Cloud faces some key challenges in 2026 - we spoke to these experts to find out what's next
Experts give us their cloud computing predictions for the new year.
(Image credit: Cloudflare)
Cloud computing remains an increasingly important part of business and personal internet use - and with the rise of AI and the increasing need for huge amounts of data, cloud storage is in demand now more than ever.
AI is undoubtedly changing the cloud landscape, with vast amounts of data and compute needed to train and run Large Language Models (LLMs). Bigger, non-proprietary, and all purpose models are less secure and less reliable for enterprises on the whole, so smaller, often locally stored models are becoming more popular - which means on-prem storage and compute will become once again more significant.
We spoke to a few cloud storage experts to find out what their predictions are for the cloud storage space going into 2026, and these are our top picks.
Sovereign cloud solutions
An overwhelming response from experts was in regards to the importance of cloud sovereignty. One of the biggest lessons from 2025 has been how the convenience and scalability of hyper-scalers, does not always necessarily outweigh the risks of security and outages.
“Demand for sovereign cloud solutions will rise, along with greater reliance on regional providers and renewed interest in on-premises or air-gapped data centers,” predicts Chintan Patel, Cisco EMEA CTO.
“A full overhaul of global infrastructure is unlikely, but selective migrations and diversified cloud strategies will become the norm, creating demand for local talent and skills.
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Downtime caused historic issues in 2025, with the AWS incident in particular outlining the dramatic losses that come with giving up control of your information infrastructure. We’ve already seen a stagnation in the adoption of non-sovereign cloud storage, and the experts we’ve heard from seem to predict this will continue.
“Make no mistake: this is a paradigm shift," explains Emma Dennard, Vice President, Northern Europe at OVHcloud
“Organizations are realising that not having sovereign cloud - for certain workloads and applications – is an operational risk. As a result, more organizations are building cloud-native, portable systems by default. This means that moving apps between clouds is easier than ever, risks can be mitigated and costs can be optimized.”
Hyper-scaler hype cycle
It’s difficult to discuss predictions for cloud computing without mentioning AI. Cloud and AI are intertwined, and the dramatic increase in demand for cloud services is directly linked to the enormous amount of data and compute needed to run Large Language Models that have soared in popularity.