Tech Talks: 2025 Tech Predictions

At Markerstudy, we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of innovation, leading the charge with a number of groundbreaking technology projects over the years. From a transformative claims process, deployment of a hybrid cloud infrastructure, the development of our in-house rating platform - processing an astounding 30 million insurance quotes daily – to cutting-edge AI innovations now operational, we've consistently pushed the envelope and that shows no signs of stopping.

As we embark on 2025, we want to start sharing our successes with you and we’re excited to be launching our monthly series ‘Tech Talks: IT Insight’. In this blog series, we'll bring you a wealth of insights, stories and experiences from our senior IT leaders at Markerstudy Group. You'll hear directly from the experts who have been driving our technological advancements, sharing their knowledge and predictions for the future.

To kick off ‘Tech Talks: IT Insight’, I have the privilege of writing the first blog post and where better to start than with my predictions for technology in 2025.

The pace of technological change in 2024 was nothing short of astounding. It felt with every week we saw new innovations, making it increasingly challenging to stay abreast of the latest developments. Looking ahead, there's little indication that this rapid tempo will slow down and it’s more likely we’ll witness an even greater acceleration. With that in mind, I'd like to share my predictions for some of the core aspects of IT that will shape the landscape in the coming year.

Cloud

In 2025, the adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud environments will continue to accelerate, driven by organisations seeking to optimise costs and avoid vendor lock-in. As more providers embrace multi-cloud strategies, we will see significant growth in platforms offering a single pane of glass for platforms such as API management, firewalls, data, and Kubernetes. This move would greatly reduce the overheads associated with managing multiple cloud environments.

To support the drive for standardisation, Kubernetes is likely to become the default hosting platform for many, ensuring software engineers have a consistent development experience, regardless of the cloud provider. Much of this shift will be driven by platform engineering, as organisations transform their DevOps teams into platform engineering teams that focus on the entire developer ecosystem. This transformation will enhance the efficiency and productivity of development processes across different cloud environments.

The current geopolitical climate, marked by uncertainty and the potential for a global trade war, will bring cloud sovereignty to the forefront. Discussions around data sovereignty and localised cloud services will become more prevalent, with major hyperscalers already exploring solutions in this space. This shift will be crucial for businesses looking to ensure compliance with regional regulations, such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for the financial services industry in the UK, and mitigate risks associated with geopolitical tensions.

Finally, after years of slow but steady development, we are starting to see the dawn of the era of commercial quantum computing. Microsoft announced during their Ignite conference that they will be offering quantum computers to commercial customers next year. Although not yet accessible to most businesses, the technology represents an exciting development for the future, with the potential to revolutionise various industries.

Overall, 2025 will be a pivotal year for cloud technology, with advancements in hybrid and multi-cloud environments providing businesses with greater flexibility, security, and control over their digital infrastructure.

AI

In 2025, AI will continue to be a transformative force across various industries, driving innovation and efficiency. One of the standout technologies will be the integration of AI with everyday business processes, making it more accessible and practical for a wider range of applications. This democratisation of GenAI will enable even small and medium-sized enterprises to leverage AI for competitive advantage.

2025 is set to be the year of the AI agent and the beginning of organisations creating AI agentic workforces. These will be teams of AI agents working together to automate complex processes and tasks. By collaborating, these AI agents can handle intricate workflows, improve operational efficiency, and reduce the need for human intervention in routine tasks. The development will not remove the need for human workers though but will allow colleagues to focus on more strategic and creative activities, enhancing overall productivity and innovation within organisations.

While we will continue to see the development of larger LLMs, the next year should also see the emergence of smaller, more industry-specific models. These models will offer more targeted performance at a fraction of the cost, making advanced AI capabilities accessible to a broader range of businesses and applications.

However, as AI becomes more integrated into business operations, the importance of data ethics will grow. Ensuring that AI systems are fair, transparent, and unbiased will be crucial. Organisations will need to establish robust ethical guidelines and frameworks to govern AI usage, addressing issues such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, and accountability.

As AI grows, so will the regulation surrounding it. Regulatory bodies, such as the FCA, and regions like the EU with its AI Act, will impose stricter guidelines. For multinational organisations, this will complicate AI development, as they must navigate and adhere to varying regulations across different jurisdictions. Ensuring compliance while fostering innovation will be a significant challenge.

