Enterprise Wallets in 2026: What's the new Bubble Tea or Bubble this time?

Shopping as usual? The staple IT groceries? Shiny AI wrappers in the check-out aisle- taking a big bite of the Budgets? What are the next year's Enterprise IT carts looking like?

- By Pratima H

Austrian Architect Victor Gruen may have repented his mistake after many years but when he designed shopping mall layouts, sensory cues, no windows, great lightning, maze-like spaces and comfortable interiors with the idea of making shoppers forget the world outside them- he did hit the right aisle.

Shopping spaces can be designed into a cocoon. Thanks to the Gruen Effect. But in the IT shopping castles, one cannot afford to be totally forgetful, deaf and unconscious to what's actually happening outside in reality. It is ok to walk in for a packet of bread and come out with a new variety of butter along with it. But to forget bread altogether or to add huge milkshake boxes when you are lactose-intolerant- that's a stretch. Something that is a dangerous, but easy, mistake to make when there is so much hype, noise, glitter, pressure and disillusionment all around your cart. Is that what enterprises are mindful of in 2026? Would they spend just to keep the lights on (the bread) or try some modernisation (the new butter flavour) or be bold enough to try something really disruptive and new (that Matcha shelf)? And more importantly, are they going to sip more of the Boba (AI) that the world is intoxicated with? Let's follow the cart.

REPEAT OR RETURN OR REINCARNATE?

The 2026 IT budgets could go anywhere across run, change, and innovate. Whether CIOs would be keeping the lights on, or modernising core systems, or investing in new disruptive capabilities - is something that depends on the vertical, the enterprise and the leadership's courage-meter too.