This new report from OutSystems looks at development, AI, systems, agentic progress and more;
OutSystems, a leading AI development platform, has released its global 2026 State of AI Development report, revealing that enterprises have moved decisively from AI experimentation to execution. Nearly every organisation surveyed, 96%, is already using AI agents in some capacity, and 97% are exploring system-wide agentic AI strategies. In the UK, 91% of UK enterprises are deploying successful AI projects into production, with 41% reporting that over half of their AI projects are successful. The findings signal a clear shift from pilots to production as businesses embed AI into mission-critical operations and drive increased impact with AI.
However, as adoption accelerates, governance is struggling to keep pace. According to the report, 94% of organisations report concern that AI sprawl is increasing complexity, technical debt, and security risk. Still, only a small fraction of enterprises have established a centralised approach to agentic AI governance, meaning most are using agents across fragmented environments
In the UK, fragmentation is what tends to hold enterprises back from AI success. The top reasons why application development projects haven’t been started is that they are hard to integrate with existing systems (43%), the impact of legacy systems or fragmented data sources (42%) and governance or compliance concerns (38%). A lack of internal skills is another common reason, reported by 31% of UK organisations, the highest of any country surveyed apart from Japan. These findings support why UK respondents believe having a centralised place to build and deploy agents will be “very important” in the future.
“Our approach to working with OutSystems for an agentic solution was to start with a small, well-defined project that we felt like we could get into production, and that would actually have an impact on the business,” said Scott Finkle, VP of Technology, McConkey Auction Group. “Our main goal of the project was to build some muscle for building AI projects moving forward. OutSystems and Agent Workbench will pay great dividends to us as we iterate on our AI implementation.
Agentic AI represents a significant evolution from earlier applications of AI, capable of autonomously executing workflows, making decisions, and adapting in real time. Gartner predicts that 40% of enterprise applications will include task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, highlighting the speed at which autonomous systems are becoming embedded in enterprise software. According to the OutSystems report, which surveyed 1,900 global IT leaders, 49% describe their agentic AI capabilities as advanced or expert.
Adoption maturity varies by region though, with most UK enterprises rating their AI capabilities and maturity only as “intermediate”. Similarly, Australia, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands and the US report intermediate progress, while France remains earlier in its journey. Financial services and technology organisations report the highest levels of production deployment.
The impact of agentic AI is most apparent within IT and software development, where time-to-value is easily measurable. Thirty-one percent of global respondents say AI is already integral to their development practices, and another 42% have embedded AI into specific phases of the software development lifecycle. As agents prove value in development environments, 52% of organisations globally now rely on a human-in-the-loop model, allowing systems to operate with reduced direct oversight while maintaining supervisory control. 65% of UK respondents now report generative AI-assisted development as their top app development process, followed by SaaS apps being customised internally at 60% and outsourced or vendor-built solutions at 58%.
“The transition from AI experimentation to measurable business outcomes is no longer a future state—it is our current reality. The findings in the State of AI Development Report reveal a fundamental shift where building software and building AI systems have become one and the same,” said Woodson Martin, CEO at OutSystems. “As organisations move toward a ‘system of agents’ model, the challenge is no longer just about adoption, but about creating a stable architectural foundation that can coordinate these complex intelligent systems to drive real-world productivity.”
Despite momentum, architectural fragmentation remains a challenge. Thirty-eight percent of organisations globally report mixing custom-built and pre-built agents, creating AI stacks that are difficult to standardise and secure. While 12% have implemented a centralised platform to manage sprawl, most enterprises are still experimenting with governance approaches that vary by team and region.
To help enterprises close the control gap, OutSystems recently introduced OutSystems Agentic Systems Engineering, a new open approach to AI development designed to help organiszations build, manage, and evolve governed agentic systems for the enterprise.
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