Barcelona to Boardroom: Rethinking People, Process & Platforms in 2026

Last month, I was back in Barcelona for perhaps my favourite annual event – the Gartner IT Symposium/XPO. Why do I like it? Well, very few events are as well attended, the interaction and engagement levels are high, and the city itself is hard to beat.

So after a week of keynotes, presentations, and hundreds of 1:1 conversations, here are my thoughts.

The IT agenda is defined by a single truth: complexity is the enemy of speed.

As AI infrastructure, distributed cloud, data governance, and platform engineering rise to the top of every priority list, organisations need an operating model that delivers simplicity, consistency, and control across every environment.

This ideal operating model - one that is product-centric, AI native, platform-driven, and relentlessly outcome-focused was undoubtedly my most discussed topic. The reasons why it’s becoming the dominant blueprint for high-performing IT organizations are consistent.

From Projects to Products - A Structural Reset

For decades, enterprise IT has operated around projects, tickets, and temporary teams. But this model struggles under the weight of continuous digital initiatives and newly introduced complex AI systems. A product operating model establishes persistent teams responsible for an outcome, not just a deliverable and this drives some key shifts:

• Fund teams, not projects - Teams stay intact and continuously improve.
• Full lifecycle ownership - Teams build, run, refine, and evolve digital products.
• KPIs tied to value, not output -Adoption, experience, time-to-value vs. deadlines and ticket counts.
• Embedding business roles within IT teams -Product managers, process owners, and analysts co-create outcomes.

This approach is essential for operationalizing AI, where systems continually learn, adapt, and require meticulous lifecycle governance.

Traditional project-driven IT slows down innovation. A product-based model thrives only when teams have a consistent infrastructure that delivers predictable performance, allows for self-service provisioning, and shows centralised costs.

If I think about how Nutanix is supporting organisations with this change, it’s clear:

• One platform. Every location – We help teams innovate fast with a consistent API, operational model, and experience—whether on-premises, in the public cloud, or at the edge.
• Infrastructure that “just works.” Automated operations reduce the burden on product teams, allowing them to focus on features rather than firefighting.
• Frictionless provisioning. Self-service catalogues and automated workflows accelerate delivery for persistent product teams.

Product-centric IT requires a product-like foundation and platform, and that’s exactly what Nutanix delivers.

The Rise of Platform IT

If the last decade was about cloud migration, the next decade is about “Platformization.”

CIOs are increasingly looking to move from fragmented tool stacks toward an Enterprise platform that can accelerate delivery, reduce multicloud complexity, and enforce consistency at scale. Nutanix pioneered the platform model for enterprise cloud, unifying compute, storage, virtualisation, networking, governance, and data services into a single software-defined platform.

As IT teams consolidate around internal developer platforms (IDPs), run platforms, and data/AI platforms, the underlying infrastructure must be simple and consistent, API driven, hybrid by design, and not destroy the budget.

How Platforms Will Shape the Future of IT

Organisations really need to be thinking about three things:

Build Platform (IDPs)

These platforms streamline development by providing fast feature delivery and fewer handoffs, offering:

• stable, fast, reliable environments
• Kubernetes ready infrastructure
• automated provisioning and lifecycle management
• embedded security and compliance.

Run Platform (Cloud, Edge, Ops)

Enterprises are consolidating operations into unified run platforms that reduce operational overhead and improve cost transparency by providing:

• unified management & orchestration across locations
• native virtualization for cost efficiency
• automated updates and one-click operations
• built-in governance and policy enforcement.

Data + AI Platforms

AI and advanced analytics require cohesive, enterprise-wide data foundations:

• integrated storage, database, and data protection services
• consistent data performance across hybrid multi-cloud
• infrastructure ready for LLM hosting, GPU workloads, and AI pipelines
• model monitoring and risk/governance controls.

Together, these elements form the “new IT spine”—supporting every digital product and workflow.

AI Infrastructure: Enabling Intelligence Everywhere

AI was everywhere at Gartner IT Symposium 2025. As organisations rush to take advantage of new initiatives, AI native processes will redefine operating efficiency. AI thrives on simplicity, consistent data access, and scalable compute. As it permeates development, operations, and security, CIOs will face rising operational complexity – the killer of agility.

Enabling AI Anywhere

Organisations want to run AI workloads in the datacentre, at the edge or in the cloud with the same operational model, creating opportunities for:

• low data movement
• predictable cost
• simplified compliance
• faster deployment of AI services.

Supporting AI-Enhanced Ops

Automated operations and self-healing architecture reduce manual effort, freeing teams to focus on AI-assisted workflows rather than maintenance. The ability to accelerate value from AI projects drives success.

