2026 Trends in Applied Infrastructure & DevOps
In 2026, AI will mature into agentic operations and human-supervised development, driven by hybrid infrastructure, custom silicon and open governance for industrial-grade enterprise reliability.
Biography
John Abbott is a principal research analyst in the Applied Infrastructure & DevOps channel of 451 Research, a technology research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence. He covers semiconductor, systems and software infrastructure. This includes new cloud and datacenter system architectures (scale-up and scale-out), accelerated computing and AI infrastructure, semiconductor ecosystem and supply chain issues, and legacy-to-modernization platform evolution. John arrived at S&P Global Market Intelligence through its 2019 acquisition of 451 Research. He was a cofounder of The 451 Group in 2000, running analyst operations from the San Francisco office until 2007. He has been the principal author of many special reports on areas such as storage virtualization, blade servers, software- defined infrastructure and virtual desktop infrastructure. John began covering the technology industry in 1984, building on work as a user of mainframes, early PCs and Unix machines, and then becoming a technical author. As a freelancer in the 1980s, he contributed to BBC World Service, Computing, Computer Weekly, the Financial Times and the Times. He worked on the pioneering daily IT news service Computergram International and became its editor in 1997. John holds music and English degrees from Keele University and a master’s degree in modern English literature from the University of London.
Recent Research from John Abbott
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AI accelerator specialist Cerebras raises $1.1B as it pivots toward cloud inference services
The company has announced a $1.1 billion series G funding round that values the business at up to $8.1 billion. The capital infusion comes amid a flurry of massive investments, forward-looking contract commitments and acquisitions in the AI infrastructure sector.
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Meta Platforms hones silicon design expertise with acquisition of RISC-V specialist Rivos
The two companies had already been working on the design of Meta's internal MTIA training and inference accelerator. Four-year-old Rivos reportedly had been seeking its next round of funding. Its founders have held key silicon design roles at Apple, Google, Intel and Sun Microsystems.
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Fujitsu's strategic shift emphasizes AI, modernization and global services
A move from hardware to a services-led digital enterprise changes Fujitsu's role in the global tech landscape, driven by AI and quantum with a commitment to sustainability. Yet the challenge remains to continuously innovate and integrate emerging trends to maintain a competitive advantage.
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VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 has a coming-out party; Tanzu adds data intelligence
Broadcom's VMware Explore event focused on evangelizing its modern private cloud platform. While its VMware Cloud Foundation and Tanzu divisions are explicitly emulating public cloud's convenient interface and operating model, officials made a case for keeping more IT infrastructure in-house.
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Tech Trend in Focus: GPUaaS market momentum
As generative AI development and deployment gain momentum, demand for graphics processing units continues to accelerate. The GPU-as-a-service market encompasses a fragmented ecosystem of players with intensifying competitive dynamics. So, who is powering the AI boom? This report highlights how GPUaaS strategies are evolving given current market volatility. It includes a market forecast, key players, GPU suppliers and a discussion of how hyperscalers’ own silicon development efforts and datacenter buildouts are contributing to the kinetic GPUaaS landscape.
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