New Study Finds Apache Iceberg Core to Enterprise Data Platforms

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A new independent survey of 252 senior data leaders finds Apache Iceberg has become a foundational component of enterprise data platforms, now powering business-critical analytics and AI workloads at scale. The research highlights growing operational challenges as Iceberg-managed data environments scale to thousands of tables and petabytes of data.

Why it matters

As Apache Iceberg moves beyond the 'getting started' phase and into the era of operational excellence, organizations are relying on the open-source table format to power their most demanding analytics and AI workloads. However, the study identifies a growing operational gap, with companies struggling to manage optimization, access controls, compliance, and disaster recovery at scale.

The details

The State of Apache Iceberg in the Enterprise (2026) study found that 58% of organizations are using Iceberg for business-critical analytics, 95% are using or planning to use Iceberg for AI or ML workloads, and 93% report that Iceberg adoption unlocked new use cases. However, most companies rely on custom scripts and internal tooling to manage their Iceberg environments, increasing operational risk and inconsistency as data lakes scale.

• The survey was conducted in January 2026 among 252 data and IT leaders across North America and Europe.
• 79% of respondents are moving or plan to move their remaining data to Iceberg in the next 12 months.

What they’re saying

What’s next

As Iceberg-managed data environments continue to scale, organizations will need to focus on developing more robust operational management capabilities to ensure security, performance, and reliability at scale.