{"id":174717,"date":"2026-01-05T14:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T19:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/05\/it-in-2026-tech-leaders-provide-advice-for-the-year-ahead\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T15:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T20:15:09","slug":"it-in-2026-tech-leaders-provide-advice-for-the-year-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/05\/it-in-2026-tech-leaders-provide-advice-for-the-year-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"IT in 2026: Tech leaders provide advice for the year ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

IT in 2026: Tech leaders provide advice for the year ahead<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.tcbusinessnews.com\/it-in-2026-tech-leaders-provide-advice-for-the-year-ahead\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-01-05 14:16:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.tcbusinessnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

By Art Bukowski
\n January 2026<\/p>\n

Business owners have a lot to keep up on, but few things are as rapidly changing as the world of technology.
\nFrom artificial intelligence and cybersecurity to automation and cloud computing, the decisions made now could substantially impact profits and sustainability in the long run.
\nThe TCBN connected with leaders at three local information technology (IT) firms to see what\u2019s on their minds \u2013 and by extension, what should be on their clients\u2019 agendas \u2013 as we enter 2026.
\nCybersecurity
\nIt\u2019s the big one now and most likely well into the future. IT professionals are constantly chatting with clients about security and risk, and it\u2019s a conversation that won\u2019t be going away anytime soon.
\nEven in 2026, and even after abundant news about cyberattacks, it’s still a topic that sometimes requires a little pushing from the IT team.<\/p>\n

Cerny
\n\u201cThere are companies that feel as if the antivirus software that they’ve had in place for the last 10 years is fine and there’s no real need to continue to add more to cost associated there,\u201d said Tim Cerny, area vice president for Thrive (which bought Cerny\u2019s Safety Net last year). \u201cIt’s just a matter of when they’ll get a ransomware attack.\u201d
\nWhile hackers can and do target any system, most small to medium businesses in northern Michigan are unlikely to fall victim to the most sophisticated hackers, who are using the latest technology to focus on much, much bigger fish.
\nWhat this means is the hackers that are in fact targeting smaller businesses are most often going after the low hanging fruit: Employees who can be tricked into giving them access to the system.
\n\u201cThe big hacker group isn\u2019t going after $100,000 \u2026 so the whole idea of how you do cybersecurity [at smaller businesses] is different. It\u2019s so user focused,\u201d said Cody Lewis, IT manager at Anavon Technology Group. \u201cYour users are really the only avenue that these people are going after \u2026 and human error is the number one vulnerability.\u201d
\nSo while security software and other systems are indeed important, the biggest risk is still Debbie in the sales department.
\n\u201cThe biggest area we see cybersecurity problems is email, and the weakest link is the employee. It\u2019s the user,\u201d said Wyant Technologies CEO Tom Wyant. \u201cWe had three clients suffer business email compromises within about six months of each other. Because of tools we had in place we locked them down within like five or six minutes before anything happened, but the user let them in in each instance.\u201d
\nThe basic steps are still, even in 2026, the most important, IT leaders say. Train your employees to never click on even remotely suspicious links. Pick up the phone and verify emails that appear to be legitimate if they\u2019re asking for sensitive information or tasks (or, for starters, always be sure to look at the sender\u2019s address to assure it\u2019s legitimate).
\n\u201cI think we’ve done a pretty good job of training [clients] to not trust anything,\u201d Wyant said.