Data

Data has taken on an even higher level of importance with the explosive growth in AI. The saying "Data is the new oil" has never been more accurate. However, most organisation’s data platforms have traditionally been designed to produce data for MI and reporting, rather than AI. It's like we've been turning our oil into diesel when we now need petrol. Traditional data platforms are designed to produce aggregations of the data and create highly structured data models - removing much of the unique flavour. In contrast, AI requires data in its more raw, unstructured form to retain all its uniqueness, especially for AI systems running in production environments that deal with unstructured data.

GenAI will also unlock the huge potential of unstructured data. Historically, most organisations have underutilised unstructured data, which remains an untapped gold mine. GenAI is set to unlock this potential, enabling us to leverage documents, images, and videos more effectively. This shift will make our data ecosystems significantly more important, requiring preparation to handle the massive growth in unstructured data.

With these changes, security and governance have never been more critical. Tools and practices like data catalogues, data tagging, and data governance will only grow in importance next year. Ensuring that data is well-managed, secure, and compliant with regulations will be essential as we navigate this new landscape.

Data Centre

As organisations strive to become greener, their data centres will play a crucial role in reducing their carbon footprint. This effort will be jeopardised with the increasing demand from compute-intensive AI use cases. To manage the heightened power demands and lower their carbon footprint, data centres will need to adopt more advanced cooling systems and renewable energy sources. This will drive the construction of large data centre campuses in regions with access to low-carbon energy sources, further supporting sustainability goals.

The current geopolitical climate, marked by uncertainty and the potential for a global trade war, will bring compute sovereignty to the forefront. For some organisations, this may lead to cloud repatriation, where they move workloads back from public clouds to on-premise data centres. Those undertaking cloud repatriation will face pressure from their software engineering teams to provide a more cloud-like experience in their on-premise data centres. Engineers accustomed to the self-service nature of PaaS and SaaS cloud components will expect similar experiences from their local data centres.

Regulation will continue to be a significant factor in operating on-premise data centres, especially in highly regulated industries. Operational resilience will become more important than ever, ensuring that data centres comply with stringent regulatory requirements while maintaining high availability and performance.

Overall, 2025 will see data centres evolving to meet the dual challenges of sustainability and increased computational demands, while also adapting to the changing geopolitical landscape and regulatory environment.

Software engineering

In 2025, software engineering will continue to evolve rapidly, driven by advancements in technology and changing business needs. One of the key trends will be the rise of platform engineering. As organisations adopt more complex multi-cloud and hybrid environments, platform engineering teams will become essential. These teams will focus on creating and maintaining not just the infrastructure and continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) pipeline but also the tools and platforms that enable developers to build, deploy, and manage applications efficiently. This shift will enhance developer productivity and streamline operations.

Most organisations have successfully embedded DevOps and CI/CD into their software development lifecycle. The rise of platform engineering builds upon these foundations and focuses on the entire software development lifecycle, emphasising the developer experience. By streamlining processes and reducing the complexity of the development environment, platform engineering allows developers to spend more time writing code.

Another significant trend will be the increasing adoption of AI and machine learning in software development. AI-powered tools will assist developers in writing code, detecting bugs, and optimising performance. These tools will not only speed up the development process but also improve the quality of the software. Additionally, AI-driven analytics will provide deeper insights into user behaviour and application performance, enabling more informed decision-making. With the growth of these tools, prompt engineering will become a critical skillset for software engineers, enabling them to effectively interact with AI-powered tools and optimise their workflows.

The demand for cybersecurity expertise will also continue to grow with the ever-increasing threat facing organisations. Developers will need to integrate security practices into every stage of the software development lifecycle, from design to deployment. This approach, known as DevSecOps, will help organisations protect their applications and data from evolving threats.

Low-code and no-code platforms will continue to gain more traction, allowing non-developers to create applications and automate workflows. These platforms will democratise software development, enabling business users to address their own needs without relying on IT departments. This trend will lead to faster innovation and more agile responses to business challenges.

Finally, the emphasis on remote and distributed work will persist, influencing how software engineering teams operate. Collaboration tools and practices will continue to evolve, supporting effective communication and project management across geographically dispersed teams. This shift will also drive the adoption of asynchronous workflows, allowing teams to work more flexibly and efficiently.

Thank you for taking the time to read through my predictions for 2025. I hope you found these insights as interesting and thought-provoking as I did while putting them together. Keep an eye out for our next blog post, which will be coming soon. Until then, stay curious and keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible with technology.

Written by Andrew Beal, Chief Architect.