In this article, Giles Sirett, CEO of ShapeBlue, outlines the top 10 cloud trends he expects will shape the industry in 2026. Read more to stay ahead in the cloud space.

After more than a decade spent building IaaS infrastructures, I’ve learned to recognise when a market is on the edge of real transformation and 2025 has absolutely been one of those moments. It sets the stage for where I believe the industry is heading in 2026.

2025 has been a standout year for ShapeBlue and Apache CloudStack, with unprecedented adoption driven by the global shift away from VMware and the growing demand for open, sovereign, and cost-efficient private cloud platforms. CloudStack’s maturity and reliability, together with ShapeBlue’s leadership in enterprise delivery, support, and innovation, have made our ecosystem one of the most trusted alternatives available today.

But what have we learnt this year at ShapeBlue, and what do we see emerging for next year?  Here’s my top 10:

 

1. Accelerated AI-driven Infrastructure Demand (but not all NVIDIA)

AI-driven infrastructure demand is accelerating and diversifying. Across a wide range of customers, we’re seeing rapid expansion of GPU-backed private cloud, but with a noticeable shift away from NVIDIA-only estates. Organisations increasingly want AI-capable infrastructure built on AMD, Intel, and emerging accelerators, driven by price considerations, power constraints, and the need for greater supply-chain resilience.

 

2. ARM Moves Into the Mainstream Under Energy and Cost Pressures

Energy and cost pressures are pushing ARM servers into serious consideration. Customers operating large compute estates — or dealing with datacentre power limitations — are increasingly evaluating ARM as a mainstream option, particularly for predictable, scale-out workloads.

 

3. VMware Licensing Turmoil Becomes the Biggest Catalyst for Cloud Strategy Shifts

VMware licensing disruption remains the largest trigger for cloud strategy change, particularly in the enterprise.  For many customers, the Broadcom/VMware shift is still forcing a strategic review of their private cloud architectures. As a result, we’re seeing strong momentum in KVM/CloudStack evaluations and more structured migration planning across the board. For a growing number of organisations, “cloud first” is quickly becoming “open source first.”

 

4. Regulatory and Sovereignty Considerations Are Driving Projects from Day One

Sovereignty, compliance, and regulation are now front-loaded into every major project. NIS2, DORA, the EU Data Act, and UK regulatory frameworks are shaping procurement decisions. Customers increasingly want to understand portability, auditability, logging, and operational controls before even discussing feature sets.

 

5. Reversible, Low-Lock-In Multicloud Strategies on the Rise

Rather than adopting “multicloud for resilience,” customers are increasingly planning platforms that allow easy exit, stronger negotiation leverage, and reduced dependency on any single provider. Lower egress and switching costs are driving this shift in mindset.

 

6. Small, Autonomous Edge Clouds See Growing Demand

Industrial, retail, and telco customers are actively exploring micro-cloud footprints that can operate independently, survive intermittent connectivity, and deploy compute closer to devices and sensors.

Watch more for CloudStack Edge Zones capabilities.

 

7. Confidential Computing and Zero-Trust Models Enter Mainstream RFPs

We’re seeing more organisations — particularly in finance, pharma, and the public sector — requiring workload isolation assurances, encryption everywhere, and support for hardware-backed trusted execution environments.

 

8. Sustainability Reporting Becomes Mandatory

Sustainability reporting is no longer optional. Customers face mandatory reporting on power, cooling, and carbon metrics, and they want infrastructure platforms that expose meaningful data, not just utilisation counters.

 

9. Network Design Trends Favour Simpler, Scalable Fabrics

Many customers are consolidating towards Ethernet leaf-spine, EVPN/VXLAN, and intent-based tooling. They prefer architectures that minimise operational overhead while supporting modern multi-cloud networking patterns.

 

10. Power and Cooling Constraints Are Now Core Design Drivers

In customer scoping sessions, power availability, high-density cooling, and plans for future GPU expansion are shaping capacity planning far more than rack space or raw compute density.

 

In summary, 2026 will be about flexibility, efficiency, and control. The next generation of cloud is open, resilient, and built for real-world constraints and organisations that embrace these trends will be best positioned to lead. ShapeBlue and Apache CloudStack are positioned to help organisations navigate the new dynamics, delivering open, reliable, and enterprise-ready infrastructure that meets these emerging demands.

 

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References:

Watch ShapeBlue’s webinar: Building an Open GPU Cloud with Apache CloudStack

Read more: ShapeBlue and Ampere Reference Architecture for IaaS Cloud on ARM64 Architecture

Download: VMware to CloudStack Migration Guide