This week brought clearer signals on two fronts that are quietly shaping enterprise technology planning: the progress of the UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill through Parliament and continued adoption of AI‑assisted workloads by European organisations. While neither development is flashy, both point to steady shifts in where infrastructure, storage and security decisions land on IT agendas as 2026 budgets take shape.
Where IT leaders once treated cybersecurity and AI infrastructure as separate priorities, these themes are increasingly converging with foundational platform decisions — from compute stack design to network segmentation and data storage tiering.
UK Cyber Security and Resilience Bill marks a planning inflection point
The UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill recently moved forward in Parliament with a second reading in early January 2026, reinforcing the government’s intent to strengthen cyber defences and resilience obligations for critical infrastructure and services.[1] The proposed law expands reporting requirements and broadens the scope of organisations required to enhance incident detection and response, including data centre operators and managed service providers.
This matters for European and UK enterprises because it signals regulators are no longer content to leave cybersecurity as a checkbox on risk frameworks. Instead, expectations around incident reporting, resilience testing and proactive threat management are being shifted into statutory territory. In customer conversations that intersect with Hammer’s world, that regulatory urgency is pushing network and security planning much earlier in infrastructure discussions.
When security becomes a regulatory requirement rather than a “nice to have”, enterprise buyers look more closely at how infrastructure components — from physical network segmentation to traffic visibility — support compliance. That’s why Hammer’s networking portfolio and broader infrastructure options are increasingly part of early architectural dialogues: they’re not just about connectivity or floor space, they inform how resilience and compliance are built in from the start.
AI workloads and enterprise planning converge
Alongside cybersecurity policy evolution, broader industry reporting indicates that AI adoption inside European enterprises is continuing its steady climb. Recent Eurostat‑linked findings point to around 20 percent of EU enterprises with ten or more employees using AI technologies in business processes, up from prior years and no longer confined to isolated pilots.[2] That shift into operational adoption nudges infrastructure planning — especially around servers and storage performance — closer to the core of IT strategy.
For platforms expected to support both traditional workloads and AI‑assisted analytics or automation, design choices matter sooner rather than later. Requesting server configurations that can flex with unpredictability — without blowing power, cooling or cost envelopes — is becoming common. Tying those conversations back to proven, balanced platform options from Hammer’s servers and AI technologies range helps partners anchor proposals in real, deployable configurations rather than hypothetical “AI‑ready” checkboxes.
At the same time, demand patterns in enterprise storage continue to reflect this dual pressure of performance and cost control. Analysts tracking market trends note that enterprise content growth and AI‑driven access patterns are driving interest in tiered storage approaches, where high‑performance SSD tiers are complemented by capacity‑optimised media.[3] Hammer’s depth in enterprise data storage solutions and enterprise components allows partners to frame storage tiers around actual workload behaviour, which keeps performance where it matters without arbitrary “all flash” mandates.
Infrastructure execution under regulatory and workload pressures
When security obligations tighten and AI adoption becomes operational, the infrastructure stack beneath it all can’t be an afterthought. Network fabrics previously specified for moderate growth may suddenly feel constrained once threat detection traffic and east‑west AI data flows rise. Storage arrays that performed well for seasonal workloads might struggle under latency expectations of mixed analytic patterns.
That’s where a holistic view of infrastructure becomes critical. Hammer’s portfolio — from networking and servers to storage and physical infrastructure components — gives partners the ability to talk about entire stacks rather than isolated pieces. Working with customers to align platform choices to both resilience goals and performance expectations leads to outcomes that feel coherent, not patched together.
As UK and EU organisations crystallise their 2026 technology plans, understanding how regulatory requirements intersect with rising workload demands remains a practical, actionable starting point.
More detail on Hammer’s product families and how they fit together in real enterprise environments is available at www.hammerdistribution.com.