Tech Trends 2025: A Strategic Imperative for CMOs and CPOs

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Tech Trends 2025: A Strategic Imperative for CMOs and CPOs

Introduction

Last year, our Tech Trends 2024 report welcomed the "Generative Enterprise" era. IT had to balance the demand for harnessing AI’s capabilities with protecting the organization’s information technology to ensure it did not expose the organization to possible risks of AI. This balance also included meeting market expectations in software product marketing and development.

This article offers an overview of Tech Trends 2025, focusing on the impact on technology providers and their current software products, marketing strategies, and end-user spending. The report highlights how CIOs guide companies in predicting future trends and expanding their expertise. While doing so, they ensure the processes used to generate and manage knowledge are effective.

Although AI and quantum technologies have been discussed for years as potentially transformative, the reality of their impact is now closer than ever before, with the trends report suggesting that they are on the verge of significant advancements that could bring major changes to industries. Early understanding and adoption of these technologies are critical for mature IT organizations to forge future strategies to remain credible and accurate.

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) and chief product officers (CPOs) must understand the six critical trends from the Info-Tech Tech Trends 2025 report, as these will redefine software product strategies and market positioning. This report distills these trends into actionable insights, guiding CMOs and CPOs in aligning product innovation with shifts toward AI, cybersecurity, and quantum technologies to gain a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Two lessons for product managers are drawn from looking ahead to 2025.

1. Historically, chief information officers have been accountable for record-keeping at their organizations.

Like resident historians, CIOs maintain the integrity of an organization's past, making it verifiable and auditable.

With digital transformation, CIOs were asked to do more to report on the organization’s current state in real time.

The business intelligence and analytics required to drive decision-making need to be based on something other than old information.

2. As firms invest in AI and, more specifically, generative AI, the focus shifts to simulating the future. In a fast-changing and uncertain world, AI predicts different scenarios based on the probability of the outcome.

Generative AI provides an output that aims to simulate a human response prompted by an input.

Since generative AI entered the business lexicon in 2022, this capability has worked its way into various enterprise-scale solutions from most market-leading vendors. From solutions that help organizations build with generative AI, marrying their data and process with a large language model, to features embedded in larger productivity suites, AI has quickly spread its tentacles into many different business functions.

Last year, AI or machine learning (ML) was the fastest-growing technology for net new investment among all organizations.

That trend continues this year, with AI or ML growing two points faster than last year. Almost half of all organizations are now invested in AI, so it remains in our “emerging tech” quadrant.

With a growth score of 64, AI is the clear leader in this quadrant in growth. Yet it remains behind other more-entrenched technologies that continue to see more investment planned: cybersecurity solutions, cloud computing, and data management solutions.

This year, we've added hardware to accelerate AI training to our technologies list. Given the market demand for GPUs and neural processing units (NPUs) to support AI training and inference operations, we wanted to understand how many organizations are investing in this area.

Given the rapid rise in AI investment trends, AI is on the verge of exiting the emerging quadrant and entering our transformative quadrant. That investment is being driven primarily by generative AI.

We expect that in next year's report, AI will cross that threshold and join more established enterprise technologies.

Whether it continues to grow at the same pace will likely depend on how much value organizations see in return from their initial efforts with AI and if they feel confident in overcoming the new risks associated with AI adoption on both current investment (x) and growth (y) dimensions.

For CMOs and CPOs, the rapid acceleration of AI investments, especially in generative AI, means they must prepare to integrate AI more deeply into their product strategies and marketing narratives. As AI transitions from an emerging technology to a transformative one, leaders must demonstrate value and ensure trust, manage the expectations around ROI, and address the evolving risks associated with AI adoption to maintain competitive advantage and drive sustained growth.

More Significant Risks, Bigger Opportunities: Six Tech Trends to Watch in 2025

As AI advances exponentially, its influence will permeate more aspects of organizational operations.

Companies will consider the following when planning their IT resources, and software providers must ensure that their product lines address these aspects:

Expert models for specialized AI training to create a competitive edge.
AI sovereignty to maintain control over their AI tools and data.
New opportunities and risks stemming from the rise of quantum computing, including the need for quantum advantage to gain utility from quantum cloud computing.
The shift to post-quantum cryptography for secure encryption.
Digital humans simulating human interactions through AI avatars.
Deepfake defense to counter AI-powered attacks.

