AI Agents in 2026: The Data Problem No One Mentions

Author(s): Ahmed M. Abdelfattah Originally published on Towards AI. Why vendors promise 3–5 employee productivity but Forrester finds 0% improvement and what your data infrastructure needs before deployment works Google Cloud claims AI agents deliver productivity equivalent to hiring 3–5 employees. Forrester’s analysis shows 0% actual improvement. Vendor demos run on sanitized test data. Your production systems have 10+ years of fragmented data scattered across tools that don’t talk to each other.The article explores the disparity between vendors’ claims of AI agents increasing productivity and the reality revealed in Forrester’s analysis, highlighting that 65% of companies lack the necessary data infrastructure for successful AI agent deployment. It discusses the challenges faced by organizations attempting to implement these technologies without adequate preparation and emphasizes the importance of building structured data access layers before deploying AI solutions to avoid the pitfalls of relying solely on vendor promises. Read the full blog for free on Medium. Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming a sponsor. Published via Towards AI