2026 marks a turning point for the way we work, innovate and secure our digital future. AI is no longer a sidekick or a bolt-on tool it’s become a core part of the workforce.

BCN’s experts share their predictions for the year ahead  with practical insights on how to optimise AI, manage risk and build resilient foundations for growth.

Contents

1. The Agentic Workforce: People + AI Agents
Mark Rotheram – Chief Technology Officer

2. From Pilots to Production: The AI Workplace
Johan Venables – Cloud Consultant

3. Data Becomes a Living Asset
Fraser Dear – Head of AI and Data Innovation

4. Cloud Costs and Compliance
Chris Henry – Head of Azure Centre of Excellence

5. Cyber Security Goes AI-Native
Darron Millar – Solutions Director

6. Round-Up: The Year AI Grows Up

Mark Rotheram – Chief Technology Officer

Welcome to the age of the agentic workforce

Mark Rotheram, Chief Technology Officer at BCN, believes 2026 will be a defining year for the future of work. Over the next 12 months or so, he says, AI will stop being a mere bolt-on for isolated tasks or a quiet adviser at the margins – it will become an integral part of the workforce. “This isn’t a distant vision,” he says. “It’s happening now – and it’s accelerating.”

Intelligent agents are beginning to replicate, augment and, in some cases, reinvent the roles that have underpinned organisations for decades. For Mark, that’s cause for excitement for businesses of all sizes.

People + agents = the new operating model

For Mark, the agentic workforce – where humans and semi-autonomous AI agents work together – is an opportunity to put people back at the centre of meaningful work. By handing over the responsibility for repetitive, repeatable, rules-based jobs to AI agents, he says, human teams are given the time and headspace “to focus on creativity, complex problem-solving, and building deeper relationships with customers and partners.” In this era, says Mark, the leaders who win will be those who orchestrate this collaboration – with humans and AI working side by side – so that the organisation becomes more adaptive, more resilient and more innovative.

Mark’s view is practical and people-centric: empower your teams, redesign your workflows to support AI autonomy, and start to think of agents as skilled digital colleagues rather than chatbots.

Leading with purpose (and guardrails)

This shift needs more than just new tools – it requires a bold commitment from leaders to do things differently. Mark is clear about what that means for him and BCN. “Rethinking roles and responsibilities. Embedding ethical, transparent and trustworthy AI in everything we do. Investing in upskilling and supporting our people, so everyone can thrive alongside intelligent agents. Building resilient, secure and sustainable digital foundations. And fostering a culture of experimentation, learning and partnership – because innovation is a team sport.”

Johan Venables – Cloud Consultant

From pilots to production: the AI workplace

With workplace AI now a given, Johan predicts copilots will become standard across documents, spreadsheets, collaboration tools and low-code apps. For hybrid teams using collaboration platforms, he expects AI features like automated summaries, knowledge discovery and real-time translation to become standard features.

With this in mind, Johan predicts mid-market organisations that moved early with AI will gain a clear efficiency edge as it shifts from prompt-taking assistant to proactive collaborator – suggesting actions, flagging risks and taking care of cross-app workflows without needing to be directed. His advice to organisations looking to leverage these intelligent tools: redesign workflows so agents can take autonomous action safely, and coach teams to “think of them less as a ‘chatbot’ and more as a digital colleague with specialist skills.”

Foundations first: data, security, trust

Johan stresses how robust data management is the backbone of AI’s value, and that having strong data and AI policies and procedures in place will become a key differentiator. Without clear governance, permissions and retention policies, he says, the risks of AI will outweigh the rewards. He recommends modernising the data lifecycle now and strengthening controls – data loss prevention, insider-risk detection and information protection – to keep pace not with not only tech advancements but evolving UK and EU requirements. “Businesses will need to strike a balance between agility and oversight.”

Fraser Dear – Head of AI and Data Innovation

Data becomes a living asset

Looking at what’s happened over the past 12 months, Fraser says AI has pushed data out of “cold storage” and into daily operations. As AI agent use grows, he says, expect more of a focus – backed by active monitoring – on where data comes from, who can use it, and whether it’s trusted. He says organisations should start to treat governance like product management for data: give it owners, tighten permissions and retention, and make quality visible so agents only act on information that can be defended.

“Agentify” the business – without blowing the budget

Fraser expects agent-style interfaces to seep into everyday processes. On the build side, he says Microsoft’s low-code stack will accelerate delivery, but it will be expensive. On the pro-code side, he predicts the best balance will come from choosing the right large language model for each job (not just the biggest) and reusing proven components before creating new agents. Fraser says that, because agent-generated apps will likely default to best-of-breed services, organisations will benefit from using Microsoft Copilot Studio to “create an ecosystem of agents that are all able to talk to each other and hand off tasks through a unified chat experience” to keep spending in check.

