Enterprise adoption of AI agents is accelerating, but many organizations are struggling to turn pilots into measurable outcomes, according to new research from Nasuni.
Nasuni’s State of Enterprise File Data Annual Report 2026 found that 97% of organizations have deployed or are piloting AI agents, while 57% of AI projects are not meeting their stated objectives.
Unstructured data becomes a core AI blocker
The report, released May 18, found that 94% of enterprises are struggling to manage unstructured data, even though it accounts for a large share of their overall information footprint.
Only 16% of organizations currently rank unstructured data management as a core IT investment, but 60% plan to invest in it over the next 18 months.
“Enterprises are moving fast on AI projects, but most aren’t getting the results they want,” CEO Sam King said in a statement. “What this report makes clear is that AI success depends on how well you manage and prepare your data.”
The report also found that 90% of organizations face barriers to scaling AI. The most common obstacles include:
- data security concerns (43% of respondents),
- integration roadblocks (36%),
- and a lack of trust in data (33%).
Just 43% of AI projects are successfully delivering on their objectives, according to those surveyed.
Scaling AI remains difficult for most organizations
Nasuni said AI initiatives are also exposing underlying weaknesses in data quality, governance, and infrastructure.
Nearly half of organizations said AI efforts have revealed data quality and governance problems, while 79% reported inconsistent file access and performance across locations.
Agentic AI adoption remains particularly uneven.
Although nearly all surveyed organizations are piloting AI agents, only 18% have deployed them at scale, suggesting many enterprises are still working through the operational and infrastructure requirements needed to support broader rollout.
Nasuni’s data points to a picture becoming clearer to many channel partners: the profit opportunities in the race to adopt AI are likely going to be in governance, readiness, and ongoing services offerings rather than the tooling margin itself.
Hardware costs add pressure to IT budgets
The report also flagged rising hardware costs as an additional pressure point. Sixty-two percent of organizations expect hardware costs to increase as components such as DRAM become more expensive, adding strain to IT budgets as companies scale AI and modernize infrastructure.
We’ve covered the concerns about those rising costs before, and infrastructure opportunities are among the most-talked-about topics on conference show floors right now.
For MSPs, resellers, and advisors, client conversations are shifting from products to resilient plans for market uncertainty.
The survey was conducted by Sapio Research in March 2026 among 1,000 purchasing decision-makers in organizations with more than 1,000 employees across the US, UK, France, and the DACH region.