Each year, the technology industry continues to make remarkable advancements that were once considered impossible.
2025 will be no exception, bringing significant changes across various fields, including AI, data, and finance. To understand the future impact, we spoke to a panel of experts to uncover the trends and innovations we can expect in the coming year.
AI’s impact across industry
2025 has been coined ‘the defining year of AI’. However, in the industrial sector, AI has been improving and optimising operations and maintenance for more than 20 years and it’s only getting more sophisticated.
“In 2025, as every area of AI continues to evolve, they will be integrated much more closely, and barriers to entry will drop,” explains Jim Chappell, global head of AI and advanced analytics at AVEVA.
“Sophisticated analytics will be available at many more points across the industrial value chain, delivering end-to-end insights from shopfloor to top floor in a much more humanised, conversational manner. This industrial intelligence will accelerate new pathways to efficiency, profitability and sustainability, while putting early investors in AI closer towards Industry 5.0.”
AI’s potential to enhance frontline workforce productivity will also shine in 2025. Mark Williams, Managing Director EMEA, at WorkJam explains, “integrating AI into digital frontline workplaces has enabled businesses to seamlessly process customer feedback and create a powerful feedback-to-action loop.”
“Similarly, AI can also undertake sentiment analysis on employee communications to identify frustrations and keep a pulse on morale,” he adds. “Ultimately, it provides store managers with the insights they need to boost engagement, productivity, and efficiency among frontline staff.”
For tax professionals, AI will also streamline routine tasks, boost efficiency, and shift job functions in 2025. “The emergence of AI tools presents a fundamental shift in roles, especially for junior staff,” discusses Russell Gammon, Chief Solutions Officer at Tax Systems.
“The growing use of AI tools in the workplace will redefine job functions over time.AI can complete routine tasks, such as data entry, first line review, number crunching and anomaly detection, in a consistent and reliable way, and in a fraction of the time it would take its human counterpart.”
This allows tax specialists, “to focus on higher-level tasks that require their expert knowledge and critical thinking skills.”
The rise of agentic AI
In 2025, we’ll also see the rise of agentic AI coworkers which will transform how businesses operate by introducing AI as a co-worker rather than just a tool.
“”Agentic AI” refers to AI systems that can act autonomously, pursuing specific goals while interacting with people and other systems to complete complex tasks,” explains Philip Miller, AI Strategist at Progress.
“Unlike today’s AI tools, which mostly generate content or make suggestions, agentic AI will actively execute decisions, manage workflows and collaborate in real-time with human teams.”
“Such advancements bring AI closer to fulfilling the vision of intelligent, self-improving systems,” adds Paul Cartwright, Technology & Innovation Director, ERP at Node4.
“Copilot Agents can receive feedback during interactions and refine their behaviour in real-time, improving processes or involving human oversight where necessary.” He adds, “As production-ready AI agents roll out, early adopters are likely to reap considerable rewards, marking 2025 as a pivotal year for AI-driven transformation.”
Evolving data management
As AI develops, data management practices will continue to evolve and change. Paolo Platter, CTO – Co-founder at Agile Lab and Product Manager on Witboost, commented: “This shift towards automation will unlock greater benefits for organisations, including an easier path to decentralisation – in which each team has more autonomy and freedom to innovate – and the adoption of a data product mindset.”
“We’re already seeing AI-powered tools which can not only analyse, process, and interpret data, but can also make recommendations of how to solve any encountered problems,” adds Chris Jackson, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Six Degrees. “This can greatly speed up the time taken to investigate and respond to any issues within this data.”
The rapid growth of AI is driving even more focus on GPUs, as well as higher power and density in the data centre world. Terry Storrar, Managing Director at Leaseweb UK, highlights: “The continued development of AI use in data centres is important, particularly for reporting tools and systems that help increase efficiencies and drive down energy usage.
“Far from greenwashing, the data centre industry has very much grown up in the past few years and is addressing the huge challenges that power requirements present. Harnessing data through reporting is a powerful way to do things better.”
AI: trough of disillusionment?
Over the past two years, we’ve seen AI technology make waves across industry, and is now at an inflection point of its hype cycle.
“More businesses will adopt the technology, but I can also see an equal amount of conscious disengagement,” said Hugh Scantlebury, CEO and Founder of Aqilla. “Overall, this will mean far fewer businesses will be sitting on the fence.
“As 2025 progresses, it will become apparent which organisations have engaged with AI and are seeing the benefits—and which ones are either late to the party or have chosen not to deploy.”
“While the AI buzz remains, many brands are still in the early stages – with small-scale pilots or proof of concept projects rather than large-scale revenue-generating solutions,” adds Rob Shaw, GM EMEA at Fluent Commerce. “The enthusiasm is there, but it’s clear that AI hasn’t fully scaled up to drive major revenue just yet.”
He also cautions, “while AI’s potential is exciting, it’s clear that there’s a need for stronger governance.”
How is cybersecurity faring?
In 2025, businesses must also adopt stronger security measures to protect against evolving risks.
Bruce Kornfeld, Chief Product Officer at StorMagic, expects, “ we’ll see a notable trend towards repatriating workloads from the cloud back to on-premises infrastructures in 2025, as enterprises start prioritising localised compute capabilities to enhance data processing at the edge especially.”
However, he warns, “with the expansion of edge data, security factors can’t be overlooked as the attack surface grows, and we can expect businesses to introduce heightened security measures. In 2025, CIOs must adopt comprehensive security frameworks that address vulnerabilities at the edge without compromising overall IT integrity.”
Tape storage remains a critical component of data security for long-term archiving and backup, adds The LTO Program’s Marketing Team. “Tape is one of the foundational types of data storage and it continues to rise in popularity with continued advances in density and security, remaining a very effective solution for managing and protecting important business data.”
They add, “Tape storage is one way to put up a physical barrier between an attack and your data, that doesn’t come with sky-high costs. As we move into 2025, we expect this resurgence in tape usage to continue as it proves time and again to be as relevant today as it ever was.”
As we look ahead, 2025 promises to be a pivotal year for technological innovation, with AI, cybersecurity, and data advancements taking center stage. Businesses will need to adapt to rapidly changing landscapes, embracing new solutions to stay competitive. The future is bright, but success will depend on how effectively organisations integrate these technologies to drive growth and secure their digital transformation.