\nAll of this will get harder as even low-level attackers leverage AI to clean up their awkwardly worded emails \u2013 or worse. Voice replication, deep fakes and more will likely present considerable threats to security in the years to come.\u00a0
\n\u201cThe line between what\u2019s real and fake is going to basically blur beyond recognition,\u201d Cerny said. \u201cSo the way that we’re protecting clients isn’t just going to be cybersecurity. Customers are going to have to have protection in place to help their consumers, their employees or the world recognize what is real and what isn’t.\u201d
\nHuman weak links aside, making sure systems are updated is another huge component of cybersecurity. Cerny says he\u2019s encountered far too many systems that haven\u2019t been properly maintained from an updates\/patch standpoint.
\n\u201cIf there’s a patch available for the type of application that you’re working with or the computer that you’re working on, it was created because there was a vulnerability identified, and that vulnerability is posted on the dark web and out there for anybody to kind of see,\u201d Cerny said. \u201cHold your IT team or your IT provider accountable to demonstrating the discipline that they have around patch management, because those things exist for a reason.\u201d
\nLastly, while not purely cybersecurity, data access continues to be a point of discussion.
\n\u201cMost if not all small businesses, when it comes to data security, there\u2019s none. There is still so much data on the network that probably should be locked down. We\u2019ll talk to them and say, ‘What do people actually need access to?'” Wyant said. \u201cFor the longest time nobody cared, and I think it\u2019s because they didn\u2019t know they needed to.”
\nTech debt
\nSpeaking of systems, hardware can be expensive. And like pretty much everything else, it\u2019s getting even more pricey by the minute. What this means is that many businesses are at risk of falling even further into \u201ctech debt,\u201d IT professionals say.
\nDelayed spending on necessary upgrades to hardware, software and other tech components can eventually put businesses in a very daunting hole. In some businesses, it\u2019s enough of an issue to be the number one risk to business continuity.
\n\u201cTech debt is probably a bigger problem in a lot of places than cybersecurity, because if they want to come into the future \u2026 they\u2019re going to need to spend a ton of money to eliminate that debt and upgrade everything,\u201d Wyant said. \u201cBut there\u2019s a lot of people holding on to old stuff because it still works.\u201d
\nClients can be quite stubborn in this regard, particularly as components become more expensive. But kicking the can down the road is never a good strategy.
\n\u201cWe deal with it on a regular basis where equipment becomes legacy or end of life, and it’s no longer receiving firmware upgrades, patch management, bug fixes, security fixes,\u201d Anavon President Michael Madsen said. \u201cThen you’re trying to talk to a customer and you\u2019re like, \u2018Hey, listen, you got to replace this,\u2019 and they just say \u2018No, it’s not broke.\u2019\u201d
\nMadsen says his team is regularly pushing clients to bite off upgrades in manageable chunks to avoid digging too deep of a hole.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s manageable now, but if you keep pushing it off, it’s just going to pile up,\u201d he said. \u201cThe idea is \u2026 to get yourself on a manageable schedule.\u201d
\nSome of this can be solved by leasing instead of buying hardware, Cerny says. Thrive can get clients set up with everything they need. \u201cHardware as a service\u201d is the latest in a trend that started with cloud-based \u201csoftware as a service\u201d many years ago.
\n\u201cYou could write a big check and pay for a big project to have hardware \u2026 put in place or updated. Or you can just lease that and receive that hardware as a service, as well,\u201d he said. \u201cYou move it from a big capital expenditure to an operational expenditure, one that you can count on consistently to be the same price every month.\u201d
\nArtificial intelligence<\/p>\n

