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Vertex Agility

May 13, 2026

The Data-First Reversal: Why 2026 Is the Year Cloud-First Strategies Hit the Wall

A techUK report has confirmed what CIOs have felt in their cost reviews for two years: cloud-first strategies are hitting sovereignty and cost walls. This article examines the egress tax problem, the implications of the UK Data Use and Access Act 2025, and what a genuine data-first architecture – one where compute moves to data, not the other way around – actually requires organisations to do differently.

Apr 29, 2026

The Stack You Built for Your Analysts Won’t Work for Your Agents

While nearly two-thirds of enterprises have experimented with AI agents, fewer than 10% have successfully scaled them, with 80% citing data limitations as the core obstacle. This article explores why the modern pipeline-centric data stack, designed for human analysts, struggles with autonomous AI systems, and examines the critical shift toward semantic metadata, upstream quality enforcement, and machine-readable context.

Apr 24, 2026

Your Data Team Is Shipping Faster Than It Can Be Trusted. That’s a Problem.

dbt Labs’ 2026 State of Analytics Engineering Report found trust in data has surged to 83% as the top organisational priority — the steepest single-year rise ever recorded — driven by 71% of data professionals concerned about incorrect AI outputs reaching stakeholders. With only 7% of enterprises saying their data is completely AI-ready and Gartner finding organisations that see returns invest four times more in data foundations, this article examines the acceleration-to-governance gap and what agent-ready data infrastructure actually requires.