Our Reflections on the Gartner® Top Trends in Data and Analytics 2026 Report
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Every year, Gartner® publishes “Top Trends in Data and Analytics” reports, and Gartner introduces this year’s report with these words: “In 2026, the leading trends are AI agents, advancements in semantics, and data and analytics platform convergence. For D&A leaders looking to identify key business and technology themes, these areas are essential to deliver cost-effective value and become an AI-first enterprise faster.” In this short post, I’ll offer a few reflections on this report. 

AI and Data

In terms of agentic AI and data management, Gartner elaborates: “Agentic data management refers to adaptive, self-learning systems that use AI-driven automation to optimize and streamline the entire data-to-impact life cycle, which requires safeguards, control and trust. It enables organizations to accelerate key data management processes, allowing data operations teams to focus on strategic priorities and drive better business outcomes, making it the leading trend in data management today.”

Denodo has been setting the stage for agentic data management by building AI into the very fabric of our data management processes. Denodo Assistant bridges the gap between human intuition and SQL, enabling administrators to “talk to the data.” Beyond that, the Denodo Platform is being leveraged as a powerful AI data layer that handles all of the underlying data management processes on behalf of AI agents – including access, integration, governance, and active context – so they can perform such feats such as accelerating anti-money-laundering (AML) investigations while increasing their accuracy. 

The Power of a Denodo AI Data Layer

The AI data layer that Denodo provides is not just a platform-specific add-on. It reaches across all of the applicable data sources in an organization’s data estate, including data lakehouses and warehouses, on-premises and cloud systems, streaming and static systems, SaaS implementations, and even flat files. Beyond that, it provides AI agents and applications with data that is:

  • Live and dynamic, not static and fixed-in-time. This is zero-copy data delivery at work, replicating data only when necessary, and never by default. 
  • Governed across all sources, using centrally defined policies. This provides the guardrails that prevent destructive agentic behavior.
  • Semantically unified. Through standardization, across all data sources, the AI data layer enables AI agents and applications to easily access the right data for any given task.

Working together, these capabilities provide AI agents with the active context they need to act appropriately and make the best decisions in a business moment that is constantly changing due to customer activity, regulatory changes, environmental conditions, and myriad other factors. The active context that Denodo provides in that AML use case mentioned above includes rich metadata, enabling greater explainability around AI agent activities as well as secure, complete audit trails that comply with the AI Act and other regulations. 

Be First

As the first bullet in the list of opportunities and challenges in this report, Gartner says, “An AI-first enterprise can leapfrog its peers by using a strategic approach to maximize AI benefits through D&A, achieving better business outcomes than its peers. Blockers to scaling this vision include fragmentation within the organization, complex IT systems, a sprawl of disconnected data silos, and analytics technologies that hinder enterprisewide AI success.” At Denodo, it is our strong opinion that with our AI data layer, organizations can easily overcome the limitations of traditional data management infrastructures to leverage the full capabilities of AI and agentic AI.

Gartner, Top Trends in Data and Analytics for 2026, David Pidsley, Robert Thanaraj, et al., 17 February 2026

GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.

David Weiss
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