Top Tech Trends and Predictions 2025 From Industry InsidersTop Tech Trends and Predictions 2025 From Industry Insiders

In 2025, organizations will boost IT budgets and show heightened interest in supercloud and sustainable software engineering, but quantum computing's breakthrough moment will remain out of reach.

These are just a few of our tech predictions for 2025. To gain a broader perspective, explore the insights from IT leaders and industry experts gathered by ITPro Today — essential guidance to inform your major tech decisions this year.

Predictions concerning the following topics have already been published as part of ITPro Today's 2025 prediction series:

Read on for more predictions from IT leaders and industry insiders:

Autonomous Drones Will Become Proactive Decision-Making Devices

In 2025, autonomous drones will transition from reactive tools into intelligent, context-aware systems capable of proactive decision-making. As semantic knowledge graphs integrate vast, interrelated datasets from air traffic control systems, weather patterns, geospatial data, and real-time sensor inputs, they will provide drones with a holistic "understanding" of their environment. With this enhanced knowledge framework, drones will transcend simple pathfinding and object detection, becoming capable of complex decision-making, such as dynamically rerouting to avoid hazards, collaborating with other drones in coordinated fleets, or identifying and prioritizing high-risk zones during disaster response missions. — Dr. Jans Aasman, CEO, Franz

Related:ITPro Today’s 2024 IT Priorities Report

Trump's Presidency to Bring Much-Needed Change to the DoD

From a defense tech startup perspective, we're optimistic that the Trump administration will bring needed change to the Department of Defense. Historically, it's been too slow, too expensive and too difficult to sell technology to the Defense Department and with challenges this great, we can't afford to be complacent. The Trump administration has recruited heavily from the technology industry and has sought out high-quality leaders who understand our mission in deploying new technologies at scale. — Dan Wright, CEO and co-founder, Armada

Digital Voiceprints

In 2025, digital voiceprints will become a key tool for identifying and verifying speakers across industries, reshaping how voice data is used and protected. Voiceprints can be used to: 1) Verify the authenticity of statements from public figures to combat misinformation and deepfakes. 2) Act as an additional layer of verification in legal proceedings where accuracy is paramount. 3) Log contributions from individual members in hybrid + remote meeting environments, and assign post-meeting action items. However, regulatory and ethical debates will need to be addressed to balance the benefits of voiceprint verification with individual privacy rights. — Aron England, chief product and technology officer, Rev

Related:The Shifting Priorities of IT Professionals in 2024 (Infographic)

AI Transformation Spurs Resurgence of Services Firms in 2025

Professional services and recurring services engagements will take on a more important and strategic role to complement AI-enabled SaaS solutions in 2025. There is an increasing need for continuous iteration and tuning to make AI more effective and performant. Services firms that adopt AI to shrink project delivery timelines, improve governance, and reduce project delivery risk will win more business and grow faster in 2025. Shorter, less risky projects have far more takers! With AI transformation across enterprises, and new AI-enabled or AI-first software products emerging across categories, there's a lot more service work coming to deploy AI in the enterprise. The resurgence of services firms will lead to many companies being created in 2025 to fulfil demand in this space. — Srikrishnan Ganesan, co-founder and CEO, Rocketlane

Storage Steps into Spotlight for AI Infrastructure

Over the last 24 months of frenzy around AI and the AI infrastructure, conference presentations and industry articles have focused on other critical challenges for scaling up AI processing capabilities – memory capacity, memory bandwidth, network bandwidth, GPU power consumption, cooling the power-dense GPU systems – while largely ignoring storage challenges. With large-scale AI clusters in data centers and an emerging group of processors optimized for edge AI, users will start feeling the pinch from storage and begin clamoring for new storage solutions to pair with their GPUs and AI processors. These solutions will need to deliver high performance to combine with power efficiency, space efficiency, capacity density, security, unified storage management (block, file & object), and shared access. There will not be "one solution to rule them all" but rather an array of solutions best suited for various environments and stages of the AI workflow. — JB Baker, vice president of products, ScaleFlux

What's Old Is New Again

Technology becomes so big and pervasive that it sparks a need for smaller, quieter, easier options. Small language models prove a popular choice for businesses needing a more targeted approach than large language models. Dumb phones offer a welcome respite from their noisier, smarter counterparts. While there's no turning back the clock in terms of technology, we'll see a movement that harkens back to a simpler time. — Jared Peterson, Sr. VP, Platform Engineering, SAS

More Mergers and Acquisitions

Look for a data and AI consolidation, and a large AI acquisition in the coming year. Maybe Snowflake buys Dataiku, DataRobot, H2O or Alteryx. Evolving technologies inspire interesting new partnerships. — Jared Peterson, Sr. VP, Platform Engineering, SAS

