Artificial Intelligence has spent the last few years dazzling organisations with increasingly capable models. From generating content and writing code to analysing customer behaviour and automating business processes, AI has become synonymous with innovation. Yet, on this year’s AI Appreciation Day, industry leaders argue that the real breakthrough is no longer the intelligence itself. It is the trust, governance and accountability that now surround it.
Across enterprise technology, the conversation is shifting from what AI can do to how organisations can safely allow it to act. The excitement around large language models is giving way to a more pragmatic discussion about governance, resilience and business outcomes.
For Deepak Pandey, VP, Technology at Backbase, the biggest advance in 2026 was not the model itself but the operational framework that enables AI to function safely inside regulated industries.
“Most of the appreciation in 2025 went to the models. The thing that actually earned its place in 2026 sits underneath them,” he said.
Pandey describes enterprise AI as three interconnected layers: the intelligence, the contextual data and what he called the AI harness. This governance layer gives AI agents clearly defined authority, tracks every action they take and creates complete accountability.
Governance is becoming equally important across enterprises embracing AI at scale.
Dhary Abuhimed, AVP – Solution Consulting MEA at ServiceNow, believes unified AI governance platforms are becoming one of the defining enterprise technology milestones of 2026.
“These solutions enable organisations to scale innovation responsibly, ensuring compliance, risk mitigation and measurable value realisation,” he said.
He points to regional initiatives such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, where data sovereignty and responsible AI are becoming strategic priorities.
“When aligned with regional mandates, these platforms transform AI from experimental pilots to strategically governed capabilities, unlocking sustainable competitive advantage while safeguarding trust and accountability across the MEA region.”
Cybersecurity leaders are witnessing a similar evolution. AI is rapidly becoming both the defender and the attacker.
Alexandre Depret-Bixio, SVP of International at Anomali, said AI Appreciation Day should also recognise the quality of intelligence that powers modern security operations.
“The conversation has moved beyond AI adoption to AI effectiveness,” he said.
“In today’s AI-versus-AI threat landscape, success depends not on deploying more AI, but on deploying AI fuelled by high-fidelity, context-rich data that can distinguish genuine threats from overwhelming volumes of noise.”
He argues that organisations investing in trusted data, governance and explainable AI will ultimately build stronger cyber resilience than those simply deploying additional AI tools.
Michael Adjei, Director of Systems Engineering at Illumio, shared a similar perspective. While AI is dramatically strengthening cyber defence capabilities, it is simultaneously expanding the attack surface available to adversaries.
“Power, however, is nothing without control,” he said.
Rather than relying solely on prevention, organisations must prepare for attacks that inevitably bypass traditional security measures.
“AI Appreciation Day is a moment to get excited about where AI is headed, but it should also prompt a broader conversation about how organisations adapt their security strategies to keep up.”
For many organisations, becoming AI-ready now means strengthening core security controls, segmentation and resilience before deploying increasingly autonomous AI systems. Trust also sits at the heart of enterprise data strategies.
Shiva Pillay, SVP and GM, Worldwide Data and AI Trust Solutions at Veeam Software, believes AI is only as trustworthy as the data underpinning every decision. “It’s no longer just about having smarter tools. It’s about uncompromising trust in the data fuelling those tools, and in the platforms that protect every decision AI makes.”
He points to research showing that AI adoption is accelerating faster than security and governance programmes can mature, while relatively few organisations can rapidly recover their data following an attack.
“If organisations can’t trust the integrity, security and recoverability of their data, then every AI insight and business decision is built on quicksand.”
Salman Kazmi, Area Vice President – Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) at BMC Helix, said the evolution of AI over the past year has been defined less by automation and more by autonomy, with agentic AI fundamentally changing how organisations deploy intelligent systems.
“An advancement in AI in 2026 has been the transition of AI from a productivity booster to an independent partner through agentic AI. It has moved beyond mundane automation into intelligent orchestration, allowing AI to reason, take context-based decisions, and resolve problems proactively while humans stay in control of the process. But the use of AI is an organisational transformation, not a technology exercise alone. Those who do it right first identify the business problems to be solved and then support them by robust governance and human involvement, as responsible AI cannot work without transparency and accountability.”
Bernard Montel, EMEA Field CTO at Tenable, said AI Appreciation Day should also serve as a reminder that organisations must balance the speed of AI adoption with robust security and governance.
“AI Appreciation Day shouldn’t just be a celebration of productivity, it needs to be a reality check for how we manage risk.
“The defining feature of this era is the sheer velocity of AI adoption. It has created a corporate culture driven by instant gratification, where timelines that used to take days are collapsed into seconds. This is unlocking undeniable innovation, but convenience always wins until the consequences catch up.
“Right now, speed has become the only priority. Anything that introduces a moment of friction, whether it’s governance, compliance, or essential security checks, is being viewed as an obstacle rather than a necessity.”
This AI Appreciation Day is less about celebrating another leap in model performance and more about recognising the invisible foundations making enterprise AI viable. Governance, trusted data, resilient infrastructure, explainable decision-making and accountable automation are becoming the true differentiators.
As AI moves deeper into critical business operations, appreciation is no longer reserved for intelligence alone. It now extends to the trust that makes that intelligence safe, resilient and ready for the enterprise.
