The EM360Tech Quarterly Impact Index is now live, and the Q1 2026 nominees have been announced.

Built around one simple idea, the Index is designed to recognise enterprise thought leadership that does more than attract attention. We don’t measure content by views. We measure it by impact.

That distinction matters. Enterprise audiences are surrounded by content, but not all content changes the conversation, earns trust, or gives decision-makers something useful to take back into their own organisations.

For Q1 2026, the EM360Tech Quarterly Impact Index recognises nominees across four categories: the Vanguard Award, Apex Award, Catalyst Award, and Authority Award. Each category measures a different kind of impact, from individual podcast insight and audience engagement to campaign execution and analyst influence.

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Voting is now open, giving the EM360Tech community a direct role in recognising the podcasts, campaigns, companies, and analysts that helped shape enterprise technology conversations over the quarter.

A More Structured Way To Recognise Impact

 

Enterprise technology content has never been easier to produce. That doesn’t mean it’s easier to trust.

A podcast can reach the right audience because the topic is sharp. A campaign can create movement because it connects across channels. An analyst can carry influence because their perspective helps enterprise leaders understand what’s really changing, not just what’s trending.

That’s why the EM360Tech Quarterly Impact Index separates impact into clear categories. Visibility still matters, of course. But visibility on its own isn’t the full story. The real question is whether the work helped enterprise audiences think more clearly, engage more seriously, or act with greater confidence.

EM360Tech Vanguard Award Nominees

Three EM360Tech Impact Index Q1 2026 Vanguard Award nominee graphics showing Fabrix Security, CallRevu, and Vespa.ai logos with podcast titles: “Why Are AI Agents Forcing CISOs to Rethink Identity Security Architecture?”, “Automotive Communication Best Practices: Trust, Privacy, and Compliance”, and “How To Scale AI in Digital Commerce Effectively.”

The EM360Tech Vanguard Award recognises the most innovative or forward-thinking individual podcast of the quarter.

This category focuses on originality, clarity of insight, and contribution to the wider enterprise technology conversation. It’s not about who had the biggest profile. It’s about which episode pushed the discussion somewhere more useful.

Fabrix Security (Acquired by Silverfort)

Podcast: Why Are AI Agents Forcing CISOs to Rethink Identity Security Architecture?

Fabrix Security’s nominated episode takes on one of the most urgent security questions created by artificial intelligence: what happens when AI agents start acting inside enterprise systems?

The conversation moves beyond simple access control and into a deeper architectural issue. Traditional identity models were built around human users, known devices, and predictable access patterns. AI agents complicate that model because they can act, adapt, and interact across systems in ways that static controls don’t always understand.

That’s what makes the episode a strong Vanguard nominee. It doesn’t just add AI to an existing security conversation. It asks whether the identity security model itself needs to change.

CallRevu

Podcast: Automotive Communication Best Practices: Trust, Privacy, and Compliance

CallRevu’s nominated episode focuses on an area that’s easy to underestimate until something goes wrong: communication in regulated customer environments.

Automotive dealerships now manage customer conversations across phone, text, instant messaging, and other digital channels. That creates more convenience, but it also creates more responsibility. Customer trust, data privacy, and compliance have to sit inside the same operational workflow.

The episode stands out because it’s grounded in real-world pressure. It doesn’t treat communication as a soft business function. It treats it as a practical enterprise discipline where trust, process, and regulation meet.

Vespa.ai

Podcast: How To Scale AI in Digital Commerce Effectively

Vespa.ai’s nominated episode offers a more practical view of artificial intelligence in digital commerce.

Rather than leaning into AI hype, the conversation focuses on the systems that determine whether AI can actually scale. Search, personalisation, recommendation, and ranking often operate in disconnected ways. That fragmentation makes it harder for businesses to deliver relevant experiences, even when they have the data to support them.

The value of this episode is its restraint. It makes the case that scaling AI isn’t just about adding new models. It’s about simplifying the architecture around them so the business can turn intelligence into something usable.

EM360Tech Apex Award Nominees

Three EM360Tech Impact Index Q1 2026 Apex Award nominee graphics showing New Relic, Uniphore, and Hex Tech logos with podcast titles: “Are ‘Vibe-Coded’ Systems the Next Big Risk to Enterprise Stability?”, “From Monolithic to Composable: A New Era in CDPs”, and “Is AI Analytics the Missing Link Between Business Users and Data Teams?”