The Brand-Integrated QR Evolution

AI-powered QR codes that automatically incorporate brand elements will become the next industry standard, marking the end of generic black-and-white codes in consumer marketing. These next-generation codes will dynamically pull colors, logos and design elements directly from a company's digital assets to create brand-consistent experiences. The QR code will transform from a simple utility into a critical brand touchpoint, with companies treating code design with the same strategic importance as their visual identity systems and packaging. — Sharat Potharaju, co-founder and CEO, Uniqode

Local SEO: Thriving in a Pro-Business, AI-Driven Economy

With a strong economic outlook and renewed support for AI innovation following the 2024 U.S. election, local businesses are positioned for a dynamic year ahead. From advanced metrics like Share of Local Voice (SoLV) to AI-enhanced competitive intelligence, now is the time to refine data-driven approaches. Adapting to economic growth, emerging SEO trends, and evolving customer expectations are all winning strategies for local businesses in the coming year. — David Hunter, CEO, Local Falcon

Local SEO: The Metrics, AI, and Strategies That Will Shape Success

As local SEO continues to evolve, 2025 promises to bring shifts that will challenge conventional wisdom. From the rise of advanced metrics like Share of Local Voice (SoLV) to the increasing role of AI in mapping hyper-local strategies, businesses will need a deeper, more data-driven approach to gain an edge. The changing landscape of Google Business Profiles and competitive analysis, means local SEO that prioritizes adaptability, intelligence, and precision will drive results. — David Hunter, CEO, Local Falcon

More Humanized Digital Twins for Real-World Impact

In 2025, we will see the next generation of digital twins emerge, which are more human and user-centric, offering a dynamic and interactive experience. This shift is especially beneficial for industries like energy and electronics, where safety and cost are critical concerns, making it essential for engineers to perfect their designs from the outset. Traditionally, digital twins relied on synthetic data to simulate how a product design would respond to specific scenarios. However, with the advancement of IoT sensors capturing real-time data, engineers can now compare live data with synthetic models, resulting in more accurate insights and intelligent outcomes. This fusion of live and synthetic data allows for deeper analysis and improved product performance, making digital twins more intuitive and effective in real-world applications. — Keshav Sundaresh, senior director, digital transformation, Altair

The Winds are Shifting in Advanced Air Mobility Investment

After a few years of enthusiasm, it's time for a reality check on air mobility advancement. Building an aircraft is complex, and certification can drain energy and money while taking much more time than expected to get off the ground. On the other hand, investors are more cautious, having now a deeper experience of the market dynamics and challenges. We can anticipate a new wave of startups that will encounter greater challenges in securing the necessary funding to bring their products to market. — Paolo Colombo, director of strategy, aerospace & defense, Altair

3D Printing Takes Center Stage for EDA Efficiency

Consumer expectations and the rapid pace of innovation present constant pressure on the electronics industry to develop high-performance products quickly, at lower costs, and with reduced material waste. Additionally, in light of supply chain disruptions, companies need to be agile and resource efficient. Consequently, the industry is increasingly turning to additive manufacturing techniques and 3D printing for both flexible and rigid printed circuit board (PCB) production. This shift enables more complex and customized designs while facilitating faster prototyping and minimizing material waste. — Sarmad Khemmoro, SVP of technical strategy, electronics design and simulation, Altair

Shaping the Future of Electronics: The Power of Collaboration

Semiconductor companies will increasingly place a greater emphasis on forging strong partnerships with system companies. These collaborations are vital, as many chip manufacturers lack a complete understanding of how their products are integrated into final devices. In the years ahead, this teamwork will be even more important, especially as systems designers face relentless pressure to create smaller, more efficient products. Staying attuned to these changes and adapting accordingly will be essential for maintaining competitiveness and driving innovation forward. — Sarmad Khemmoro, SVP of technical strategy, electronics design and simulation, Altair

PCB Design Becomes Full Circle with AI

Printed circuit board (PCB) design requires multiple disciplines and skill sets. As a result, companies are increasingly adopting automation across the entire workflow — from initial requirements and logical design to fabrication and assembly. By converging AI with simulation in the design process, design decisions are accelerated and development cycles are significantly shortened. To enhance this process even further, advanced monitoring systems are now being employed in the field for industries with long product lifespans, such as automotive, aerospace, and defense, to track PCB performance after the fact, as well as de-rate components, to relay potential issues directly to development teams. These insights can then be incorporated into the PCB design process for further efficiency and reliability. — Sarmad Khemmoro, SVP of technical strategy, electronics design and simulation, Altair