Powering AI-Accelerated Development

Stable, scalable infrastructure accelerates developer velocity and puts AI-enhanced development pipelines on reliable foundations.

AI isn’t just an application modernisation; it’s an infrastructure transformation.

The Mindset Shift

Assume AI is the default method for every workflow, not an optional add-on. Organizations that build processes around AI, rather than simply adding AI to the edges, will see the largest productivity gains.

Your people will play a critical role in the AI Era, with new skill requirements and roles emerging constantly. Keeping platforms and infrastructure simple will enable teams to focus their expertise on higher-value AI and platform-engineering roles.

As organizations adopt platform engineering, AI Ops, and data governance roles, they will need tools that:

• reduce toil and minimize complexity
• streamline learning curves
• eliminate specialized silos.

Nutanix helps skill transformation in three ways:

• A single operational model replaces multiple cloud or virtualization skill sets.
• Intuitive management can reduce time-to-productivity for new roles.
• Automated operations free teams to focus on design, architecture, and AI workflows.

But as the operating models evolve, so must the workforce. Many roles that will define IT in 2026 didn’t exist five years ago, and CIOs will have to increasingly invest in them. These roles include:

• AI/ML Product Owner – aligns AI capabilities with business outcomes
• Prompt & Interaction Engineer – optimizes model-human communication
• AI Ops Engineer – manages model monitoring, drift, and performance
• Platform Product Manager – oversees IDP, cloud platforms, and governance
• Data Governance Lead – manages compliance, lineage, and quality
• Digital Twin Architect – builds simulation models for predictive decisioning.

These new roles help bridge the gap between humans, AI systems, and automated processes.

Continuous Governance: The New Safety Net

Unified governance across clouds, clusters, and workloads with compliance, data protection, and built-in security is a necessity. A modern platform model requires continuous AI, data, and cloud governance, not spreadsheets or manual reviews.

Nutanix strengthens governance with:

• Consistent security posture across hybrid multicloud
• Built-in micro-segmentation
• Automated patching and lifecycle management
• Encrypted data at rest and in transit
• Native compliance frameworks and reporting
• Policy-driven resource management and cost controls

With strong governance features, teams can scale digital products and AI responsibly with confidence, visibility, and control. IT governance can no longer be periodic, manual, or reactive.

Enterprises are shifting to always-on, automated governance fabrics. The new expectation: Governance at the speed of automation

But what does Continuous Governance look like?

• Policy-as-code embedded into platforms
• Automated guardrails for security, compliance, and data usage
• Continuous model validation and monitoring for AI
• Centralized oversight of AI risk, privacy, and fairness
• Zero-trust integration across cloud and edge environments

Rethinking Success: Metrics for the 2026 CIO

Nutanix helps CIOs measure business value, not just infrastructure uptime, through platform simplicity and cross-cloud visibility.

Because Nutanix consolidates silos into a single platform, organisations can gain clearer and more actionable KPIs, including:

• Fast time-to-value for new services
• Developer experience metrics (improved through automation and consistency)
• Platform reliability and SLO attainment
• Cost-to-serve insights across workloads and clouds
• AI workload performance consistency
• Streamlined operational overhead

The KPIs that defined IT in the cloud era - uptime, ticket closure, project delivery - don’t adequately reflect success in the AI era. With the shift from output to impact, new KPIs that will matter include:

• Business value per platform investment (How much value each platform enables downstream)
• Developer Experience (DevEx) scores (Leading indicator of delivery performance)
• AI ROI and adoption velocity
• Use-case time-to-value
• Cost-to-serve per digital product
• Platform reliability + SLO attainment

High-performing IT leaders are designing scorecards that tie IT success directly to measurable business value.

Final Thoughts: Why Nutanix Fits the 2026 Operating Model

The future belongs to IT leaders who simplify. Those who tame complexity. Those who unify their environments. Those who build platforms that last.

Nutanix has spent over ten years preparing for this moment.

By providing:

• a consistent hybrid multicloud platform
• integrated data services
• AI-ready infrastructure
• simple, automated operations
• unified governance
• and a radically easy operational model.

In 2026, the real differentiator won’t be the tools IT deploys; it will be the operating model IT empowers. Nutanix is built to power that model.

The technology itself is no longer the differentiator; any Enterprise can buy cloud services, AI models, or tooling. The true competitive advantage in IT will be the operating model, not the software stack.

CIOs who make this shift now will shape the next era of digital and AI performance across their organisation, delivering business value and competitive advantage.

I am already looking forward to Gartner IT Symposium 2026. See you there.

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