If there's one word that defined technology in 2025, it would be "fragility." The year revealed just how dependent businesses have become on systems they don't control and often don't fully understand. It also showed us how quickly the technology landscape can shift when a single tool like generative AI captures the imagination of an entire economy.
For Alberta businesses, 2025 wasn't just about following global trends. It was about adapting to local realities while navigating the same technology pressures affecting companies worldwide. As we head into 2026, it's worth reflecting on what happened, what we learned, and what's coming next.
The Year the Cloud Showed Its Cracks
The most striking story of 2025 wasn't a cyberattack or a data breach. It was a series of routine mistakes at the world's largest technology companies that brought major portions of the internet to a standstill.
In October, Amazon Web Services experienced a prolonged outage caused by a DNS race condition in their Northern Virginia data center. The cascade effect was remarkable: Slack went down, Atlassian products became unavailable, and countless businesses suddenly found themselves unable to communicate or access critical applications.
Within weeks, Microsoft Azure followed with its own outage, affecting services from Microsoft 365 to Xbox to the websites of major retailers. The cause wasn't sophisticated: a configuration change that shouldn't have been pushed to production systems.
Then in November, Cloudflare, the company that handles traffic routing for much of the internet, experienced what its CEO called their worst outage since 2019. ChatGPT, Spotify, and dozens of other popular services became temporarily unavailable. The root cause? A database permissions change that created an oversized configuration file.
The pattern across these incidents is worth noting. None of them were cyberattacks. They were operational errors, the kind of mistakes that can happen at any organization. The difference is that when they happen at companies running critical infrastructure for millions of businesses, the consequences ripple outward in ways that are difficult to predict or contain.
What this means for Alberta businesses
The concentration of technology infrastructure in a handful of massive providers creates single points of failure that affect everyone. A business in Edmonton using cloud-based dispatch software, point-of-sale systems, or communication tools is connected to these global systems whether they realize it or not. When AWS goes down, it doesn't matter that your office is 4,000 kilometers from Virginia.
The takeaway isn't to abandon cloud services. That ship has sailed for most organizations. Instead, the lesson is to understand your dependencies, have contingency plans for when they fail, and ensure someone is thinking about resilience before you need it.
AI Went From Curiosity to Commonplace
A year ago, generative AI tools like ChatGPT were still a novelty for many businesses. By the end of 2025, that changed dramatically. AI adoption roughly doubled over two years, with the majority of organizations now reporting they use AI for at least one business function.
The cost of AI tools dropped significantly, making technology that was previously out of reach for smaller organizations suddenly accessible. More importantly, AI became genuinely useful for everyday business tasks. Document drafting, customer service responses, data analysis, and content creation all became areas where AI could meaningfully assist human workers.
But the rapid adoption created new challenges. "Shadow AI" emerged as a significant concern, referring to AI tools that employees use without formal approval or oversight from their organizations. Workers discovered they could use free AI tools to speed up their work, often without considering the implications for data security or accuracy.
For regulated industries, this created compliance headaches. Healthcare practices found staff using AI to draft patient communications without understanding privacy implications. Transportation companies discovered drivers using AI navigation tools that didn't account for vehicle-specific restrictions.
What this means for Alberta businesses
AI is now a practical tool rather than a futuristic concept. The question isn't whether your organization will use AI, but whether you'll manage that adoption deliberately or let it happen haphazardly. Businesses that establish clear policies around AI use, including which tools are approved and how data should be handled, will be better positioned than those that ignore the trend until something goes wrong.
Cybersecurity: Same Threats, Faster and Smarter
The cybersecurity landscape in 2025 followed a familiar pattern, but at an accelerated pace. Ransomware remained the most disruptive threat for mid-sized businesses, with small and medium organizations continuing to represent the vast majority of victims. The financial impact of security incidents continued to climb.
What changed was the sophistication of attacks. AI tools that make work easier for legitimate users also make work easier for criminals. Phishing emails became harder to detect because AI could generate flawless, personalized messages without the grammatical errors that used to be a warning sign. Voice cloning technology advanced to the point where criminals could impersonate executives in real-time phone calls.
The most notable shift was in how attackers gained access. Rather than exploiting complex technical vulnerabilities, the majority of breaches came through compromised credentials and social engineering. The fundamental security problem remained human, not technological.
Multi-factor authentication, once considered an advanced security measure, became table stakes. Organizations that still relied on passwords alone found themselves increasingly exposed. Yet surprisingly, adoption remained incomplete. Many small businesses still hadn't implemented basic security measures, creating easy targets for attackers who focus on volume rather than sophistication.