Vendors Must Focus on Strategic Partnerships and Professional Services

Organizations are facing mounting pressure to derive meaningful ROI from AI, but they need support moving from concept to production, navigating a rapidly evolving technological landscape, and controlling costs. The most successful technology vendors in 2025 will be those who act as strategic partners to guide their customers through the fast-moving AI landscape. As such, vendors must look beyond technology alone and double down on the professional service and enablement initiatives that drive strong customer experiences through the AI adoption journey. In the near term, copilot application development and application modernization will likely be the highest ROI use cases for gen AI. In an environment where organizations are looking to maximize ROI, vendors will need to invest in the technology and services that drive customer success for those use cases. — Alan Chhabra, EVP of Worldwide Partners, MongoDB

Maximizing GPU Utilization Becomes the New Standard

In 2025, as the size of AI model training datasets continue to grow exponentially, maximizing GPU utilization will become the primary design goal for modern datacenters. Organizations will face mounting pressure to optimize their expensive GPU infrastructure investments. This shift will drive innovations in hardware and software design to sustain the massive read bandwidths necessary for training and minimize checkpoint-saving times that cause training pauses. Success will be measured by how effectively datacenters can keep their GPU resources busy while managing larger model checkpoints and growing data requirements. — Haoyuan Li, founder and CEO, Alluxio

Focus on Simplified, IT Generalist-Friendly Solutions

Many enterprises will invest in failover clustering solutions that are easier to manage, targeting the growing need for solutions that can be operated by IT generalists, not just clustering experts. With automation, simplified interfaces, and streamlined deployment, these clustering solutions will allow organizations to maintain high availability without the complexity typically associated with failover clustering — appealing particularly to small and medium-sized businesses looking to achieve enterprise-grade resilience. — Cassius Rhue, vice president, customer experience, SIOS Technology

Hyperconverged Infrastructure Takes Center Stage in Enterprise IT

Enterprises will increasingly migrate critical applications to hyperconverged infrastructures (HCI) to simplify management, cut costs, and enable dynamic scaling. HCI consolidates storage, compute, and networking, reducing the complexity of traditional systems. As IT leaders prioritize agility and resilience, HCI's automation and reliability will present a strong alternative to traditional setups. This trend also aligns with growing demands for hybrid and multi-cloud flexibility, as HCI integrates seamlessly with public cloud providers. — Cassius Rhue, vice president, customer experience, SIOS Technology

Founder Mode Will Continue to Trend, but the Best Companies Will Realize It's Not Just About Founders

2024 brought the emerging trend of Founder Mode, wherein successful founders and co-founders are revisiting the first principles that led to their company's initial success, adapting some of those principles while evolving others to suit current challenges. But Founder Mode is a mindset, not a person. It's about setting a clear direction and executing it with an insane obsession with details. That path is not a straight line, with changes and mistakes along the way, but with a culture of ownership and trust, it's easily navigable. This is not to say that each company needs a team full of people going Founder Mode and pulling in opposite directions; Founder Mode starts at the top and filters down to individual ownership. It's not about micromanaging, quite the opposite. With a solid strategy from leadership and mutual trust between teammates, you can achieve Founder Mode at scale. — Milin Desai, CEO, Sentry

Need for Data Center Capacity to Skyrocket Due to Increased AI Adoption

The demand for data center capacity will certainly continue to increase. The major public cloud providers invested more 60 billion in infrastructure and AI hardware in 2024. There will be continued investment to order to create superlative offerings to pull market share from other providers. As multi-cloud is more widely embraced, organizations will find the offerings that are best suited for their use case and at the best price and will actively avoid vendor lock-in. Another interesting facet of the increased infrastructure investment comes the power demands needed to operate the new infrastructure and AI hardware. AWS, Azure, and GCP are all investing in Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology. This technology represents scalable and flexible nuclear options that could have applications in other areas. — Jason Bright, product marketing manager, Hyland

Power Constraints Will Drive Regional Shifts in Data Center Locations

As major tech hubs like Virginia and Texas reach their energy capacity limits, the demand for large-scale data analytics, quantum computing and AI will prompt a shift in where new data centers are built. Regions with untapped power reserves, like parts of the Midwest, will emerge as prime locations for future data center development. This geographic shift will influence where technology companies expand as they seek proximity to available energy sources and where computing occurs. Additionally, companies will form strategic partnerships with regional utilities to secure long-term energy contracts, leading to a new wave of investment in energy infrastructure specifically designed to support the growing power needs of new technologies. This shift could also incentivize regions to focus on developing renewable energy sources to attract companies in other high-tech categories. — Chris Gladwin, CEO and founder, Ocient

Increased Search Engine Competition

SearchGPT, Bing, and Google are now at each other's necks, trying to outperform competitors with various changes to algorithms. I foresee that we'll see major changes in search engine results. Other shakeups may happen as Google continues improving Gemini and OpenAI focuses on its own models. It's currently unclear whether SearchGPT will take a major share of search volume, but it's the first real competitor for Google in a long time. — Karolis Toleikis, CEO, IPRoyal

