In 2026, the strategy for enterprise IT infrastructure is shifting from a cloud-first approach to a hybrid-by-design model. Organizations are focusing on workload-right placement, balancing public cloud, private cloud, on-premises, and edge environments based on factors like cost, performance, and compliance. This transformation is expected to see over 40% of leading enterprises adopting hybrid computing paradigms into critical business workflows by 2028.

Cost management in enterprise IT is evolving into a continuous operational discipline, particularly as AI workloads introduce unpredictable consumption patterns. FinOps is expanding beyond cloud billing to encompass total technology spend, including AI infrastructure costs and engineering accountability for efficiency. By 2027, organizations may face up to a 30% increase in underestimated AI infrastructure costs, making clear visibility into spending essential for justifying future investments.

Resilience is becoming a core design principle in IT operations, moving beyond just disaster recovery. Organizations are embedding resilience into infrastructure design, backup architectures, and incident response workflows. With the average cost of a ransomware incident reaching $4.4 million, mature IT organizations are investing in systems that can degrade gracefully and recover quickly, rather than striving for unrealistic uptime perfection.