News in the Channel - issue #36

PREDICTIONS

vendors and consumption models, while also managing security, governance, reporting and integration requirements. This places increasing importance on technical expertise and clear operational processes, which are not always readily

available in-house. To support this, we provide access to specialist knowledge, structured enablement and resources that help channel partners strengthen their capabilities and align workflows to manage their end customer technology estates. n

Simone Larsson , EMEA head of enterprise, Lenovo ISG In 2026, energy will overtake compute as the primary design constraint for AI infrastructure across EMEA. Europe’s grid systems remain under significant strain, with the International Energy Agency projecting continued electricity demand growth and persistent price volatility through 2026. At the same time, organisations are approaching ambitious sustainability commitments set pre-

clusters, high-density rack support and scalable interconnects. Decisions across the infrastructure stack – hardware, cooling, network architecture and workload placement – will increasingly revolve around power availability, efficiency and compliance. By 2026, organisations across EMEA will shift from traditional automation into the era of agentic AI: intelligent systems capable of taking autonomous actions to personalise experiences, streamline operations and augment employees in every sector. In retail, this means deeper customer engagement and more adaptive service. In manufacturing, agentic systems will optimise production flows, anticipate disruptions and reduce downtime. In financial services, they will support advisors with real-time insights while strengthening fraud detection, and in the public sector, agentic AI will help deliver faster, more citizen-centric services at scale. The ROI from earlier AI investments – from computer vision for loss prevention to predictive maintenance and workflow automation – will become reinvestment capital fuelling this next phase of transformation. As organisations navigate diverse customer needs and complex regulatory environments, agentic AI will become a strategic advantage, enabling them to operate with greater responsiveness, efficiency and empathy. In 2026, agentic AI won’t replace the human element, it will elevate it, enhancing every interaction where people and processes meet. n

Simone Larsson

pandemic, forcing CIOs to treat energy not as an operational cost, but as a strategic limitation. Every watt now matters. This shift will fundamentally redirect infrastructure strategy. Data centre planning will begin with energy availability, efficiency and location, not server density. Power-aware design encompassing low-footprint systems, advanced cooling and intelligent workload placement, will become essential, particularly in secondary markets and edge locations with limited grid capacity. Regions with favourable energy profiles, such as the Nordics with abundant renewables, will continue to attract AI investments, while Southern and Eastern Europe accelerate innovation in colocation and micro-grid development. Across the Middle East and Africa, hybrid and on-site generation models will move from experimental to mainstream as enterprises seek to stabilise and scale AI operations. As compute demand accelerates faster than utilities can expand capacity, energy access becomes the new competitive differentiator. Colocation facilities will shift to the centre of AI deployment thanks to their proximity to renewable

lenovo.com