Gartner VP urges firms to rebuild tech sourcing for geopolitical risk
Yanni Karalis, managing vice president at Gartner, told the 2026 Procurement Conference in San Diego that geopolitical strife is forcing companies to rethink technology‑sourcing strategies. He warned that conditional access to U.S. technology, vendor concentration and rising compliance costs are eroding traditional procurement rules.
Karalis said conditional access creates new risk to innovation and competitiveness, pushing firms to prioritize resilience over cost efficiency. He identified three systemic issues — conditional U.S. tech access, excessive vendor lock‑in, and time‑cost inflation — each paired with a solution: building sourcing optionality, shifting to multi‑vendor multi‑region ecosystems, and designing for resilience over efficiency. To enable optionality, firms need data portability and prequalified alternatives; multi‑vendor strategies require standardized interfaces and workload segmentation; resilience demands a mindset shift beyond chasing a 5% discount. He also warned that data sovereignty is under threat, with trust fundamentally broken and no clear protector for where data must be stored or processed.
“Tech access is becoming conditional,” Yanni Karalis, managing vice president at Gartner said.
“Assuming that global providers bypass political borders is outdated,” Yanni Karalis, managing vice president at Gartner said.
Previously, working with the smallest possible number of suppliers was considered a best practice for financial and governance reasons. Now, changing government trade policies are causing those traditional sourcing rules to break down.
What we know
Yanni Karalis is managing vice president at Gartner
The 2026 Procurement Conference was held in San Diego earlier this month
Karalis identified three systemic issues currently affecting data security and supply chain tech acquisition
Data sovereignty is under threat
Karalis said the shift to resilience over efficiency comes from bigger conversations than getting a 5% discount