2026 Cloud Predictions for Asia Pacific from Akamai Technologies

- Jay Jenkins, Chief Technology Officer, Cloud Computing Services at Akamai

Cloud: Digital sovereignty redefines cloud strategy in APAC

● Digital sovereignty becomes economic sovereignty: The EU’s 2025 push to reduce hyperscaler dependency has sparked a parallel movement across Asia Pacific. Organizations now view cloud portability not as a cost optimization tactic, but as essential risk mitigation against geopolitical uncertainty and vendor considerations. India is leading this transformation, with Australia close behind through large scale proof-of-concepts. True digital sovereignty requires infrastructure independence—the ability to move workloads across providers, geographies, and architectures without technical or financial penalty. This flexibility, initially pursued for risk reasons, is also essential for next-generation AI applications that demand computational portability.

● AI architectures get smart and distributed: We also anticipate stronger momentum behind distributed AI architectures, as enterprises move inference closer to users and operational systems to improve latency and performance. This will influence how sectors like mobility, public services, and industrial automation scale their next wave of digital initiatives.

● AI security is more than endpoints: Organizations will also need to strengthen AI governance as security and cost complexity rise. Protecting endpoints alone will no longer suffice; leaders must secure the entire AI data supply chain, from training datasets to inference traffic and model outputs. This will accelerate the adoption of “AI firewalls” that inspect prompts and responses in real time, rating at the edge alongside distributed AI workloads rather than only in centralized environments. In parallel, AI governance will mature quickly, with provenance controls.

● FinOps finally shifts left: The rising volatility of AI compute will force a major shift in FinOps practices. Rather than discovering costs after deployment, in 2026, engineering and product teams will embed real-time cost visibility into the financial impact of model design, showing the financial impact of choices like model version, deployment region or inference patterns. Organizations that adopt shift-left FinOps will gain a decisive advantage, deploying AI applications that competitors cannot afford to match because cost efficiency is built into every architectural decision from day one.

Jay Jenkins, Chief Technology Officer, Cloud Computing Services at Akamai, said: “Cloud strategies in Asia are shifting toward autonomy. Leaders want the ability to move workloads easily, enforce strong data controls and run AI where it makes the most sense, whether that’s in the core or at the edge. With the IDC predicting that 80% of APAC CIOs will rely on edge services for AI performance and compliance by 2027, it’s clear that the region is already preparing for a distributed future. In 2026, designing for portability and distributed AI will be essential to building resilient and future-ready digital services.”