When shaping future virtualization and private cloud strategies, 55% say integrated observability and AIOps is very important or business critical.

100% of enterprises plan to expand agentic AI adoption in 2026.

74% of enterprises view deploying agentic AI into production as a critical priority or strategic imperative.

Budget constraints (28%), technical complexity (24%), migration risk (21%), and skills gaps (20%) are cited by enterprises as the top barriers slowing virtualization progress.

Only 4% of enterprises cite licensing costs as the single biggest catalyst for virtualization.

57% of enterprises are taking a phased approach to future‑proof their IT.

78% of provisions are in the public cloud, 61% are in virtualized clusters, 48% are in private cloud, and 32% are at the edge.

64% of enterprise leaders in the UK view AI as posing little or no threat to networks.

70% of enterprise leaders use real-time alerts to secure data.

Confidence in data security falls to 40% when data passes through third-party provider networks.

Nearly a third of senior leaders admit "we know we should do more than we do" when it comes to critical data security.

32% of leaders do not know the locations of all of their data centers, rising to 49% when including third-party providers.

70% of senior leaders are losing sleep over the security of their critical data.

Data security is the single biggest network concern for enterprises, cited by 35% of leaders.

11% of leaders say they are aware of definite weak points when their data travels across third-party infrastructures.

56% of enterprise leaders classify AI-related risks to their critical data as moderate to extreme.

83% of enterprise leaders agree that reducing third-party network hops increases security.

68% of enterprise leaders use SIEM integration for visibility of backbone traffic.

77% of enterprise leaders say data sovereignty requirements heavily influence their choice of backbone provider.

48% of enterprise leaders are not fully confident they could demonstrate compliance with data protection regulations.