The EM360Tech Apex Award recognises the top-performing individual podcast of the quarter.

This is the most directly data-led category in the Index, focused on standout engagement, reach, and commercial impact. The nominees reflect episodes that didn’t just carry strong topics, but connected with audiences in a measurable way.

New Relic

Podcast: Are “Vibe-Coded” Systems the Next Big Risk to Enterprise Stability?

New Relic’s nominated episode brings a sharp frame to a fast-moving enterprise risk.

“Vibe-coded” systems tap into a wider anxiety around AI-assisted development. As more teams use artificial intelligence to generate or accelerate code, the question shifts from whether AI can help developers move faster to whether organisations can maintain stability, governance, and accountability at the same pace.

That combination makes the episode highly relevant. It connects a catchy emerging term to a serious enterprise concern: what happens when speed starts outpacing control?

Uniphore

Podcast: From Monolithic to Composable: A New Era in CDPs

Uniphore’s nominated episode addresses a major shift in enterprise data strategy: the move from monolithic customer data platforms to composable architectures.

Customer data platforms have become central to personalisation, marketing intelligence, and customer experience. But rigid systems can make it harder for organisations to adapt to new privacy requirements, first-party data strategies, and changing business needs.

The episode’s strength lies in how directly it connects architecture to business flexibility. It’s not just a technical discussion about platform design. It’s about how enterprises build data environments that can keep moving without losing control.

Hex

Podcast: Is AI Analytics the Missing Link Between Business Users and Data Teams?

Hex’s nominated episode tackles a familiar but stubborn problem: the gap between business users and data teams.

For years, enterprises have talked about data democratisation as though access alone would solve the problem. But access without shared context can create confusion, duplicated work, and conflicting answers. The episode examines whether AI can help bridge that divide by making analytics more collaborative, contextual, and usable.

That’s why the topic lands well. It speaks to data leaders, business teams, and executives dealing with the same frustration from different sides of the table.

EM360Tech Catalyst Award Nominees

Three EM360Tech Impact Index Q1 2026 Catalyst Award nominee graphics showing Island, Fable Security, and Temporal logos within hexagon frames, each labelled as Catalyst nominees with EM360Tech branding.

The EM360Tech Catalyst Award recognises a multi-channel campaign that delivered strong performance across the quarter.

This category looks beyond a single podcast or asset. It reflects how campaigns perform across podcasts, articles, social channels, audience engagement, lead generation, and wider market relevance. Because meaningful campaign impact rarely happens in one place.

Island

Island’s nominated campaign centres on the enterprise browser as a new kind of workspace.

That positioning matters because browser-based work is now where many enterprise interactions happen. Applications, data, collaboration, and security controls increasingly meet in the same place. Island’s campaign connects that shift to a broader enterprise need: making work smoother for users while giving IT and security teams stronger control.

The result is a campaign narrative built around security, productivity, and user experience rather than one isolated feature set.

Fable Security

Fable Security’s nominated campaign focuses on human risk and behaviour-driven security.

That’s a strong enterprise angle because many security programmes still treat employee behaviour as an awareness problem, when it’s often a design and intervention problem. Fable Security’s campaign reframes the issue by focusing on real-time, relevant actions that help change behaviour where work actually happens.

The campaign stands out because it moves security away from generic training and toward targeted behavioural change. That’s a more useful conversation for security teams under pressure to reduce risk without adding more noise.

Temporal

Temporal’s nominated campaign is built around workflow orchestration and reliability at scale.

Modern software systems are distributed, complex, and increasingly tied to AI initiatives. That makes reliability harder to maintain, especially when long-running workflows need to keep executing even when systems fail. Temporal’s campaign connects directly to that enterprise pain point.

Its strength is the clarity of the message. Distributed systems are difficult. AI makes them more demanding. Enterprises need infrastructure that reduces complexity rather than hiding it until something breaks.

EM360Tech Authority Award Nominees

Three EM360Tech Impact Index Q1 2026 Authority Award nominee graphics featuring Herb Blecher (Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates), Jon Arnold (Principal, J Arnold & Associates), and Richard Stiennon (Chief Research Analyst, IT-Harvest) with their portraits and Authority nominee badges.

