Gartner Identifies Top Data and Analytics Trends

Gartner released its Top Trends in Data and Analytics for 2026 at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Sydney on June 16, forecasting that more than 10% of enterprises will be AI-first by 2030. Carlie Idoine, VP Analyst at Gartner, said: "Organizations are moving rapidly toward an AI-first operating model, where AI is now a core consideration in every business decision, workflow and investment. Without a clear, enterprise-wide commitment, organizations will struggle to consistently realize its full potential across the business." The six trends Gartner recommends organizations factor into their strategies are:

• •Sovereign AI Acceleration
• •Reducing AI Agent Risk with Decision Governance
• •Driving Trust with AI Governance Platforms
• •Agentic Data Streaming
• •Agentic Data Management
• •Handling Complex Use Cases with GraphRAG. (Source: Gartner press release, June 16, 2026.)

Gartner predicts that explicitly modeled business decisions will be five times more trusted and 80% faster than ungoverned decisions by 2029, enabled by decision intelligence platform adoption (per Gartner). Separately, Gartner predicts 40% of enterprises will have leveraged GraphRAG techniques by 2029 to improve factual accuracy and LLM reasoning, and that disruptive pressure for real-time responsiveness will drive agentic data streaming adoption beyond 60% by 2028, up from under 15% in 2025 (per Gartner press release).

The elevation of GraphRAG reflects a known retrieval gap in production AI systems: standard RAG struggles with multi-hop, context-rich queries. Combining knowledge graphs with LLMs improves how systems retrieve and connect information across entity relationships. Agentic data streaming mirrors a broader industry shift from batch-based pipelines toward event-driven architectures, which are necessary for low-latency agent decision loops. Both are engineering priorities, not merely strategic concepts.

Sovereign AI is framed as a geopolitical reality requiring organizations to localize data and analytics control, aligning with regulatory and procurement moves in multiple countries that constrain cross-border compute and model choices. Decision governance applies governance principles to decision intelligence to make automated decisions explainable and auditable - a direct response to expanded AI agent adoption in operational workflows. Gartner also recommends adopting AI governance platforms to operationalize responsible AI principles as regulatory complexity increases globally.

Denodo and similar vendors have republished Gartner highlights in marketing materials; vendor-attributed commentary on product fit is separate from Gartner's analysis and should be read accordingly.