The Year Ahead: IT Pros Offer Insight, Predictions for 2025

By Jon Kennedy, Quickbase

Where we will all be one year from now is anybody's guess, but it's always interesting to take a step back, assess what we've learned, and use those experience to make even smarter decisions in the future. Looking into 2025, we surveyed thousands of IT professionals and spoke with industry experts about critical issues impacting organizations today, including IT consolidation, technology investments, and, of course, AI. Below are five of the boldest views on the future and key takeaways from those steeped in the tech stack and in decision-making roles.

1. AI Proves Its Value

A shift is underway from talking about what AI could do to seeing what it is actually doing to improve business. It didn't take long. In April, Quickbase released its annual Gray Work Index, a look at productivity and the impact of gray work, the time and resources lost when work is done using ad-hoc solutions and workarounds. When 1,923 participants were asked about AI, 92% were curious yet only 10% reported being extremely confident in the accuracy of their data. However, half of all respondents anticipated their organization will increase their AI budget.

Today it is clear that some businesses did invest in AI while others took a wait-and-see approach. Those waiting for the right time for AI will likely find themselves scrambling to catch their competitors in the coming months.

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Isaac Sacolick, founder and president of StarCIO, predicts: "2025 will be a year when CIOs must elevate their organizations above the AI hype, demonstrate AI's business value, convert productivity improvements into cost savings, and identify where AI can drive growth opportunities. Top CIOs will channel AI investments and change management activities in areas that improve employee and customer experiences and will become more prescriptive in their AI governance, communicating why, how, and in which workflows to leverage generative AI solutions."

2. AI Wins in Vertical Industries

The greatest AI productivity wins will be in industries that have a mix of digital tools and paper-based protocols, established workflows, and are otherwise project-management driven environments. Manufacturing, construction, and legal are prime examples of industries ripe for AI transformation.

 According to Kevin Montgomery, developer and certified user experience designer: "As with any application development, I suspect AI will find its niche in contextual applications like medical, legal, and project management. I doubt it will find a useful place in general use like an AI virtual assistant. The reason is because with AI, a quality data set is everything. For this reason, it's easier and cheaper to apply AI to stable and specific applications."

A Fortune 500 manufacturing organization offers a good example of using an AI-driven app to connect the shop floor with its back-office ERP. The app eliminated the need for staff to rekey data while ensuring a consistent and accurate view of production and the supply chain throughout the company. Before the manufacturer went forward with AI, however, they connected their underlying systems for data consistency, security, and compliance. Otherwise, AI apps built on shoddy data would not be useful.

As AI drives workflows, we will see more anecdotal and ROI-driven evidence of its benefits. Prominent tech influencer Evan Kirstel believes: "We can expect to see more evidence of successful applications of AI throughout the coming months. On the SaaS front, I'd say next year could be the tipping point where AI moves from 'cool to have' to a real business essential. We're talking systems that actually work well enough to blend into daily workflows and make a real, practical difference from day one — something that could kick off a wave of adoption as more companies see the impact right out of the gate."

3. The Rise of AI Agents

As we close out 2024, it is impossible to ignore that AI agents are front and center on the IT agenda. Sacolick, who has seen industry trends come and go for more than 30 years, had this to say: "Many SaaS, low-code, and other enterprise platforms released AI agents in 2024 to integrate genAI capabilities into people's work in areas like HR, IT, and marketing. In 2025, I expect to see a growing number of Industry 5.0 AI agents, such as agents for construction superintendents and manufacturing line managers, aiming to ease daily reporting, improve worker safety, and increase quality. Key enablers to deliver these benefits with industrial AI agents require creating standardized dynamic work applications, centralizing trustworthy data, and training workers on using AI agents."

These AI agents will impact software development. Aarni Heiskanen, managing partner at AE Partners and a construction innovation agent, predicts: "AI agents will be used, first by software developers, to automate business processes. Later, even savvy users will be able to utilize AI agents on no-code or low-code platforms. This way of development will rival point solutions and make them eventually obsolete."

4. Beware AI Vapor Lock

For businesses that have not mapped out their AI strategy, there is a real risk of "AI vapor lock," a term coined by noted tech industry veteran David Linthicum. "Unable to make some key AI hires, find the correct use cases, get the data 'AI ready,' and concerns around security and compliance, many enterprises will spend 2025 still in a holding pattern around the implementation and operation of key AI systems," said Linthicum.

5. IT Consolidation Deemed a Top Priority

 Blame it on gray work, but IT consolidation is going to be a top priority in the coming year. A recent Quickbase survey of more than 1,000 IT professionals in the U.S. and UK found 68% spend 11 hours or more of their week managing and maintaining software applications. Nine in 10 IT professionals surveyed report IT software consolidation is a priority in their organization.

Over the next year, 56% of respondents expect they'll spend more time and resources on IT consolidation, and 73% of those surveyed predict their organization will continue to grow their software investment and add new technologies in the next year. All that sprawl and planned spending has put the consolidation bull's-eye on IT professionals, with 87% saying pressure to consolidate is mounting from both the C-suite and their own IT departments.

For IT professionals, the year ahead will test their infrastructure, associated apps, tools, and data. Without the right foundation, and a strategy to centralize and streamline information to avoid gray work, it will be an uphill climb to keep pace with the proliferation of digital tools and demands of AI.

About the author:

Jon Kennedy is Senior Vice President, Engineering, at Quickbase.