A New Year of Opportunity (and Why I’m Skipping NRF)

As we step into 2026, there’s a level of energy in the market that I haven’t felt for quite a while. While plenty of people I know are heading to NRF next week, I’ve made a conscious decision to stay closer to Europe. Quite simply, that’s where the most meaningful conversations are happening right now.

The Confidence Shift

Something changed towards the end of November.

We saw it first in the pipeline. Conversations that had been exploratory suddenly gained momentum. Paused initiatives were picked back up. Budgets that had been “under review” quietly became approved. What started as a handful of positive signals turned into a steady flow that carried through December and straight into the new year.

This isn’t optimism for optimism’s sake. Enterprise teams are moving beyond talking about transformation and are actively committing to delivery. Decisions are being made. Timelines are being discussed. Teams are being mobilised.

The Economics of Change

There’s also a very practical reason for this shift.

When interest rates were high, sitting on capital was a defensible strategy. Doing nothing still produced a return. As rates have eased, that equation has flipped. Value now comes from change. From improvement. From removing friction and inefficiency.

The cost of inaction is becoming impossible to ignore. Legacy platforms, slow release cycles, expensive change processes and inflexible operating models all carry a real and growing price tag. In many cases, transformation is no longer a strategic ambition. It’s a financial necessity.

The Great Unbundling

What’s been most interesting is how much the conversation itself has evolved.

For years, large organisations built their digital estates around monolithic platforms. Salesforce. SAP. Oracle. These choices shaped everything. Team structures. Delivery models. Procurement cycles. Even how change was planned and approved.

Now we’re seeing a deliberate move away from that mindset.

Teams are tired of systems that are expensive to change and slow to adapt. They are frustrated by licensing models that grow faster than the value they deliver. They’re realising that the promise of a single platform doing everything rarely holds up in practice.

Instead, enterprises are starting to unbundle.

What This Means for 2026

What we’re seeing isn’t just vendor fatigue, it’s a sign of maturity. Organisations are choosing new architectures because they align better with how businesses actually operate. Best-of-need over best-of-suite. Smaller, focused components that can evolve independently to match requirements. Making sure the technology supports the change rather than resists it.

The most important conversations this year aren’t happening on exhibition floors. They’re happening in leadership teams and architecture forums where people are finally ready to act on decisions they’ve been circling for years.

So while I’ll miss the buzz of NRF, I’m confident the real momentum is in the work starting right now with teams ready to move.