What this means for Alberta businesses
The security measures that were optional a few years ago are now essential. Multi-factor authentication, regular security awareness training, and verified backup systems aren't premium upgrades. They're baseline requirements. The good news is that most attacks still succeed through basic failures rather than advanced techniques, which means basic defenses remain effective.
Not Sure Where Your Business Stands?
The events of 2025 caught many businesses off guard. A technology assessment can help you identify dependencies, gaps in your backup systems, and security vulnerabilities before they become problems.
Request a Free AssessmentWhat to Expect in 2026
Based on what we've seen and what industry analysts are forecasting, several trends will shape the technology landscape for Alberta businesses in the coming year.
Business Continuity Moves from Optional to Essential
The 2025 outages served as a wake-up call for many organizations. Business continuity planning, once considered something only large enterprises needed, is becoming a priority for businesses of all sizes. This includes not just data backup, but documented plans for operating when critical systems become unavailable.
Expect to see more businesses asking harder questions about their technology dependencies: What happens if our internet goes down? What happens if our cloud provider experiences an outage? What happens if our primary software vendor has problems? The businesses that can answer these questions confidently will have a competitive advantage over those caught off guard.
AI Integration Gets Practical
The experimentation phase of AI is ending. In 2026, successful AI adoption will be less about trying new tools and more about integrating AI into established workflows in ways that deliver measurable value. Generic AI tools will give way to specialized solutions designed for specific industries and use cases.
For small and medium businesses, this means the AI tools worth adopting will be those embedded in software you're already using rather than standalone applications that require new learning curves. Expect to see AI-enhanced features in accounting software, customer relationship management systems, and industry-specific applications.
Hybrid Strategies Become the Norm
The all-or-nothing debates about cloud vs. on-premises infrastructure are fading. Most organizations are settling into hybrid approaches that use cloud services for some functions while maintaining local control over others. This is particularly relevant in Canada, where data sovereignty requirements and geographic distance from major data centers create practical reasons to maintain some local infrastructure.
For healthcare practices operating under PIPEDA and Alberta's health information laws, hybrid approaches allow cloud benefits while maintaining compliance. For transportation companies with mission-critical dispatch systems, local redundancy provides insurance against internet-dependent failures.
Zero Trust Becomes Mainstream
The traditional security model of protecting a network perimeter is giving way to "zero trust" approaches that verify every access request regardless of where it originates. Rather than assuming that anything inside the corporate network is safe, zero trust assumes that threats could come from anywhere and requires continuous verification.
For businesses with remote workers, multiple locations, or cloud-based applications, zero trust offers a security model that matches how people actually work today. Implementation complexity has been a barrier for smaller organizations, but security providers are making these approaches more accessible.
Preparing for the Year Ahead
The businesses that will thrive in 2026 aren't necessarily those with the biggest technology budgets. They're the ones that approach technology deliberately, understanding what they depend on, where their vulnerabilities lie, and how they'll respond when something goes wrong.
Practical Steps for 2026
Document your dependencies. Create a clear picture of which systems your business relies on, what happens if each one fails, and how long you could operate without them. This exercise often reveals surprising connections and single points of failure.
Test your recovery. Backup systems that haven't been tested are backup systems that might not work. Regular restoration tests confirm that your safety net is actually functional.
Establish AI policies. Even if you're not actively using AI, your employees might be. Creating clear guidelines now prevents problems later and positions you to adopt useful tools deliberately rather than reactively.
Review your security basics. Multi-factor authentication, current software updates, and regular security awareness training remain the highest-impact security investments for most organizations.
Plan for change. Technology will continue to evolve rapidly. Building relationships with trusted advisors who can help you evaluate new developments saves time and prevents costly mistakes.
The technology landscape of 2026 will bring both challenges and opportunities. The outages of 2025 reminded us that the systems we depend on are more fragile than we assumed. The rapid adoption of AI showed us that useful new tools can spread faster than policies can keep up. And the continued evolution of cyber threats demonstrated that security is an ongoing process, not a one-time project.
For Alberta businesses navigating this landscape, the goal isn't to predict every development or adopt every new technology. It's to build resilience, maintain awareness, and make deliberate choices about how technology serves your business rather than the other way around.
Planning Your Technology Strategy for 2026?
Whether you're concerned about business continuity, considering AI adoption, or just want a second opinion on your current setup, we're happy to help. We've been supporting Alberta businesses for over 30 years, and we've seen just about everything.