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The strategy for many IT departments over the last decade was simple: move everything to the cloud to save costs. The promise was going faster, with less downtime and less maintenance, but as we settle into 2026, the reality looks a little different for some teams. Parallels has just been released 2026 State of Cloud Computing Survey. The results paint a picture of an industry putting the brakes on “cloud at all costs” as teams begin to realize it’s driving them to vendor lock-in.
About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers managed the enterprise IT network from 2009 to 2021. With experience implementing and managing firewalls, switches, mobile device management systems, enterprise-class Wi-Fi, 1,000s of Macs and 1,000s of iPads, Bradley will highlight how Apple’s IT managers support them, build networks, and deploy networks to Apple’s users. Ways for IT management and Apple’s IT departments to improve their products.
Fear of closing vendors
The most striking figure in the report is that 94% of organizations are concerned about vendor lock-in. This stat confirms much of what I’ve heard from IT teams. SaaS worked great, but constant license increases across all your tools drove many of your costs to the point where teams started questioning their ROI. I know I’m in the same bucket when I start getting license updates for the tools I manage at work. What was a three-figure purchase initially fell into four figures.
Nearly half of respondents said they were “very concerned,” citing uncertain product roadmaps and fears about future support as key drivers. This marks the end of the era of blindly trusting a single platform vendor. CIOs now prefer architectures that give them an exit strategy if pricing or features are bypassed. The age of artificial intelligence certainly doesn’t help here.
AI: Moving from hype to help
In 2025, everyone was trying to figure out their “AI Strategy”. In 2026, the dust has settled and a survey shows that organizations are no longer interested in AI. They want to reduce the noise work. Here’s what the survey respondents said:
- 47% prefer artificial intelligence for problem detection
- 41% want automated software patches
- 39% want to reduce administrative costs
Most importantly, only 29% of respondents are willing to pay extra for these features. This is a clear signal to sellers: do not close the chatbot and do not receive a reward. Build automation that saves the team time, or they don’t buy it. There are a number of places where I’ve come across AI in my tools that helps me open fewer support tickets, but it’s really saving my vendors, not my costs. What’s happening here in the next 24 months? I am very interested to see.
VDI fatigue is real
For Mac admins, VDI may be a necessary evil for delivering Windows applications to macOS users, but the operational costs become a burden. The survey found that 85% of organizations spend between 1 and 10 hours per week managing their VDI environment. This “hidden value” of employees’ time drives change. Two-thirds of organizations are actively looking for a new VDI or DaaS solution, and more than half plan to make the switch in the next six months.
Summary: hybrid is the new standard
Perhaps the biggest turnaround is the shift away from cloud-only strategies. Almost half of respondents (49%) are actively considering or planning to return to local or hybrid models. Drivers are exactly what you’d expect: cost flexibility and data sovereignty.
When you combine security breaches (almost half of those surveyed experienced them in the past year) with the rising cost of cloud computing, the pendulum swings toward a balanced approach. IT teams aren’t giving up on the cloud, but they’re certainly getting pickier about who lives there. Hybrid is definitely the future, and it provides flexibility in the long to mid-term as SaaS tools look to get more expensive to install AI features.
Download entire survey to learn more.
Apple @ Work is brought to you exclusively by Mosylethe only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates all the solutions you need to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage and protect Apple devices in the workplace into a single professional-grade platform. More than 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to get millions of Apple devices up and running effortlessly and affordably. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL PERIOD Today and find out why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.
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