Wyant
\nThese tech professionals have a somewhat measured take on AI. Yes, they say, it\u2019s going to be a major disruptor in business and society, and it\u2019s something that all businesses need to be ready for. But it\u2019s also somewhat of a bubble, especially on the consumer side, as various companies race to capitalize on the zeitgeist with endless AI solutions.
\n\u201cUnless people are willing to invest a ton of money, it\u2019s just a big marketing thing right now,\u201d Wyant said. \u201cMarketing fluff.\u201d
\nThere are specific ecosystems where AI is already having a big impact, Wyant says, like systems that assist with sales management and follow up. But effective AI is just not there yet in a lot of business segments and applications, he says. Wyant finds that as of now, many customers asking about AI are really asking for something else.
\n\u201cOnce we start talking to clients and get into the whole AI thing, a lot of it isn’t AI, it’s automation,\u201d he said. \u201cDo you really want AI, or do you just want this thing to run on its own?\u201d
\nCerny says Thrive is \u201call in\u201d on AI, specifically finding solutions that help clients increase productivity. One example he cites is a tool that lets his private equity clients thoroughly analyze prospective business purchases and generate rock-solid reports and recommendations in a matter of minutes, rather than weeks. Still, most of his clients are asking for much more mundane things.\u00a0
\n\u201cWe’re seeing it for the simple things: Can it summarize my email? Can I have it write things for me? Can I build PowerPoints?\u201d he said. \u201cBut what I’m not finding yet, and I expect we’ll start to see a lot more of that in the new year, is true business use cases: \u2018If we could streamline this process, it would save us this amount of time, this amount of dollars and give us this kind of competitive advantage.\u2019 That isn\u2019t happening a ton within our market today, but it will be coming.\u201d
\nUltimately, most businesses just want to make sure they\u2019re prepared.
\n\u201cWhat they are asking us to help them do is get ready for AI,\u201d Cerny said. \u201cThat readiness piece is probably the biggest trend.”
\nA big part of that, incidentally, is cleaning up what for many companies has become a file structure that is a \u201ccomplete mess,\u201d built up over time with old, useless data in cumbersome or confusing pathways.
\n\u201cIf you’re going to leverage AI, you’ve got to have that clean. You can’t have it mine old bad data. You can’t have it accessing files that people shouldn’t be accessing,\u201d Cerny said. \u201cData and file structure management is a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis and Madsen\u00a0
\nAnavon\u2019s Madsen says AI has already shown tremendous value in certain areas. Anavon is a full-service technology company that (among many other services) installs and maintains security cameras. One example Madsen cites is AI programs that allow hours of security footage to be text searchable, a massive improvement over having to watch all that footage to find what you\u2019re looking for.
\nBut like Cerny, Madsen doesn\u2019t yet see a lot of strong use cases for many of his clients. They\u2019re asking plenty of questions about AI, but Madsen would rather identify the problem that needs to be solved before chasing an endless buffet of solutions that are looking for problems.
\n\u201cI think that we\u2019ve still got to have those conversations about what the ultimate end goal is, and if they really need it,\u201d he said.
\nMadsen is also curious to see how much AI end users will ultimately put up with.
\n\u201cEven though I’m in technology, I still have a hesitation with AI. I still want to preserve that human factor, because I feel like it’s going to get lost as we just try to automate everything,\u201d Madsen said. \u201cIf you try to go too heavily into something, there’s going to be pushback and blowback. I\u2019m hopeful that people are still going to appreciate human voice and human interaction and not have it all AI driven.\u201d
\nTo the cloud
\nLocal IT companies are still badgering their clients to move their systems and data from on-site servers to the cloud. There are tons of benefits, tech leaders say, including (generally) better security and no longer having to worry about updates.
\n\u201cWith most of the applications our clients deal with, once they move to the cloud it’s just a treadmill of new features and updates,\u201d Wyant said. \u201cOne day they walk into the office, they log in and there’s a new feature. Vendors are doing this now where instead of releasing software, you subscribe to their cloud plan, and it’s just constant features and upgrades and stability fixes.\u201d
\nMany companies that couldn\u2019t effectively use the cloud before because of enormous file sizes now have that opportunity, and they\u2019re among the last to migrate over.
\n\u201cThere’s becoming more and more options for customers that have historically had to keep physical infrastructure in place, like architectural companies or manufacturing firms or engineering firms that are using large files,\u201d Cerny said. \u201cThey haven’t historically been able to leverage cloud infrastructure because they’re moving giant files back and forth through their internet. That\u2019s beginning to change.\u201d
\nWith more companies working on the cloud comes a lot more riding on that precious internet connection, Madsen says. Because internet outages can mean major problems for those who no longer house their own systems or data, a lot of companies are investing in fiber to reduce the risk of outages.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re working weekly on building out the fiber networks to our customers so they have that reliability with fiber,\u201d Madsen said. \u201cAnd even outside of that, some businesses are saying, \u2018Hey, listen, I got the fiber, and I understand it’s incredibly reliable, but I also need another redundant internet source.\u2019\u201d
\n\u2018So much more\u2019
\nIT isn\u2019t what it used to be, in large part because of how interwoven technology and the internet have become into our daily (and business) lives. As such, clients are increasingly looking to their IT companies for much more than setting up email systems.
\n\u201cOur role has gone from being the guys who fix the PC to: We do everything,\u201d Wyant said.
\nCerny says IT companies like his are quickly moving from mere supporting actors to key advisors for business growth and success.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re evolving from just providing vanilla technology solutions to being a real partner that’s involved in helping CEOs and business leaders identify ways to streamline their business and drive profitability for their companies,\u201d he said.
\nThe advent of AI is only accelerating this phenomenon as businesses lean on their IT teams or contractors to make sense of it all.
\n\u201cIt’s not just delivering a tool and monitoring a tool and providing support to that tool. It’s [looking at existing tasks and] saying, \u2018Is there a way to streamline this and leverage AI to accomplish this task in a shorter time frame, in a more efficient and productive way?’\u201d he said. \u201cHow do we do that faster?\u201d
\nAnavon\u2019s Madsen agrees.
\n\u201cIT is becoming like a strategic cornerstone of a business. It’s not just, \u2018Hey, my computer’s broke, I need you to fix it.\u2019 IT is doing so much more,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re being looked at for proactive management, automation, risk reduction and also like, \u2018Hey, I’m growing my business. How are you going to help us enable that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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