Enterprise Architects rely on a range of stakeholders and partners across the organization to convey their point of view and secure buy-in for architecture initiatives. Few are more important than the CIO. EA problems can be difficult to get people interested in. But when those are also CIO problems, the strategic value of solving them becomes clearer.
We looked at a wide range of 2025 and 2026 CIO content to identify common trends and points of view, and came up with five priorities your CIO will be thinking about next year, if they haven’t started already.
AI has already advanced at an astonishing rate, and as organizations do their best to get maximum value from LLMs, the technology is starting to progress to the next stage: agentic AI. Agentic AI promises systems that can make decisions without human input, either on their own or as part of a group of agents, and CIOs are getting ready to use it soon. In August 2025, Gartner predicted that “40% of Enterprise Apps Will Feature Task-Specific AI Agents by 2026, Up from Less Than 5% in 2025”. This prediction has borne out, with their 2026 CIO Agenda finding that 64% of technology executives plan to deploy agentic AI across the next 12-24 months.
On a more general level, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) found in its Impact of Tech in 2026 that 96% agreed that "Agentic AI innovation, exploration and adoption will continue at lightning speed in 2026”.
To be trusted to work autonomously, these agents depend on clean, reliable data and clear architecture. Enterprise Architects have a fundamental role to play in ensuring the organization’s AI usage can be tracked and data flows mapped to establish rigorous processes for AI usage. This ensures that agents have the context needed to make correct, informed decisions.
A striking MIT report in August 2025 found that 95% of generative AI pilots at companies failed to demonstrate ROI. Going into 2026, it is more important than ever to ensure that the investments organizations make in AI deliver. Flexera says one-third of IT leaders cite integrating AI as a top priority for next year, while the majority of IT leaders (93%) say they are being asked to innovate faster and demonstrate ROI.
AI must be employed strategically to avoid wasted spend. This requires an understanding of how it interacts with data, systems, and capabilities.
AI depends on data governance to be trustworthy. Salesforce’s second annual CIO study found their number one AI fear is data security and privacy, followed closely by a lack of trusted data. Contrasting this, they found that just 35% of CIOs say they are working more closely with chief data officers as a result of agentic AI, and only 14% of their IT budget is dedicated to data security. Additionally, just 23% of CIOs are completely confident they are investing in AI with built-in data governance.
The world is thinking more about data governance, too; the EU AI Act will become fully applicable from August 2026, while more specific state-wide laws like the Colorado AI Act and the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act are expected in 2026 to target high-risk decision-making systems and Government entities.
EA has an important part to play in data governance. Rigorous Enterprise Architecture enables modeling of where regulatory requirements sit within the organization, identification of gaps, and monitoring of risk.
CIO.com said at the beginning of 2025 that updating IT operating models to mesh with business needs should be a top priority for CIOs. Alan Thurogood, a research leader at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), recommended beginning the new year by revisiting the organization’s entire architecture and standards.
Moving forward to September, Gartner’s CIO Report said that evolving and optimizing the operating model for efficiency and growth continues to be a key concern for 2026. They recommend switching to a service-based model. In this, the IT department moves away from a focus on internal processes to instead be a service provider for business needs.
Enterprise Architecture ensures transparency between an organization’s applications and IT services and the capabilities they affect. This ensures alignment between strategic needs and the tech that is required to realize them.
Cybersecurity has been a constant in the news this year, thanks to a constant stream of high-profile organizations being attacked: UK retailer Marks and Spencer, luxury vehicle company Jaguar, HR software vendor Workday, and global beverage manufacturer Asahi, to name a few. When accessed by malicious actors, they lose not just revenue from interruptions to operations, but also the trust of their customers when it is revealed that their personal data was accessed.
This is nothing new: in its CIO 2025 Outlook: Key Priorities for Tech Leaders, Manpower Group found it was the top priority. Accordingly, Forrester’s Budget Planning Guide 2026: Technology Executives report says 43% of technology decision-makers plan to increase IT security and research spending in excess of inflation. But shadow IT is an ever-present threat; Flexera’s IT Priorities Report 2026 says that more than 70% of IT leaders believe that their business units are purchasing more cloud and SaaS applications than they or their teams are aware of, a rise of 2% from last year.
Architecture provides transparency over what applications are used, where in the business they are, and the capabilities they enable. With a clear view and understanding of the IT landscape, compliance can be tracked, risks identified, and threats analysed.
Addressing each of these CIO priorities requires strong relationships between CIOs, EAs, and their stakeholders. To deliver solutions to these problems, the organization’s technology usage needs to be optimized to provide business value and respond quickly to changing business needs.
Ardoq is the ideal partner to address these priorities. By becoming a single source of truth for your organization, it ensures data transparency, allowing data flows to be tracked and governed between people, applications, and use cases. This means more informed decision-making, stronger governance, and technology usage that aligns with both IT goals and wider business strategy. Book a demo below to see what difference it can make to your organization.