Prediction 1: AI Outages Become the New “Ransomware Moment” 

“In 2026, the biggest wake-up call for enterprises will be unexpected AI outages. As more organizations rely on AI systems for customer service, fraud detection, claims processing, supply chain routing, and decision automation, even a few minutes of downtime will create real-world business disruption. We’re moving into an era where AI is fully embedded into workflows, which means the databases, pipelines, and connections behind those AI systems must be architected for continuous availability. The companies that treat AI like a traditional app are going to run into the same wall we saw with ransomware years ago: you don’t realize how fragile the architecture is until it breaks.

What I’m seeing going into 2026 is a shift from ‘How do we deploy AI?’ to ‘How do we keep AI running, resilient, and trustworthy every second?’ The winners will be the companies that build durable foundations - resilient failover, airtight DR strategies, and secure, persistent connections between every environment where the data and compute live. AI will only be as reliable as the infrastructure supporting it. Businesses have to treat availability and security as non-negotiable if they want AI to successfully transform outcomes.”

Prediction 2: Multi-Cloud Fragmentation Becomes a Crisis

“Whether they planned it or not… by 2026, nearly every enterprise will be operating in a patchwork of public cloud, private cloud, containers, and edge environments. When apps need to talk to each other securely, or when data must move quickly and reliably to support analytics and AI, that fragmentation will become a real liability. Teams are already discovering that traditional networking and legacy failover approaches simply don’t work at multi-cloud scale. The complexity isn’t slowing down - so the resiliency architecture and network connectivity has to evolve to match the world we’re deploying into.

What I expect to see in 2026 is a massive shift toward secure, lightweight, point-to-point connectivity models built on zero-trust principles. Companies need a way to ensure constant uptime, fast recovery, and secure movement of data across clouds without wrestling with brittle tunnels or static network overlays. High availability isn’t just about servers anymore - it’s about the entire distributed fabric staying resilient. Businesses will choose solutions that let them seamlessly failover across clouds, maintain jurisdictional control, and securely reach any resource from anywhere. That’s the only way to operate confidently in a multi-cloud world.”

Prediction 3: Disaster Recovery Moves From “Backup Plan” to “Active Architecture” 

“For years, disaster recovery has been the fire extinguisher in the hallway - something everyone pays for but hopes they’ll never have to touch. That thinking won’t make it through 2026. Regulators are tightening the screws in finance, healthcare, and government. Cloud regions are going dark without warning. Geopolitical tensions and climate disasters are taking entire data centers offline. The idea that a single cloud or region can keep you safe is becoming a dangerous illusion. Disruption isn’t the exception anymore. It’s the operating environment.

The companies that don’t get caught flat-footed will treat resilience as a living, breathing part of their architecture - not an afterthought. Cross-region and cross-cloud failover will shift from “nice to have” to the only sane way to run a business. And whether critical apps come back online fast enough will depend on secure, low-latency connections that don’t crumble under pressure. In 2026, resilience becomes a board-level concern. The organizations that invest in it now will be the ones still delivering uninterrupted services when everyone else is scrambling to recover.”