Privacy-Driven Solutions and GenAI Propel Business Innovation

Risk mitigation and data security will remain critical. Businesses will prioritize solutions that protect sensitive information by processing data securely within their environments. Vendors who address these concerns while simplifying AI adoption will lead the market, as organizations seek tools that lower technical barriers and manage privacy risks effectively. Generative AI will also revolutionize workflows, offering instant answers to complex queries and streamlining operations. This transformation will drive productivity and position AI as an indispensable tool for business innovation in the years ahead. — Michael Curry, president of data modernization, Rocket Software

Professional Services and Tech Vendors Will Become Closer Than Ever

The professional services-tech vendor divide will rapidly dissolve. Technology will then be integrated into every aspect of service delivery, ushering in more expansive ecosystems. This united front will bring together providers, consultants, startups, and regulators to co-innovate and co-develop solutions. The old client-vendor dynamic is giving way to shared ownership. Vendors and firms will collaborate to develop solutions and deliver end-to-end transformation. It will be the race to become the one-stop shop for strategy, implementation, and ongoing support. A proven synergy of domain expertise, human insight, powerful platforms, and scalable tools will elevate outcomes. Together, professional services and tech vendors will be better together. — Brent Lazarenko, head of AI innovation, InterVision

Optimize GPU Infrastructure Now or Risk Being Left Behind

Current GPU utilization rates remain strikingly low across enterprises — nearly a third of enterprises are utilizing less than 15% of GPU capacity. Emerging optimization platforms will combine workload-aware scheduling, dynamic resource allocation and AI-driven optimization. Early adopters of these optimization technologies will gain significant cost and capability advantages. Those focusing solely on hardware acquisition will fall behind in both economics and AI capabilities. CIOs should prioritize optimization of existing GPU infrastructure over pursuing additional hardware capacity at premium prices. While many organizations are fixated on acquiring more GPUs, the real competitive advantage will come from maximizing the efficiency of existing resources through advanced optimization technologies. — Mohan Atreya, CPO, Rafay Systems

Top CIO Priorities in 2025

In 2025, CIOs' top priorities should be to focus on strengthening their digital foundation to enable business growth and build resiliency, invest in AI-driven transformation. and improve cyber defenses for their organization. All of these priorities are equally important. Organizations need continued digital investments to focus on growth, strategic and efficiency-driven items. Generative AI is here to stay, and CIOs cannot afford to be bystanders. Based on our research with Oxford Economics, the expected economic impact of AI will be enormous — about $1 trillion in the next 5-to-6 years in the U.S. alone — so now is the time to invest. Finally, cyberthreats are getting increasingly sophisticated with news coming out on a regular basis about organizations being impacted by cyber-attacks. Cyber incidents have and will cripple operations at a global scale creating far-reaching impacts to brands and competitive advantage that will be too large to overcome.

The best way to accomplish these priorities is to invest in them. In a capital-constrained environment, the Office of the CIO plays the most important role in being able to guide, strategize and channel investments to yield the most impact and benefit to the organization. The CIO needs to play a seasoned business development role looking beyond the curve and preparing the organization to adapt and evolve with the changes. CIOs will need strong program and project management discipline and a structured Investment management process to accomplish these priorities in the year ahead. Close partnerships with the CFO, Risk and Market Growth functions as well as strategic alliances with partners to develop a buy/build for organizational readiness will also prepare their organizations for success. — Neal Ramasamy, CIO, Cognizant

Tech Giants Will Continue to Dominate AI Infrastructure Market

AI infrastructure will likely remain concentrated in the hands of a few dominant tech giants and cloud hyperscalers. Their massive investments in GPUs and other specialized hardware will create a significant barrier to entry for smaller players, requiring them to shift where they innovate and potentially limiting the diversity of AI applications. — David DeSanto, chief product officer, GitLab

From Growth at All Costs to Precision Growth

The era of growth at all costs is over. In 2025, successful companies will adopt precision growth strategies, aligning every function — sales, marketing, finance, customer success — around shared metrics and goals. Companies that achieve this will not only grow predictably but will redefine operational efficiency as a competitive advantage, earning outsized investor confidence. — Andy Byrne, CEO, Clari

Surge in M&As Spurs IT Modernization and MSP Partnerships

The business landscape will experience significant transactional shakeups, particularly through mergers and acquisitions. With significant private equity funds waiting in the wings to be invested and companies emerging from a three-year downturn, market activity will surge in the coming year. This could create potential challenges for customers who might find themselves suddenly and unexpectedly partnering with different organizations as the result of acquisitions. After about three years of delayed technology investments, businesses will be forced to resume their IT modernization strategies to remain competitive, leading to increased partnerships with managed service providers (MSPs). — Russ P. Reeder, CEO, ATSG

