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12/06/2026 12:16 am
TL;DR: Most organisations run more than nine platforms, 74% describe their environment as too complex, and only 19% have fully unified their IT stack, creating a direct governance problem for identity, AI readiness, and security operations, according to JumpCloud’s survey of more than 800 IT leaders. Fragmented control planes are now a strategic risk, not just an efficiency issue.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by JumpCloud: Q3 2025 IT Trends Report on unifying IT, security, and AI readiness
By the numbers:
- No wonder most 74% IT leaders say their environment is too complex.
- While only 19% of organizations have fully unified their IT stack, they are seeing stronger results across the board.
- Nearly every organization is exploring or adopting AI, with 46% ranking AI readiness as their top focus.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should organisations unify identity governance across fragmented IT stacks?
A: Start by mapping every system that can grant, broker, or deny access, then align them to one policy model for identity, device trust, and entitlement review.
Q: Why does IT fragmentation make Zero Trust harder to implement?
A: Zero Trust depends on continuous verification and consistent enforcement.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about AI readiness in fragmented environments?
A: They often treat AI readiness as a tooling or innovation issue, when it is really an identity and access governance issue.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory identity decision points across the stack Document where authentication, device trust, entitlement approval, and session enforcement are happening today.
- Define a single access policy model for users, devices, and service identities Align human access, workload access, and AI-connected access under one governance standard so teams can compare entitlements consistently.
- Use unification as the prerequisite for Zero Trust rollout Before expanding Zero Trust claims, verify that continuous verification can actually be enforced across identity systems, device controls, and application access paths.
What's in the full article
JumpCloud's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The full survey breakdown of how more than 800 IT leaders ranked unification, AI readiness, and cost pressure across their environments.
- The specific commentary from CIOs on why fragmented control planes make leadership and governance harder to deliver.
- The survey framing behind the 19% fully unified stack figure and how that shapes operational priorities.
- The Q3 2025 IT Trends Report context for spending, security, and AI planning.
👉 Read JumpCloud's Q3 2025 IT Trends Report on unifying IT and AI readiness →
IT unification and identity control: what should teams do now?
Explore further
12/06/2026 9:24 am
IT unification is now an identity governance problem, not just an efficiency programme. The survey shows that fragmented environments are common and that complexity is widely felt by IT leaders. That fragmentation matters because identity policy loses consistency when access, device trust, and security enforcement are split across multiple control planes. Practitioners should stop treating stack consolidation as an infrastructure clean-up exercise and start treating it as a governance redesign problem.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 70% of organisations grant AI systems more access than they would give a human employee performing the exact same job, according to The 2026 Infrastructure Identity Survey.
- Only 44% of organisations have implemented any policies to manage their AI agents, despite 92% agreeing that governing AI agents is critical to enterprise security.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How can CIOs tell whether IT unification is improving security or just simplifying operations?
A: Measure whether access decisions, device trust, and audit evidence are becoming more consistent across platforms. If unification only reduces admin effort but does not improve visibility, least privilege, and policy enforcement, it is not yet delivering the governance outcome the business actually needs.
👉 Read our full editorial: IT unification is becoming the control plane for AI and identity