Governance, security and cost

With AI-enabled data now a reality across the Microsoft ecosystem, Fraser identifies three key priorities for organisations to address over the coming year. The first, he says, is governing Dataverse environments; the second is to strengthen security where AI both hardens and weakens posture; and the third is to make AI costs visible and allocatable as more people are given the tools to create agents, apps and autonomous processes.

Chris Henry – Head of Azure Centre of Excellence

Cloud costs: strategy over sprawl

Chris sees many cloud adopters now wrestling with unforeseen cloud waste, costs and spiralling spend. He predicts 2026 will be the year when organisations seek to address this, and says his guidance would be to build a strong cost strategy that includes ongoing consumption monitoring. He says using FinOps tools and tight policies will help with monitoring, as well as preventing spikes and aligning budgets to business value. “It is also important to architect for what you need as a business, not necessarily for gold standard.” Right-sizing resilience and disaster recovery for example. “Not every workload needs multiple layers of global redundancy and near-instantaneous secondary failover.”

Data sovereignty by design

As AI and ML scale, Chris expects 2026 to see the focus shift to data governance, lineage and compliance. With differing rules across jurisdictions, organisations will need to prioritise data sovereignty – choosing regions, controls and features that ensure data is kept where it needs to live, and that those who need to access it are able to. His advice is to treat compliance as an architectural choice, and assume regulations will only get tighter. “I think this will lead more technology providers to create services where they themselves physically cannot access the underlying data.”

Edge + hybrid for performance and control

Chris predicts more organisations will blend edge computing with hybrid cloud, “to maximise the performance of resource-intensive local operations and optimise their costs”.  He points to the way tools like Azure Arc and Azure Local bring a unified Microsoft Azure experience to on-prem and edge, so organisations can process data locally for faster response times, central management, and PAYG capacity. Chris’s key takeaways are to control costs, design for sovereignty, and put compute where it creates the most value.

Darron Millar – Solutions Director

The threat goes AI-native

Wherever there’s tech, there’s a cyber security risk, and Darron’s got his eye on how cyber criminals are starting to use AI and machine learning to their advantage. The most common uses as we head into 2026, he says, will be for automating, personalising and accelerating phishing, ransomware and social-engineering attacks on unsuspecting employees. Deepfakes will also feature more regularly, with fabricated “executives” and “trusted contacts” being used to trick employees into transferring money or sensitive data.

What unites these attacks is, unfortunately, the biggest threat to most SMEs: the “human firewall.” Darron says lack of awareness around cyber security, MFA and password hygiene, as well as the emotional side of ransomware, phishing and other attacks, mean employees are the weakest link for most businesses. “SMEs are increasingly investing in staff training, cyber hygiene and security culture to mitigate these risks,” he says, predicting this focus will continue into 2026.

Regulation tightens, and insurance matures

Compliance demands on organisations are rising – from GDPR to the UK’s incoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill – alongside tougher supply-chain expectations. Amid this picture, Darron says organisations will start treating compliance as proof of resilience rather than an administrative burden. Mapping critical assets and evidencing controls should be considered a minimum – and, importantly, requiring proof of the same from suppliers.

For further assurance, Darron nods to the maturing of cyber insurance, with policies now bundling real-time monitoring and incident response with the more obvious policy provisions. Darron points to the ABI’s updated guidance, and expects SMEs to begin using insurance as part of a wider resilience strategy – quantifying risk, closing security gaps to meet underwriting standards, and rehearsing response so cover speeds up recovery.

Round-up: The year AI grows up

2026 is the year AI stops being an assistant and starts being a partner. Across BCN, our experts see the same pattern: intelligent digital agents moving from the margins into the middle of work; data shifting from “cold storage” to living asset; cloud architectures getting leaner and moving closer to the edge; and a threat landscape that’s gone AI-native.

The key takeaway is that, when done right, people and agents can work together with powerful results. Get the foundations right – governance, security, data management, cost control – and the payoff will be faster delivery, sharper decisions and teams with more time for the work only humans can do.

Final thoughts from Mark Rotheram, CTO

The agentic workforce is not a threat; it’s our next great leap forward. At BCN, we’re ready to help our clients and partners embrace this future – confident that, together, we can shape technology to serve people, business, and society for the better.

About BCN

BCN is a leading IT services provider and AI specialist, delivering cloud, data and cyber security solutions that drive growth and resilience. With deep technical expertise, we create solutions that put people at the heart while enabling intelligent automation. As a leading Microsoft Partner we shape technology that serves businesses and society for the better – delivering innovation with integrity, agility and purpose.