Hybrid Computing Will Address Rising Demands for Privacy, Security, Performance

In parallel to Agentic AI will be hybrid computing (not to be confused with hybrid working). While GPT-based systems will continue to provide human interfaces for enterprises, the complexity of what they are expected to deliver will increase well beyond what they are currently capable of. This requires working with not just a hybrid of cloud and on-prem, but a new paradigm in privacy, security and performance will be complemented by genuine edge computing, quantum computing, and next-generation networking. — Brendan Bonner, innovation lead, Office of the CTO, Extreme Networks

Data Center Industry Is Set for Significant Growth

The data center industry will continue to grow significantly in 2025 as the investments that have been announced in the past 1-2 years by the hyperscalers and large PE firms begin their work. The incoming administration will be positive on these projects and expansion in total given their initial policy announcements. — Jim Kozlowski, chief sustainability officer and VP Data Center Operations, Ensono

Increased Focus on Time to Value the ROI Around Technology Services

The concept of technical debt is evolving to encompass not only coding shortcuts but also outdated infrastructure and the need for modernization. Addressing technical debt will be crucial for maintaining competitiveness and ensuring that overall IT systems can support growth initiatives, boost security measures, and build business resiliency. — Eric Stavola, vice president of managed services sales and programs, Visual Edge IT 

The End of the Model Wars

The past two years have seen big players and some well-funded startups compete to bring ever-larger models to market. But funding is a finite resource. When asked last year about the cost of training foundation models, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted it is more than $100 million. Such costs aren't sustainable for anyone other than the hyperscalers and infrastructure giants, particularly since there is no proven way to monetize them. The end of the model wars will ultimately be a good thing. Less choice means third-party ecosystem players will spend fewer dollars placing multiple bets and can concentrate their investments on fewer alternatives. — Jeremy Burton, CEO, Observe

Say Hi to the 'On-the-Fly' UI

Enterprise software users have long had to deal with the complexities of a feature-rich but confusing user interface. Even the revered "Business Dashboard" is often a dizzying array of numbers and charts. A new breed of AI-native interfaces will drive a completely new interaction model between human and software. User interface will be constructed "on-demand," in response to the user's inputs — showing just enough information, but no more. Every user will be comfortable with AI-native interfaces immediately, gone are the days of training courses and mountains of documentation. — Jeremy Burton, CEO, Observe

What Will Drive Data Center Innovation in 2025

The widespread adoption of AI will require more data center hyperscalers to provide the computing power that AI applications require to process and analyze data at scale. Hyperscalers also require more power to operate. We'll see the data center operators continue to focus on "green energy" locations, providing a better option for companies required to meet ESG compliance mandates and a core competitive advantage for operators. — Fredrick Forslund, VP & GM, International, Blancco 

Push for Efficiency in AI Production and Alternative Chip Designs

2025 is AI's promised year, but as the industry transitions from training to production, we're seeing greater demand for data centers and efficiency. In fact, a Gartner report estimated the power required for data centers to run incremental AI-optimized servers will reach 500 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year in 2027, which is 2.6 times the level in 2023. In essence, the need for enterprises to be efficient in 2025 has never been more critical, yet the reality is, the cost, power and retrofitting challenges with GPUs are cost-prohibitive. It's ironic that while Nvidia's stock keeps soaring, their approach isn't optimized for the next wave of AI. 2025 will bring a rapid shift to inference, which will be a true test for GPUs, opening doors for new, more efficient chip designs. — Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder, SambaNova

Standout Leaders Within Specialized Fields Will Emerge

While Big Tech has dominated the market so far, 2025 will mark the emergence of standout leaders within specialized fields. Some of the most transformative advancements will likely come from smaller companies who are solving real business challenges. Technical or regulated industries such as legal, finance and healthcare benefit most from specialized LLMs that provide deep, domain-specific insights, and this is where there is the greatest opportunity for imminent impact. We know that AI is as strong as the data it's trained on, and therefore we're seeing the focus shift from quantity to quality as this is what will really define AI's abilities to transform specific industry verticals. — Eleanor Lightbody, CEO, Luminance

Feasible 'Fun' Predictions

2025 Knowledge Management Evolution

Over the next few years, we'll see knowledge management technology evolve into more proactive, AI-powered systems that drive not only insights but also action. This will require systems that don't just centralize information but also anticipate needs and provide recommendations that allow teams to work more strategically. Additionally, as enterprises continually blend human insight and AI, they will begin offloading repetitive tasks to AI agents for automation. Additionally, we've already seen a radical shift in companies adapting recurring revenue models, like subscriptions or services, rather than products. Customers not only want quick, efficient setup but also continuous value throughout their relationship with a provider, as part of this new relationship. Using models like TSIA's LAER (Land, Adopt, Expand, Renew), leading companies will continually structure their services to build value at every stage, creating more customer touchpoints throughout the lifecycle process. Knowledge sharing will become even more about aligning every function around shared outcomes to create products that win long-term retention and greater customer loyalty. — Deb Ashton, SVP of Customer Experience and co-founder, Certinia

