Will You Be a 2026 AI Winner or Loser?

Can you believe that 2025 is over and we are now in 2026? Time flies and unfortunately business priorities don’t diminish with changes in time, season or year. Even if you recognize a fiscal rather than calendar year, it is always a good practice in the first week of a new year to reflect on the past 12 months and set a few New Year’s Resolutions to help you stay focused for what is to come, especially in the age of AI transformation.

Do you want to be a 2026 AI winner or loser? Spend the next 7 minutes with this blog to first recognize how business-led AI can transform your organization for the good and then develop a set of best practices to ensure 2026 AI transformation projects lead to business success.

Business-led AI transformation with a data intelligence cloud for AI

For some time now, data has become the new currency, and an enterprise data intelligence platform is the magic that turns data into usable information. To make that accessible and usable be the average (non-technical) business executive, the introduction of a data intelligence cloud for AI will fill the gap. New business requirements for an agent-driven enterprise and Autonomous Decision Agents are also putting serious pressure on even the most progressive of organizations.

Put most simply, an intelligent cloud is a cloud computing model/platform that leverages to power of AI to enhance its capabilities. What was once a platform for pure application processing power and storage can now leverage new GenAI technologies to extend functionality into the realm of contextualized data ingestion, advanced omni-channel analytics and proactive/predictive engines to forecast future states based on variables correlated from both within as well as outside the enterprise.

While the promise of AI is still in maturing quickly, the value realized for specific use cases such as enhancing cloud operations are generating measurable results. But the true value of an intelligent cloud can only be realized by establishing a technology stack that not only creates new content but learns as it processes. This is where the marriage of GenAI with Reinforcement Learning steps in to deliver on the promise of an intelligent cloud.

5 New Years Resolutions to deliver on the promise of an intelligent cloud

As 2026 slams into reality and the need to stay competitive, productive and profitable becomes even more a priority, the impact of digital and AI transformation projects becomes priority one. But how do you ensure that your AI transformation project succeed instead of being part of the 95% of generative AI pilots failing to deliver measurable financial returns?

To that end, we would offer these 5 News Years Resolutions to deliver on the promise of an intelligent cloud:

1. Identify: Identify a cross functional team with representative stakeholders from business, technical and governance disciplines, then prioritize decision requirements that will most impact reporting and dashboard critical success factors
2. Connect: Target specific use cases and associated data sources inside and outside the enterprise along with access to business policies and regulatory requirements in selecting the cloud environment/platform
3. Enable: Leverage the power of no-code development for a new GenAI plus Reinforcement Learning-powered cloud ecosystem to deliver the foundation for your intelligent cloud platform
4. Empower: Everyone appropriate should be trained to satisfy their own information requests for realtime analytics all with the only requirement being the ability to ask a question and therefore freeing valuable data science resources to focus on bigger picture revolutionary change opportunities
5. Iterate: Understand that this is a process, not a project, delivering a true intelligent cloud will be an ongoing learning experience for both the human and machine elements of the solution to planning, execution, analysis, and improvement recognition iterated ad infinitum in order to avoid the challenges listed above

One final recommendation would be to select experienced partners who understand the nuances of an intelligent cloud adapted you your specific requirements with an eye to future enhancements that don’t require proprietary tools or resources.

Transforming cloud environments into data intelligence clouds for AI

A data intelligence cloud is a cloud computing platform that leverages to power of GenAI, Reinforcement Learning and Agentic AI to enhance its capabilities and transform data into usable information accessible by the average person starts with ensuring you have the right data to the right person at the right time in the right format. UBIX makes that a reality.

UBIX provides the ability for an average business executive to “converse” with a machine using natural language (NLP) to get the analytics they need to gain actionable insights and make better decisions by inspecting hundreds of variables instantaneously from across all systems within the enterprise and combine that with data that is publicly available.

Learning how GenAI and emerging advancements like Reinforcement Learning and Agentic AI can deliver on the promise of a data intelligence cloud for increasing levels of autonomy and enterprise impact. Download our free eBook titled “Agentic AI and the Power of Action Agents” to help better understand the nuances of emerging AI and Agentic AI concepts/technologies and offer a set of best practices for consideration to ensure digital transformation and business-led AI success. Or if you can spare 22 minutes for a mini–Agentic AI Readiness Workshop, you can contact one of our AI experts today.