By Ramanujam Komanduri, Country Manager – India, Pure Storage

In 2026, success in APJ will belong to businesses that can move as fast as the technology they depend on. The themes of the year – AI agility, data sovereignty, subscription-first models, and energy efficiency – all point toward a single truth: adaptability is the new edge. Those who design for flexibility, think beyond compliance, and act with speed will not just weather uncertainty – they’ll define the next era of growth.

Agility, not scale, will define AI leadership in 2026

By 2026, AI leadership in APJ will be defined by an organisation’s ability to reconfigure its AI infrastructure models, inference engines, and deployment platforms regularly. Companies that build modular, provider agnostic AI stacks will outpace those that bet on large fixed infrastructure or single vendor architectures.

As foundation model capabilities leapfrog every few months and cost/performance curves shift unpredictably, enterprises will no longer gain advantage by scaling static AI systems. Instead, the winners will implement infrastructure that allows them to:

• swap models and inference providers within weeks
• orchestrate workloads across cloud, on-prem, and edge based on cost and capability
• absorb rapid changes in GPU hardware, quantization formats, and model architectures
• redeploy AI copilots or agents to production multiple times per quarter

In 2026, competitive advantage won’t come from how large your AI infrastructure is, but how quickly you can adapt it.

In 2026, data sovereignty emerges as the next frontier of resilience

In 2026, data sovereignty will evolve from a compliance checkbox into a boardroom priority. As governments tighten data localization laws and trade relationships reshape digital borders, organizations in APJ must gain clear visibility into where their data resides, who controls it, and how easily it can move when markets shift.

Forward-looking businesses will map their digital supply chains, ensuring applications and assets can move across jurisdictions with minimal friction. With rising geopolitical volatility, 2026 is expected to bring tighter and more fragmented supply chains, making such agility even more essential. Organisations that can pivot between sovereign, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments will be best equipped to navigate geopolitical uncertainty and supply chain constraints while maintaining business continuity. Treating data sovereignty as strategy, not policy, will define resilience.

In 2026, subscription becomes the language of flexibility

In 2026, subscription overtakes ownership as the dominant model for how organisations fund and deploy AI and digital infrastructure. Faced with economic uncertainty, rapid AI capability changes, and unpredictable compute demand, enterprises will no longer commit to large capex-based or multi-year infrastructure bets.

Instead, they will construct modular, subscription-driven stacks where compute, AI models, storage, cybersecurity, and even industry-specific capabilities can be scaled up or down monthly. This shift allows organisations to redirect workloads, budgets, and markets at the pace of change, making subscription-based architecture a core enabler of resilience and growth.

In 2026, the C-suite will make diversification mandatory across supply chains, cloud, and GTM.

In 2026, diversification becomes a non-negotiable priority for APJ leadership. Escalating geopolitical tension, concentrated digital infrastructure risk, and rising regulatory fragmentation push enterprises to abandon single-market and single-provider dependencies.

C-suites will actively redesign their operating models around multi-market supply chains, multi-cloud and multi-AI-provider architectures, and multi-channel GTM strategies. The goal is explicit: reduce vulnerability to regional shocks while positioning the business to capture growth across both emerging and mature APJ economies.

By broadening their operational, digital, and commercial footprints, APJ enterprises will replace the old “optimise for efficiency” playbook with a new one built on structural resilience.

In 2026, energy will decide who wins the AI race

2026 will be the year the region’s AI ambitions collide with its energy realities. As GenAI workloads surge and national grids strain under unprecedented demand, power, not performance, will become the ultimate constraint on innovation.

Across APJ, organizations will be forced to re-engineer their infrastructure around energy efficiency. The shift from spinning disk to flash will accelerate, driven not just by performance gains but by necessity. Data centers will evolve into energy-aware ecosystems, where every watt counts, and technologies like modular design, advanced cooling, and intelligent workload placement will define competitiveness.

In 2026, the winners won’t just be those who scale AI, but those who can sustain it. Energy will emerge as the new currency of digital progress, reshaping how businesses design, deploy, and differentiate their technology strategies.