Navigating Lean Budgets and Resource Constraints

For many organizations facing funding slowdowns in 2025, the pressure is on CTOs to innovate within tight budgets, reducing headcounts, and operating more leanly. They will need to prioritize high-impact investments, such as scalable cloud solutions that reduce infrastructure costs, and look for resource-efficient ways to develop transformative technology. The focus will increasingly shift towards these lean development methods, driving CTOs to find cost-effective pathways to achieving proof of concept before investing in full-scale AI rollouts. — Karl Bagci, head of information security, Exclaimer

Balancing Innovation Through AI with Cost Control

AI and analytics will continue to be essential in 2025. However, they will present significant cost challenges for tech leaders. While AI offers potential long-term savings, the initial expenses associated with training, deploying, and maintaining models are substantial, particularly for companies with lean budgets or lower-cost products. The emphasis in 2025 will be on targeted investment: companies must deploy AI where it can deliver tangible results. Applying AI to core, repeatable functions, such as automating internal processes or enhancing customer support, can yield cost savings at scale. However, if a company deploys "five clever solutions for five small problems," it may not see the financial benefits, as the initial spending often outweighs any incremental savings when addressing low-cost issues. The challenge for companies will be to balance innovation with cost control by testing AI solutions on a smaller scale before full implementation. This approach will enable businesses to strategically use AI while keeping financial risks in check. — Karl Bagci, head of information security, Exclaimer

Strategic AI Investment for Sustainable ROI

In 2025, companies will need a more careful approach to AI investment to ensure a sustainable ROI. CTOs will need to evaluate where AI can truly optimize operations, whether by automating customer interactions or streamlining internal processes. The scale at which AI is deployed will be crucial: companies with large-scale operations may see substantial returns. However, for smaller operations, the cost of AI implementation might not be justified. As such, CTOs need to prioritize AI applications that comes with measurable cost efficiencies, avoiding a scattergun approach. — Karl Bagci, head of information security, Exclaimer

Security as a Core Component in Tech Strategies

With increasing concerns around data security, CTOs in 2025 will prioritize security as a central part of their technology strategy. As AI and analytics solutions handle vast amounts of sensitive data, CTOs will seek out solutions that integrate security from the ground up rather than treating it as an afterthought. In a landscape with mounting regulatory and reputational risks, CTOs will face the challenge of not only safeguarding customer data but also ensuring that security is a differentiator, helping to build customer trust and protect brand reputation. — Karl Bagci, head of information security, Exclaimer

Iteration as the Key to Success

With global digital transformation spending set to reach 3.9 trillion U.S. dollars by 2027. organizations will increasingly realize that large, one-off transformation projects are a recipe for failure. The pitfalls of attempting a "big bang" transformation, resulting in cost overruns and delays, are well-documented. In 2025, businesses need to embrace an iterative approach to digital transformation. Rather than overhauling everything at once, companies will prioritize breaking projects into smaller, more manageable stages, allowing for continuous improvement and adjustment. As part of this strategy, CTOs will also focus on mitigating risks from emerging technologies and AI, recognizing these as critical areas of concern. This shift will enable businesses to deliver value faster, address potential challenges early, and build a more adaptable, sustainable transformation strategy. — Karl Bagci, head of information security, Exclaimer

Enterprises Will Embrace Open Ecosystems and Interoperable Email Solutions

Another significant trend for 2025 will be a shift toward a more open, integrated ecosystem for email and martech tools. While tech giants like Microsoft and Google have long dominated business communications, enterprises will increasingly seek interoperable solutions from challengers that offer flexibility beyond a single provider. For example, companies might adopt email signature management platforms to enhance branding and compliance, seamlessly integrating these solutions with existing tools such as Microsoft Outlook or Google Workspace. This shift will encourage competition and collaboration, pushing the martech sector forward and enabling a more versatile and responsive future for email. — Karl Bagci, head of information security, Exclaimer

Pain Points That Need to Be Addressed in 2025

One pain point that's really come into focus is the need for AI regulation at the organizational level. AI adoption is happening everywhere — not just in tech roles — and companies need clear guidance to protect both their teams and their security posture. Another ongoing challenge is supporting employees with the time and resources they need for continuing education. If we're asking people to take on more, we need to equip them to handle it. — Chrystal Taylor, evangelist, SolarWinds

