Flexera 2026 IT Priorities Report

The Flexera 2026 IT Priorities Report puts IT leaders front and center at a pivotal moment. Innovation is accelerating—especially around AI—but translating those bold investments into real business impact is still a challenge for many organizations. Today’s IT teams face mounting pressure to move quicker, manage budgets wisely, tackle evolving tasks and minimize security risk, all while bridging the gap between ambitious goals and practical results. Simply put, yesterday’s playbook won’t cut it anymore.

Technology stacks are becoming increasingly complex, shadow IT is rising and struggles with visibility and data quality remain persistent. As more dollars continue to flow into AI, it’s becoming more challenging for leaders to prove value and maintain oversight. Discover the top trends that have emerged in this year’s findings—and what successful, forward-thinking organizations are doing differently to get ahead.

AI integration accelerates, but proving AI ROI remains elusive

The challenge of measuring AI value realization

For the third consecutive year, integrating AI is the undisputed top IT priority. Leaders across every industry are embedding it into their technology stack, but this rush to adopt has not been matched by a focus on results. The data reveals a critical disconnect between implementation and impact, highlighting a widespread challenge in measuring AI value realization: 94% of IT leaders are always looking for ways to integrate AI into their technology stack, yet only 19% say demonstrating its effectiveness is a top priority.

Data quality as a barrier to Al success

The core issue is that most AI systems lack contextual learning and are misaligned with day-to-day operations. This reflects a broader industry crisis where an estimated 95% of AI projects fail, not due to technology, but due to poor data quality and a lack of a robust AI governance framework.

The persistent threat of shadow IT on budgets and security

The complexity and rapid implementation of AI are amplifying concerns around cost and risk, which remain among the top three CIO priorities. A primary driver of this is the unchecked growth of applications purchased outside of IT’s view, a problem that has worsened in the last year.

Managing an expanding cyber-attack surface

This unmanaged SaaS sprawl directly contributes to budget overruns and introduces significant security vulnerabilities by expanding an organization’s cyber-attack surface. With 85% of decision-makers stating that gaps in IT visibility pose a significant risk, it’s clear that you can’t protect what you can’t see.

Balancing AI spending and FinOps proves a critical challenge

Preventing cloud overspending in an AI-driven world

IT leaders have always had to balance spending and saving, but ambitious AI investment is making this act harder than ever. With 80% of organizations reporting that their spending on AI applications has increased, many are now grappling with the financial consequences. The voracious appetite of AI for compute power is a primary driver of these rising costs, making effective cloud cost management a business necessity.

The growing importance of FinOps practices

To combat rising costs, leading organizations are adopting FinOps practices, bringing financial accountability to the variable spending model of the cloud. By creating a culture of shared responsibility, FinOps provides the visibility needed to make intelligent trade-offs between speed, cost and quality.

Sustainable IT emerges as a key strategic mandate

Aligning IT operations with corporate ESG goals

Sustainable IT has firmly moved from a niche concern to a core strategic priority, with 94% of IT leaders reporting its growing importance. This shift is driven by increasing regulatory pressure and consumer demand for environmentally responsible practices.

The rise of green IT and the circular economy

CIOs are now expected to play a key role in achieving corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. Key green IT initiatives include investing in energy-efficient data centers, responsible e-waste management and promoting a circular IT economy.

Reducing complexity and risk through software rationalization

As IT leaders look to optimize investments, the strategic process of IT vendor consolidation is gaining momentum. The goal is to reduce the complexity, cost and risk associated with vendor sprawl through strategic software rationalization.

Negotiating value in a consolidated vendor market

By strategically reducing the number of technology suppliers, organizations can lower administrative overhead, improve their security posture and mitigate supply chain risks. With OpenAI maintaining its strong position, the focus on consolidating around platforms that offer clear AI-driven value is a defining trend.

Shadow IT proliferation creates critical IT visibility gaps

Quantifying the risk of unmanaged SaaS sprawl

While IT vendor consolidation helps manage sanctioned software, the risk posed by a lack of IT visibility has increased, with 85% of IT decision-makers now acknowledging it as a significant threat—a six-point jump from last year. This is a direct result of the uncontrolled proliferation of shadow IT and business-led IT initiatives.

Business-led IT vs. centralized governance

This SaaS sprawl creates critical data silos, increases the risk of data leakage and leads to wasted spending on redundant applications. The primary barriers to achieving full visibility remain cybersecurity protocols (31%), a lack of skilled IT staff (25%) and a lack of resources (25%).

The link between data fidelity and decision-making

A critical paradox has emerged in enterprise data strategy. A vast majority of IT leaders—90%—believe their teams have the data they need to make good decisions. Yet, this confidence is undermined by a widespread inability to extract value from and act on that data. This highlights a critical issue: Data is abundant, but high-fidelity, trustworthy data that can be easily used remains scarce.

Investing in tools to extract data value

The success of any strategic initiative, especially AI, is fundamentally dependent on the quality of the underlying data. As the AI battle continues, 45% of leaders admit they don’t always know when their employees are using AI, pointing to a significant governance and data quality blind spot that directly impacts AI ROI.

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Download previous reports

• 2025 IT Priorities Report
• 2024 IT Priorities Report
• 2023 IT Priorities Report