The EM360Tech Authority Award recognises analyst influence across EM360Tech podcasts during the quarter.

This category isn’t tied to one episode. It looks at consistency, depth of insight, engagement, and market relevance across analyst contributions. The strongest analyst voices don’t just host conversations. They help shape how enterprise audiences understand the issue in front of them.

Herb Blecher

Herb Blecher brings a clear enterprise data and analytics lens to the Authority Award shortlist.

Are you enjoying the content so far?

His Q1 contribution included Are You Scaling Intelligence or Just Scaling Errors?, an episode of Don’t Panic, It’s Just Data focused on the risks of confusing more data with better intelligence. The discussion challenged a common assumption in enterprise AI: that collecting more information naturally leads to better outcomes.

Blecher’s perspective is valuable because it stays close to the real operational problem. AI doesn’t remove the need for governance, context, or judgement. In many cases, it makes those things more important.

Jon Arnold

Jon Arnold’s Authority Award nomination reflects his ongoing contribution to EM360Tech’s conversations around communications technology, customer experience, AI, and the future of work.

His Q1 podcast work included How AI and Analytics Are Transforming Automotive Call Tracking and Repair Orders, where he spoke with CallRevu Chief Executive Officer Ben Chodor about how AI and real-time analytics are reshaping dealership communication.

Arnold’s strength is his ability to connect technology shifts to the human side of communication. Whether the topic is customer experience, contact centres, workplace change, or communications platforms, his work keeps the focus on what the technology changes in practice.

Richard Stiennon

Richard Stiennon has been a consistent voice across EM360Tech’s cybersecurity coverage, particularly through The Security Strategist.

During Q1, his podcast work included episodes such as Why Are AI Agents Forcing CISOs to Rethink Identity Security Architecture?, The Human Factor in Cybersecurity: Behavioural Interventions That Work, From Passwords to Ransomware: What 597 Real-World Breaches Tell CISOs in 2026, and Is AI Quietly Breaking Email Security? Are False Positives Now the Real Breach?

That range matters. Stiennon’s work covers identity security, human risk, ransomware, email security, and AI-driven threats, but the thread is consistent: cybersecurity leaders need clearer ways to understand where risk is moving next.

How Voting Works

Each EM360Tech Quarterly Impact Index category is open for a seven-day public voting period.

Public voting gives the wider EM360Tech audience a role in recognising the nominees, while the shortlist itself is built around defined award criteria. That balance matters. It keeps the process open without reducing the awards to a simple popularity contest.

Vote for the EM360Tech Vanguard Award here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfwu1pbK7QI0EotC2puDCcxihOohwc_o3aNIc5jrQyrzwnp5Q/viewform

Vote for the EM360Tech Apex Award here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScUHZwlg8NXPSQMX0PPGkPZ94cwvYgDDRMsyCfSMiXU_Wei1g/viewform

Vote for the EM360Tech Catalyst Award here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdw-hvbGU8dDelPvxW_8Zpv0Xkw-n3F2vGDUmzEoiMhreJTFw/viewform

Vote for the EM360Tech Authority Award here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRj5Ky6Qzfs0RwJP_ZE7MUvnAzfIWTEm8hhRIdN_wgT1KDkw/viewform

What Happens Next

Once voting closes, EM360Tech will announce the Q1 2026 Quarterly Impact Index winners.

The winners will also be celebrated through dedicated case studies that look more closely at the work behind the result. That’s an important part of the Index. Recognition is useful, but understanding why something worked is more useful still.

Over time, those case studies will help build a clearer picture of what strong enterprise thought leadership looks like across podcasts, analyst-led discussions, and multi-channel campaigns. Not as theory. As evidence.

Final Thoughts: Recognition Should Reflect Real Impact

Enterprise technology doesn’t need more empty attention metrics. It needs better signals.

The EM360Tech Quarterly Impact Index is built around that idea. It recognises that impact can show up in different ways, from a single podcast that reframes a complex issue to a campaign that creates momentum across multiple channels.

The Q1 2026 shortlist highlights the companies, podcasts, campaigns, and analysts that helped move enterprise technology conversations forward with substance behind them.

Voting is now open. For enterprise audiences, partners, analysts, and technology leaders, this is a chance to help recognise the work that didn’t just get seen, but made a measurable impact.