Multi-agent Systems Will Emerge as the Cornerstone of Autonomous Workflows

Single-task agents face limitations under heavy loads, leading to errors or hallucinations, which will drive organizations to adopt multi-agent architectures to distribute responsibilities effectively. With advancements in LLM reasoning capabilities, these agents will operate with greater autonomy, allowing for more seamless, self-directed task management. As a result, multi-agent systems will become integral to workflow management, reducing the need for human oversight and approval and enabling smoother, more efficient operations across various industries. — Abhishek Gupta, principal data scientist, Talentica Software

HR's Lead in Driving AI Adoption and Change Management Secures a Key Strategic Role at the Executive Table

HR stands at a pivotal moment to redefine its role as a leader in business transformation. With AI reshaping how businesses operate and succeed, HR has the opportunity to spearhead strategies that build an adaptable workforce ready to harness these powerful capabilities. Beyond workforce readiness, HR can become the driving force behind ethical and trustworthy AI adoption, shaping how organizations align technology with values. This is HR's renewed opportunity to lead the AI transformation strategy—not just support it—and solidify their role as a catalyst for innovation and change. — David Lloyd, chief AI officer, Dayforce

Surge in Tech M&A

Scalable technology platforms will drive M&A activity across key industries such as retail, healthcare, and logistics. This wave of consolidation will focus on enhancing endpoint security, AI-driven threat detection, and real-time analytics to meet the complex requirements of enterprise mobility and security. This trend will position top players as essential partners for organizations navigating digital transformation, equipping them with scalable, future-ready platforms to tackle evolving security and efficiency challenges. — Shash Anand, SVP of product strategy, SOTI

Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Is the New Acronym to Know

Organizations will recognize the link between employee satisfaction and productivity, and Digital Employee Experience (DEX) encompasses a host of advantages from user-friendly interfaces to personalized workflows that enhance employee engagement. Organizations that adopt tools that monitor and improve DEX, such as data analytics to tailor resources to individual user needs, will have happier, more loyal, and more productive workforces, to the great advantage of the business. — Karen Gondoly, CEO, Leostream

Digital Workspaces Become Ubiquitous

In 2025 organizations will broadly adopt digital workspaces that provide the distributed workforce with consistent and secure access to resources. These environments will be more flexible and heterogenous than prior iterations offered as single-vendor stacks by industry giants. IT teams will realize that crafting a more vendor-independent digital workspace solution allows them to future-proof their infrastructure against unanticipated technology disruptions. There are many up-and-coming providers in this space, and they'll get increased attention. — Karen Gondoly, CEO, Leostream

SMBs Will Be Hit Hardest When Microsoft Exchange Hits End-of-Life and Loses Technical Support in 2025

Microsoft has announced that it will cease technical support for Exchange 2016 and Exchange 2019 in 2025. This means it will not provide security fixes for vulnerabilities that could make the server vulnerable to attacks. When these products go end-of-life, many businesses will become a target overnight. Now is the time for businesses to begin planning their transitions and assessing their email infrastructure. Coalition is already contacting policyholders and proactively asking them if they're aware and prepared. Because once Microsoft flips the switch in 2025, threat actors will be ready to pounce — and they're going to target the businesses that are slow to act. — Ryan Gregory, Security Support Center lead, Coalition

The Shift from Legacy Platforms Will Be the Lynchpin for Innovation

The single most important factor driving change in data center infrastructure software (DCIS) in 2025 will be enterprises transitioning away from legacy platforms like VMware. As these platforms impose increasing costs and fail to meet the needs of modern workloads, organizations will turn to innovative alternatives. Without this shift, innovation in the data center will stall, as legacy systems are ill-equipped to support demands like multi-cloud orchestration, AI-driven workloads, and advanced automation.

While the immediate focus will be on adopting modern hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solutions, existing legacy HCI platforms will also need to evolve. Many of these platforms rely on disjointed modules for virtualization, storage, and networking, connected via a management GUI. This fragmented approach creates inefficiencies and limits scalability. The next generation of HCI must integrate these components into a single, efficient code base, offering unified performance and simplicity. Only by addressing these foundational issues will HCI solutions provide the agility and cost-effectiveness enterprises need to stay competitive. — George Crump, CMO, VergeIO

5G/6G Will Change the Game for Remote Connectivity

According to the GSM association, 5G networks will account for 25 percent of the global mobile market in 2025. 5G and 6G offer high speeds and low latency over the air, creating opportunities for much more sophisticated, data-intensive applications. Rural areas and densely populated areas alike will become more connected by taking advantage of 5G/6G. The additional devices and applications are expected to increase data traffic by 1000x. This will create an incredible stress on the end-to-end network infrastructure beyond the wireless network. — Prakash Mana, CEO, Cloudbrink

