AI-curated news for your industry

The latest Databricks report shows that enterprises are adopting multi-agent systems at a significantly faster pace, with customer-facing tasks such as customer support and personalized marketing accounting for a quarter of AI use cases. Enterprises with strong governance are 12 times more efficient at advancing AI projects from pilot to production.

In 2026, the IT channel faces dual pressures from AI hype and market consolidation. Vendors are adjusting partner programs to meet scale requirements, and small VARs and MSPs need to expand service capabilities or risk being left behind. Distributors like Arrow are positioning themselves as 'change agents,' emphasizing customer needs. Industry research shows that automation without organizational change only yields hollow productivity gains, but the 'AI tax' creates opportunities for channel partners to bridge the gap between deployment and business value.

Universal Music Group (UMG) announced on Tuesday the appointment of Hannah Poferl, the first chief data officer of The New York Times, as its chief data officer, effective immediately. Poferl will oversee the company's global data and analytics strategy and lead audience development and engagement, including the application of AI technology. She will report directly to Chief Operating Officer Boyd Muir. This move comes amid a growing trend of companies elevating data and AI to the executive level.

Hybrid cloud strategies continued to gain popularity in 2025, driving increased interest in specialized AI clouds or neocloud providers. According to a Synergy Research Group report, neocloud revenue in Q2 2025 grew 205% year-over-year, with the full year expected to exceed $23 billion. Facing intense competition in 2026, neocloud providers need to deepen their focus on the enterprise buyer market.

Enterprises are racing to modernize their data foundations to support AI-driven decisions, but issues such as inconsistent business definitions, vendor lock-in from embedded logic, and a lack of visibility into data usage remain prominent. This three-episode podcast series, based on a survey of 100 senior IT leaders, analyzes why data consistency remains the most challenging problem in enterprise analytics and invites product executives from Strategy Inc to share approaches to AI observability, AI readiness, and semantic fragmentation.

Red Hat announced on Tuesday the acquisition of AI company Chatterbox Labs, which specializes in model testing and generative AI safeguards. The acquisition will add automated risk assessment, safety testing, and governance features to Red Hat's AI product portfolio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Stibo Systems' latest research reveals that although 91% of U.S. business leaders consider customer data management critical, only 31% fully trust their data. Nearly three-quarters of companies still depend on shadow databases and manual corrections, and the gap between data governance deficiencies and AI readiness has become a core challenge for CIOs.

Snowflake and SAP announced a new partnership, introducing two products: SAP Snowflake (an extension of SAP Business Data Cloud solutions) and SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Snowflake, aimed at integrating SAP business data with Snowflake's AI Data Cloud, enabling enterprises to achieve semantic data sharing via zero-copy, and leveraging AI agents and models to optimize key business processes such as supply chain, financial planning, and customer experience.

The 2025 MSP 501 list reveals that artificial intelligence has been fully integrated into the strategies and roadmaps of managed service providers (MSPs). Leading companies such as Ensono, Zayo Group, and Expedient have either achieved revenue growth through AI or are using it as an internal efficiency tool while planning commercialization paths. Based on interviews with executives from multiple listed MSPs, this article outlines the diverse applications of AI in the managed services sector and industry trends.

IBM plans to cut thousands of jobs in the fourth quarter, reducing its global workforce by approximately a low single-digit percentage, but expects U.S. headcount to remain flat year-over-year. The company stated that this is a talent structure optimization to match customer demand, while its strategic focus is accelerating toward software, infrastructure, and AI services. As of December 2024, IBM had 270,000 employees globally.