Author: Charlotte Dunlap

Charlotte is a Senior Analyst for Application Platforms at Current Analysis. She covers the technologies that provide the infrastructure necessary to build and run enterprise applications and services. She analyzes the software, services and professional services necessary to integrate disparate systems, create cross-business and cross-technology communications, deliver rich, collaborative applications, and build software that is transparent, optimized and reusable.

Lack of AI Agent Oversight Brings Dueling Approaches

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in IT Leader
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Fast-growing use of agentic AIs within organizations has triggered agentic orchestration/governance prioritization among platform providers

• Controversy remains over two distinct approaches to orchestration: control plane construct or orchestration frameworks

Enterprises deploying AI in 2026 are turning their attention from deployment of agentic AIs to the management of growing numbers of agents being released across organizations. Companies are struggling with how to manage the hundreds or thousands of individual agents built within their organizations–agents built by different teams, running on different platforms, with inconsistent security and governance. This is problematic, considering most organizations lack visibility into agent inventory, purpose, and authorization.

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AI Wars Intensify via Major LLM/Agentic Releases

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Big Data
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Cycles between advanced AI model rollouts are significantly shortened among leaders in this space

• Developers are gaining access to agentic-injected integrated development environments (IDEs); while knowledge workers gain access to agentic AI assistants.

The second quarter marks a momentous period in the industry’s ongoing AI efforts. Platform leaders shipped next-generation agentic runtimes including autonomous and other advanced capabilities, all while managing a more compressed cycle of new AI models, which are rolling out in a matter of weeks versus months.

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FinOps Takes on the AI Explosion, Including Token Management

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable
A smiling woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, wearing a white blouse, against a softly blurred background.
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

  • FinOps X conference takes place in San Diego, California (US) June 9-11, 2026.
  • Key themes will include how enterprises will operationalize AI-driven FinOps across platform engineering.

FinOps X conference in San Diego will take place in one week, and not surprisingly AI will dominate keynotes and discussions among FinOps practitioners. These experts will share insights into best practices for operationalizing AI-driven FinOps across platform engineering, including CICD, Kubernetes, and other cloud-native architectures.

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April Showers Heartache on Developers Using Popular Coding Tools

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Big Data
Close-up portrait of a woman with blonde hair and a warm smile.
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Anthropic backpedals price hikes following outcry

• GitHub makes controversial move from flat-rate to usage-based billing models

April has a been a controversial and even catastrophic month for developers of popular copilots and agents.

Some enterprise and independent developers felt gut-punched following unorthodox activities including significant price increases and major subscription restructuring. Anthropic removed Claude Code from its standard Pro Plan priced at $20, offering it instead as part of its Max plan for $100 per month. Confronted with serious backlash, it was forced to reverse its decision.

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MWC26: Telcos Vie for Limelight in Digitization Space

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Big Data
Close-up portrait of a smiling woman with blonde hair and earrings, set against a blurred background.
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Telcos are increasingly repositioning themselves as cloud and AI providers, targeting the digital transformation opportunity from an infrastructure-led perspective.

• Strategic partnerships between telcos and hyperscalers are likely to drive the most successful business transformations.

Telcos have an important agenda during this week’s high-profile technology conference, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. They are going after the digital transformation space from an infrastructure perspective, addressing enterprises’ desperate need for improved operational provisioning, an issue largely ignored by cloud platform providers.

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Cloud Wars Shift to AI Wars: Archaic Code is a New Target of Opportunity

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Big Data
Close-up portrait of a smiling woman with blonde hair and earrings, set against a blurred background.
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Google will release a broadly backed commerce protocol this quarter that threatens Amazon’s behemoth e-commerce marketplace

• Anthropic Claude Code includes new features that help developers bypass the complexities of COBOL, threatening IBM’s massive mainframe business.

The cloud wars have quickly morphed into the AI wars among leading platform services rivals, which have invested heavily in LLMs in recent years. By leveraging agentic AI, platform services providers are elevating their competitive threat in their quest for dominance in both e-commerce markets and among enterprise developer communities.

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Observability Predictions 2026: Makers of Dev Tools to Disrupt Space

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Innovative dev tools extend capabilities to include observability.

• Operations teams will see a boost in GenAI-injected operational workflows.

According to GlobalData’s latest report on 2026 predictions, observability providers will make a big push into DevOps. The industry’s platform providers will focus greater investment in the coming year in providing operations teams with AI-generated capabilities that streamline the critical application deployment portion of the application lifecycle, known for being the most complex piece of app modernization.

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2026 Enterprise Predictions: Expect New Heights for Vibe Coding and Retaining Tribal Knowledge

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in IT Leader
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Agentic AI will help document dwindling tribal knowledge

• Vibe coding will become mainstream

The industry should expect a lot more formalization of vibe coding capabilities leading to greater opportunities among non-coders across enterprise business units. Interesting applications resulting from agentic AI will help enterprises solve age-old problems such as the loss of institutional knowledge among an aging workforce. Plus, traditional automation platforms will get a major boost from agentic AI advancements. These are among just some of the 2026 GlobalData Predictions within the category of agile automation.

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Fall Conferences Reveal Critical Agentic AI OSS Innovations

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable
C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Cisco AGNTCY will be key for infrastructure multi-agentic AI frameworks leveraging security, identity, and interoperability.

• Solo.io highlighted progress in three high-profile agentic AI projects: Kagent, Agent Gateway, and Agent Registry.

The industry’s fall technology conferences have drawn to a close. Dominant themes included agentic AI integration, ecosystem partnerships to fill AI gaps, observability consolidations, and emerging open-source software (OSS) alternatives for enterprise developers.

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Oracle AI World 2025: Oracle Shifts Thinking from Technology to Outcomes; Plans Updated APEX Low-Code

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable
C. Dunlap Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Oracle shifts pitch from technology to outcomes, driven by AI-injected tools.

• Oracle APEXLang, slated for 2026, to modernize Oracle’s development practices.

Last week’s Oracle AI World couldn’t have been timelier, attended by customers and partners still buzzing from a corporate earnings report, which triggered the tech giant’s stock to soar based on its mounting investments in AI and cloud infrastructure.

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