2024 will be wrapping up soon and we will ring in 2025. With the New Year comes new opportunities. New opportunities to grow our workforce, grow our adoption of technology, and, in turn, grow our businesses and bottomline. But the question always lingering at this time of year is: what technology will rise to the top of the CIO’s priority list in the year ahead?
Perhaps the first point goes without saying, but let’s just lay the foundation for this discussion. In the past few years, gen AI (artificial intelligence) has taken the world by storm. In fact, it has been in the spotlight in many organizations, as it now offers an easy way to gather and harness essential insights about an organization’s operation. There is no question this will continue to be true in 2025. But for today’s blog, let’s hone in more specifically and look beyond the basics of gen AI. We know gen AI will remain king, but what technologies will become queen in 2025?
IEEE recently unveiled its research, The Impact of Technology in 2025, which surveyed 355 CTOs, IT directors, and technology leaders at organizations with more than 1,000 employees. Naturally, AI topped the list, but what followed? The company found cloud computing, robotics, extended reality, quantum computing, and electric vehicles are other technologies that will rise to the top in 2025.
As an example, robotics are increasingly being deployed at the software level to automate cybersecurity defenses and respond autonomously to attacks. In the physical world, they are being used for tasks that are often tedious or dangerous in the construction industry. Ultimately, robotics can help improve construction safety and productivity—all while saving costs.
Quantum, surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, depending on your view, will see some growth. Roughly 35% of companies expect to start implementing quantum computing in 2025, with another 30% anticipating it will be fully implemented, and 28% saying they will consider implementing it in 2025.
As another example, every year Gartner unveils its top technology predictions for the year ahead. Looking to 2025, the analyst firm has some interesting predictions, beyond the obvious gen AI predictions. Let’s look at a few right now.
Disinformation security: This is an emerging technology that aims to discern trust, assess authenticity, prevent impersonation, and track the spread of harmful information.
Postquantum cryptography: This provides data protection that is resistant to quantum computing decryption risks. Gartner predicts by 2029, advances in quantum computing will make most conventional asymmetric cryptography unsafe to use.
Ambient invisible intelligence: This enables ultra-low cost, small smart tags and sensors to do large-scale, affordable tracking and sensing.
Energy-efficient computing: Computing in the year ahead will become more sustainable, as companies look to reduce their carbon footprint.
Hybrid computing: This means we will see the rise of different compute, storage, and network mechanisms to solve computational problems.
Spatial computing: This computing enhances the physical world with technologies such as AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality). By 2033, Gartner predicts spatial computing will grow to $1.7 trillion, up from $110 billion in 2023.
Polyfunctional robots: These machines have the capability to do more than one task, and they are replacing task-specific robots that are custom designed to repeatedly perform a single task.
Neurological enhancement: This tech improves human cognitive abilities using technologies that read and decode brain activity.
Certainly, these are only a handful of examples. What are you seeing in your industry? We would bet you are having conversations about gen AI, but what else is out there? What is really having an impact on the day-to-day operations on construction companies—and what tech can help fill in the gaps?
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