AI, Metaverse, and Gaming Networks Will Push Network Boundaries to the Limit

As adoption increases, extreme data intensive applications like generative AI, large language models, as well as metaverse apps and gaming networks will increase the stress on network infrastructure. In 2025 the demand these applications put on the network will grow exponentially. With more remote users and devices than ever, packet loss and network latency could become a crippling issue. Networking solutions that guarantee end-to-end reliability and performance on these consumer grade connections, will win the market. — Prakash Mana, CEO, Cloudbrink

Designing Data Centers with Resiliency at the Core

Considering the high-power requirements of AI and GPU clusters, everything is now larger and denser, which introduces new challenges to designing "the modern data center." Facilities and campuses over the next 5-10 years will need significant upsizing, from 100-300 megawatts for most hyperscale campuses today to the gigawatt level corresponding with 1M+ projected GPU clusters. 2025 will be the year developers more broadly advance on planning for designs that meet those requirements. Nonetheless, AI data centers must still be designed with uptime in mind to ensure GPUs don't suffer outages at the wrong time, mid-training or during an inference call. While some degree of failure is expected in large GPU clusters, that is at the hardware level. A data center outage has the potential to be catastrophic and damage very expensive GPUs in a thermal runaway event. The largest AI and cloud companies still provide their services with underlying always-on service level agreements which flow through to the data center providers supporting them. New data center entrants, predominantly from the crypto mining sector, appear to be developing data centers faster, yet with lower resiliency — making them a risky match for AI and cloud deployments. While data center investment is an increasingly smaller proportion of overall infrastructure spending over time (as related to hardware/networking for GPUs), building to lower resiliency is like putting low octane gasoline in a high-performance sports car — it may work in a pinch, but runs the risk of killing the engine eventually. — Tom Traugott, SVP of strategy, EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure

Data Centers Need to Be Ready for Liquid Cooling

The next-generation GPUs will need over 100 KW of power in a single rack — beyond what air cooling technology can typically support. Closed-loop, direct-to-chip liquid cooling is necessary to support this density level, enabling closely coupled and denser computing systems. This cooling method will become more predominant in 2025 and will likely be considered the industry standard for state-of-the-art facilities by 2026. Over the next year, we will move from simulated performance for the latest GPUs to real world deployment and testing to determine the best cooling methods for supporting ever denser racks. Investments in liquid cooling will continue to grow given that densities are only expected to increase as chip transistor density increases further and faster (as seen with NVIDIA's shift to a one-year versus a two-year innovation cycle). Data center providers can prepare by getting the big parts right — ensuring adequate gross tonnage of chilled water that can support both air-cooled and liquid cooled solutions for large quantities of megawatts. That said, the largest buyers of GPUs, the hyperscalers, will need to take a leading position to both finalize their designs and back particular liquid cooling methods so the industry can distribute resources effectively and meet rapidly increasing densities at the rack level. — Tom Traugott, SVP of strategy, EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure

Storage Innovation Will Be Key to Tackling the Data Center Crunch and Protecting the Planet

As the data boom continues unabated, it will eventually reach the point where data centers will become overwhelmed. However, financial, regulatory, and environmental concerns will increasingly challenge the need for greater physical data center space and capacity. According to the UK's National Grid, for example, power demand from commercial data will increase six-fold just within the next 10 years. According to CBRE, AI advancements in particular are projected to significantly drive future data center demand, and high-performance computing will require rapid innovation in data center design and technology to manage rising power density needs. However, it's not just innovation in computing that can help address these issues. Higher areal density hard drives, which expand the amount of data stored on a given unit of storage media, can enable greater data capacity in data centers, avoiding the need to build new sites, driving significant TCO savings and reducing environmental impact. — B.S. Teh, EVP and chief commercial officer, Seagate Technology 

Vietnam Will Steal Manufacturing Crown from China

With robust infrastructure and manufacturing expertise already in place, Vietnam is poised to be the next Asian manufacturing champion. — Ross Meyercord, CEO, Propel Software

Mexico Tames Wild West: Infrastructure Improvements Spur Manufacturing Hub

By slashing supply chain cycle times and alleviating risk, its proximity to the U.S. makes Mexico an unrivaled choice for high-tech and complex manufacturing — representing a powerful convergence of convenience, speed and forward-thinking economic investment. — Ross Meyercord, CEO, Propel Software

Construction to Production: Domestic Manufacturing Gets to Work

Fueled by landmark legislation like the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, new U.S. manufacturing is rapidly transitioning from construction to production. After significant infrastructure investment, factories are moving to the next phase — equipping facilities, hiring skilled workers, and integrating advanced technologies to support a surge in domestic manufacturing. — Ross Meyercord, CEO, Propel Software