The six tech trends outlined for 2025 have substantial implications for product development, marketing strategies, and end-user expectations for software products.

Trend	Product Impact	Marketing Impact	End-User Spending
Generative AI and Expert Models	Focus on integrating generative AI with expert models tailored to industries, offering customizable AI solutions that match unique data and processes.	Emphasize specialized benefits of AI, such as productivity, innovation, and industry-specific use cases to attract organizations seeking a competitive advantage.	Increased healthcare, finance, and manufacturing spending on specialized AI models tailored to unique data and processes.
AI Sovereignty	There is a demand for solutions that enable data control and AI sovereignty, allowing companies to manage privacy and compliance independently of third-party providers.	Emphasize data ownership, privacy, and compliance toresonate with regulated industries like finance and healthcare.	Higher spending, especially in Europe and from finance, healthcare, and government organizations, on privacy-centric, sovereignty-focused AI solutions.
Quantum Computing and Quantum Advantage	Software providers innovate with quantum cloud services, attracting early adopters needing solutions for complex problems.	Position the organization as a pioneer of quantum technology, appealing to industries like R&D, energy, and pharmaceuticals spending incrementally on quantum solutions.	Spending by forward-thinking companies interested in quantum applications, though they will remain niche in 2025.
Post-Quantum Cryptography	Post-quantum cryptography is needed as encryption concerns rise with quantum computing.	Emphasize future-proof security, positioning the organization as a forward-thinking security provider.	Prioritized spending on post-quantum security in finance, defense, and government sectors needing robust protection.
Digital Humans (AI Avatars)	Integrating AI avatars to simulate human interactions in customer service, sales, and training fosters immersive experiences.	Focus on enhanced user experience through human-like interactions, driving expenditures in AI-driven avatars for customer engagement and training.	Increased spending by customer service–focused sectors like retail and hospitality to boost efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Deepfake Defense	Providers are developing solutions to detect and prevent deepfake attacks, especially in sectors at risk of fraud and misinformation.	Market cybersecurity around deepfake defense, emphasizing protection against AI-driven threats as a core selling point.	Growth in finance, media, and government spending on solutions to safeguard sensitive information against deepfake threats.

Software providers must align their product offerings to these advancements by offering tailored, secure, and future-ready solutions.

These trends signal a shift in end-user spending, with growing investments in AI, quantum computing, and cybersecurity, while spending on traditional IT infrastructure, legacy software, and low-skill roles declines. This evolution underscores the need for adaptable, data-driven product roadmaps that responsibly integrate advanced AI technologies, balancing risk tolerance with effective governance led by top-level leadership to safeguard company and customer interests while capitalizing on emerging opportunities.

From a product perspective, AI models must specialize in industry-specific use cases while providing data ownership and control flexibility.

Companies are expected to increase spending on AI solutions, especially in highly regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and government, where AI sovereignty and security are paramount.

Quantum computing, though still niche, offers a significant opportunity for early adopters, particularly in sectors requiring advanced problem-solving capabilities.
Alongside this, the shift toward post-quantum cryptography is crucial to maintaining data security in the face of quantum threats.
The development of AI avatars will drive new customer engagement models, particularly in customer service–oriented sectors.
At the same time, deepfake defense will be a crucial growth area in industries vulnerable to fraud and misinformation.

Conclusion

The six tech trends, including AI, quantum computing, and cybersecurity advancements, present risks and opportunities for software providers and end users.

As organizations prioritize investments in specialized AI models, secure data sovereignty, and quantum-ready solutions, we expect to see declining spending in traditional IT infrastructure, software not enhanced by AI, and basic cybersecurity measures.

To remain competitive, software vendors must evolve their product roadmaps to incorporate advanced AI technologies, ensure robust data privacy and security, and offer forward-thinking solutions that address the unique challenges posed by quantum computing and AI-powered threats.

By doing so, they can capture a growing market of businesses increasingly focused on leveraging these emerging technologies to gain a competitive edge and secure their digital environments in an ever-complex technological landscape.

Tech Trends 2025: A Strategic Imperative for CMOs and CPOs