Midmarket, Other IT Leaders Share Predictions, Hopes And Foreseeable Challenges In 2025

Change agents driving growth, big expectations for AI and new tactics for battling cyberthreats are some of the predictions for next year.

Hybrid enterprise architecture. Maturing AI. Social engineering to combat ongoing cyberthreats. These are some of the areas of focus that IT leaders see becoming dominant in 2025 and predict which technologies will be most influential. Several leaders also shared with MES Computing their hopes for the future and some challenges that they anticipate in the new year.

2025 Tech Predictions, Hopes And Challenges From IT Leaders

Midmarket IT leaders shared their thoughts on what’s on the technology road map for their organizations in the coming year.

Brian Celardo, a CIO/security officer at Birch Family Services, said that he and his organization are most focused on “supporting the neurodiverse population” in New York City in the new year as part of the nonprofit world. Specifically, he said they are looking at “how AI can drive better outcomes and experiences for individuals with developmental disabilities and kids on the autism spectrum.”

He shared some other goals for his organization in 2025, which include “continuing down our path to become a data-driven organization; a total culture shift in the way we collect, integrate and use data; ... [and] keeping up with the ever-changing regulatory requirements for data privacy, specifically, HIPAA and FERPA [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act].”

As far as challenges in the new year, Celardo said he had “concerns over changes that may be made to Medicaid and its impact on our business (and sister agencies like us around the country) and the impact on the quality of care we can provide (which relies heavily on technology)” and tackling “ongoing challenges with managing cyberthreats.”

Matt Ellsworth, an IT manager with Kelley Bros, LLC, weighed in with his predictions for 2025.

His hopes for 2025, he said, include:

As for as challenges, he foresees:

Another IT manager who asked not to be named, spoke about recent challenges and his hopes for next year:

“For me personally, I know our company has struggled with a down economy and high interest rates for a couple of years now. We’re hoping some of that changes in 2025, making it a little easier to maintain decent profit margins with less stress on resources and scaling back of critical but nonessential budgets for growth and training, like travel and expenditure budgets or training budgets.”

He also predicts that there will be advances with AI integration as the technology matures in the coming year.

“Artificial intelligence is expected to become deeply embedded across various business functions, enhancing decision-making and operational efficiency. Organizations are anticipated to increase investments in AI, with projections indicating a rise from $307 billion in 2024 to $632 billion by 2028,” he said.

Herman Brown, CIO at the office of the district attorney in San Francisco, predicts that “GenAI will continue to gain traction, however, organizations will start looking at ROI differently--instead of costs but in-terms of efficiency, productivity, workers’ experience. This will require a new/different ROI model.”

Furthermore, “Organizations will have to start considering cybersecurity as it relates to AI, I had read someone that only 38 percent of organizations today account for AI security (securing their AI solution) in their deployments,” he said.

Brown also says there will be more focus on sustainability. “Especially in the data center where AI is driving the need for more compute and processing power, equaling more energy consumption, and cooling requirements.”

He added that data privacy and compliance are also likely to garner more focus in 2025 with “stricter regulations, data protection laws, incorporating privacy by design principles in software development and IT operations.”

Several executives from Apply Digital, a digital services company, shared their predictions for the new year:

Dom Sevlon, CTO

“The industry will move beyond the notion of pure MACH [microservices, API-first, cloud-native and headless] implementations being the ultimate or only modern solution. Instead, we’ll see a growing consensus that the most effective enterprise architectures blend MACH principles with traditional software components, such as Salesforce, SAP and so on, to create flexible and composable ecosystems that balance innovation with practical legacy integration. This means there will be a greater emphasis on developing and adopting standards that ensure seamless interoperability between MACH and traditional software solutions.”

“Precomposed solutions will become the default starting point for any composable digital transformation initiative, regardless of its complexity. The most flexible accelerators that provide businesses with the speed and agility they require to remain competitive, whilst also realizing a quick time to business value will ultimately emerge as the market leaders in 2025.”

Michael Georgas, Sr. Director, AI

“The focus will shift from the performance of core [foundation] models as we see an increasing parity between competitors. Innovation will recenter on building systems and agents with specific real-world applications, rather than on general capabilities.”

“As digital agents move beyond the pilot phase, a growing number of enterprise businesses will give almost all of their employees company-approved agent/copilot support. Moreover, as AI workflows start to show their worth, our digital assistants will increasingly be deployed on tasks that go beyond simply summarizing and generating text.”

“By this point, large businesses recognize that AI models offer tangible benefits in the workplace. The next step is realizing the value from the investment. This will put a greater emphasis on ROI in 2025 and success will be measured by business results, not simply the number of pilots running or the sophistication of the model.

Consequently, the agents and the systems you build with them will be more important than just having access to a great model. With this increased focus on ROI, there will also be a renewed interest in traditional data science techniques, and notably in how they can be blended with the most recent GenAI capabilities.”

Kevin Zellmer, VP, Alliances

“The move from legacy platforms to composable ones will continue apace in 2025 as companies seek to evolve their technology ecosystems. AI will play an increasingly significant role in how ISVs support this, notably it will dramatically decrease the time to market for companies that still need to make the switch.

This will give those who have been late to the show a fighting chance to catch up to or, conceivably, even pass competitors. Consequently, we will see an acceleration in laggard markets such as B2B and some manufacturing segments.”

Gautam Lohia, CEO

“Large enterprises are sitting on vast amounts of data but are held back from the kind of data-enabled decision-making that would allow them to offer the types of modern experiences their customers increasingly expect. The market will become increasingly competitive next year as AI further levels the playing field between digital-first and incumbent businesses. Consequently, the latter will need to hire change agents in 2025, people with the vision to shake up established ways of working, and create cultures of innovation built on tech and data.”