Tools like OpenClaw, Claude Cowork, and Perplexity Computer signal a shift from prompting to delegated execution. As these persistent AI agents hold context, call tools, and keep work moving, enterprises must redesign roles, authority, architecture, context, and experimentation models. This report explains what is changing, why it matters, and how leaders can capture the upside before shadow adoption sets the operating model for them.

Most enterprises are chasing agentic AI; almost none have caught it. Forrester’s report, “The State Of Agentic AI, 2026,” digs into why investment isn’t turning into scale, why orchestration and governance lag ambition, and what separates the companies pulling ahead.

Agentic AI has reached technical viability in 2026, but most enterprises remain stuck between promise and payoff. Long-horizon agents are no longer theoretical, and technology providers are rapidly reshaping platforms, pricing, and services around autonomous, multiagent systems. Yet expanding investment has not translated into scale because companies lack orchestration maturity, executable governance, and disciplined nonhuman identity. This report explains why the chase-catch gap persists and outlines how leaders can close it through orchestration, control, and agent-native design.

OpenClaw is an example of how agent‑native software is evolving faster than enterprise governance models. Its rapid, practitioner‑led adoption highlights a shift from chat‑centric assistants to systems that do work inside existing communication channels, with local control and inspectable capabilities. This execution‑first design exposes gaps in identity, auditability, policy enforcement, and risk management that traditional AI governance frameworks were not built to handle. Treat OpenClaw as a learning vehicle, not a deployment blueprint, and use it to recalibrate how you evaluate agent architectures, execution risk, and operating models.

Our annual top emerging technologies for 2026 include the 10 most important technologies reshaping how people live, work, and buy. Like last year, AI continues to dominate, but this year we identify new applied AI technologies, such as agentic commerce and autonomous transportation, that consumers and others will experience directly, while technologies like agentic software development and physical AI will help innovators build the future that consumers will soon experience. Lastly, technologies like frontier models and AI security and trust will fuel the innovators and builders creating the future. In this report, we explain what these technologies are, when to expect value, and where to look first.

Singapore’s YCH Group, winner of Forrester’s 2025 APAC Technology Strategy Impact Award, has turned a fragmented logistics estate into a platformed supply chain. YCH pairs AI, robotics, and IoT with two in-house platforms: WMS runs warehouse execution and inventory and TMS runs transport planning and shipping events. This high-performance foundation has delivered fulfillment accuracy around 99.9%, 5% to 20% growth in order volumes without infrastructure expansion, and substantial cost savings. This case study explains the governance and practices allowing YCH to scale innovation, protect reliability, and sustain business outcomes.

About a year ago, a few of my Forrester colleagues and I coined a joke term for the dominant pattern vendors were passing off as “agentic.” The term was “agentish,” and it described workflows that were largely comprised of deterministic, flowchart-driven processes with LLM-based components embedded in them. The “agents” in agentish systems had little […]

Recent, public AI agent and bot failures have exposed the hazards of forgoing testing. Here’s what you should do before rolling out your own agents.

This post is a follow-up to my earlier announcement of our coverage of the agent control planes market. Research questionnaires for the landscape report will formally go out in the second week of April 2026. We are in the “dial-up internet” phase of the agentic era. The architecture is emerging faster than the standards needed […]

Microsoft Unified enterprise support (hereafter “Unified”) can be an opaque cost exposure for firms as their adoption of Azure, Microsoft 365, and Copilot grows. Unified’s whole-estate, percentage-of-spending model, Flex Allowance construct, and limited scope flexibility make disciplined negotiation essential. This report provides clear answers to 10 critical questions to help Microsoft enterprise customers structure, price, and govern Unified on your terms.