The 2026 IT Investment Benchmark: Navigating Sovereignty, AI and Resilience

If you’ve followed my work for a while, you know I care deeply about three things: open source, hybrid cloud and data. So when we had the opportunity to survey nearly 600 enterprise technology leaders across the U.S., UK, Japan, India and Germany on how AI is reshaping infrastructure priorities, I had to see it firsthand.

The results are in, and they confirm something I’ve been hearing from customers and partners for months: the “public-cloud-first” era is maturing into something more intentional and governed, and AI is not surprisingly on everyone’s minds. 

I’ll be diving deeper into these takeaways during a TechStrong webinar on April 8th. Until then, here are some of the highlights of what we found.

AI is reshaping IT budgets at the infrastructure level

Globally, implementing AI ranked as either a critical (24%) or major (37%) challenge for enterprise technology leaders. AI is the top budget priority line item in four of the five surveyed countries. Yet despite the urgency, many organizations are realizing their existing infrastructure wasn’t built to support AI at scale.

We’re seeing a significant re-architecting of how and where workloads run. Enterprises are demanding more granular control over their cloud infrastructures. Maybe not surprising, but it is interesting to see how AI prioritization and investment are aligned, or not.

Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud are becoming the default

Across every geography we surveyed, hybrid and multi-cloud are emerging as the go-to models. Organizations need to support regulated, sensitive and edge workloads without sacrificing flexibility. 59% of respondents plan to prioritize hybrid cloud deployments for workloads where digital sovereignty is required, with 16% relying purely on private cloud. Over half plan to increase spending on scaling across multiple cloud environments.

We also confirmed that digital sovereignty is no longer just a European concern. In the U.S., where data protection and control are increasingly urgent, nearly a third of respondents cited digital sovereignty as a top tech priority this year. 

39% of U.S. enterprises expressed concern about vendor lock-in, outpacing the global average of 25%. To me, that’s a call for choice. We need to build infrastructure that adapts as your environment changes.

IT resilience is the new baseline

U.S. respondents cited IT resilience as their most important technological priority at a rate higher than any other country: 64% compared to a global average of 55%. Whether it’s trying to optimize existing infrastructure, implement AI, or modernize existing applications, resilience becomes a core infrastructure requirement.

The data we collected at SUSE makes one thing clear: organizations are moving toward open, interoperable environments that give them long-term control. It’s why we’ve planned SUSECON 2026 around this theme of resilience.

Join us on April 8, 2026, to go deeper

These findings are just the beginning of the story. On April 8, I’ll be co-hosting a live webinar with Alan Shimel, Founder and CEO of Techstrong Group. You’ll hear us talk through the full global benchmark data, dig into regional differences and discuss what these shifts mean for your 2026 strategy.

I’d love for you to join the conversation. 

Register to attend The 2026 IT Investment Benchmark: Navigating Sovereignty, AI and Resilience