2026 Technology Outlook: Kevin Waterland

Waterland’s 2026 Projection:  I’m going to stick to AI because it’s the one I see the most potential for change. You’re going to see a large number of people that saw it as magic pull back and stop pursuing these AI projects that aren’t feasible. By the end of next year, you’re going to start seeing the same companies being more pragmatic about where to deploy it, and then we’re going to see significant changes in business when that happens.

What are obstacles the information technology industry has been facing?
The big item at the beginning of this year was tariffs. Normally, in our industry, quotes are good for 30 days, and we will let them run for 90 days typically without having to change the price. This year, we had to add terms like “This quote is good for 24 hours” because we did not know if the price was going to increase within the next 24 hours. Those are difficult things to overcome, but it seemed to be reflected upon the entire industry.

What does this look like going into 2026?
Now, we’re seeing some reactions from our vendors that are slower than others. We had one vendor who increased across the board by 7%, and their logic was “We know there’s something coming, and we don’t know what, but we’re going to increase now.” Then some vendors waited, and now they’re increasing.

There has been some commentary about the possibility of the artificial intelligence bubble bursting. What impact does this have on investments in the industry?
I don’t think an AI bubble burst would impact any kind of infrastructure sales, as long as the economy holds strong. However, we are very heavy in the AI space, and there are definitely segments that are fluff; a lot of these generative AI tasks people have farmed out aren’t very successful. We’ve seen a lot of success for our customers (in) the real-world workflows and automation tools, so using old-fashioned programming with new machine learning models. I don’t think those are going anywhere anytime soon, even if the bubble bursts.

What are some innovation trends on the horizon, and what do you think will have the most impact on your clients and area businesses?
The large language model (generative) AI stuff is not going to go anywhere. There are some features within these AI projects that are so powerful they’re going to be involved in every aspect of our lives. Professionally, any job that can be done without a significant amount of creativity can be automated at this point. That is the reality of the situation. We’re going to see Microsoft and some of these big players get heavier into the game when it comes to workflows and automation, and small businesses are going to start getting access to some of these tools that right now we only have access to. Everyone knows they need it, but they don’t know where it fits yet. That’s going to get connected, and people are going to have to use it as the future of the business. It’s going to become necessary to stay competitive.

What is the quality of the local tech talent and what efforts, if any, are impacting that?
I’ve seen a lot of talented software developers who have cursory knowledge of AI. There are not many people in this town who have expertise in the area, and you’re going to see that that’s going to be a constraint for us. We are going to need to start training people in that pretty heavily. From a general IT perspective, Springfield has talented people and extremely talented developers. We also have a pretty big problem in Springfield of a lot of these young, talented people move out of Springfield, and we need them to stay here. But there’s a lot of talented people, and I haven’t had a problem finding talented people.