market size is expected to grow from $224.46 billion in 2025 to $573.47 billion by 2033 at a CAGR of 12.44%.
Looking at 2026, key trends will emerge, including the rising adoption of cloud-based big data platforms for cost and efficiency; the growth of AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics to enhance predictive capabilities; the increasing importance of real-time data processing for customer experience and operational efficiency; and the growing emphasis on data security, governance, and compliance in analytics solutions.
However, the infrastructure underlying big data processing, typically large-scale data centers, is a mounting concern as more residents in the U.S. see climbing energy costs. These facilities, which house servers, storage arrays, and network equipment, require continuous power for consumption and cooling, which contributes significantly to global electricity demand. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that a single hyperscale data center can consume between 20 and 50 megawatts of power, which is enough to power 30,000–75,000 homes.
The Harvard Business Review finds that these massive facilities not only strain already stressed power grids but also create air pollution, including fine particulate matter, resulting in significant respiratory-related health consequences that are estimated to cost up to $20 billion per year in the United States by 2028. Technology companies have already been leveraging load-shifting capabilities to reduce their carbon emissions.
Extending these systems to incorporate public health metrics would require only minor algorithmic adjustments, making health-informed AI a natural and feasible next step according to the same Harvard Business Review article.
To help make the process of identifying useful products and services easier, each year, DBTA presents a list of Trend-Setting Products, highlighting a commitment to innovation and efforts to provide organizations with tools to address changing market requirements. These products, platforms, and services range from long-established offerings that are evolving to meet the needs of their loyal constituents to breakthrough technologies that may only be in the early stages of adoption.
Beyond the list presented on the following pages, we encourage you to continue your exploration of these products by visiting the companies’ websites for more information. In addition, in this issue, we include Product Spotlight articles written by company executives that highlight how their products stand out from the rest.