2025

Forrester

36

Key Insight: AI is moving from experimentation to large-scale enterprise adoption, but technical debt, regulatory scrutiny, and ROI struggles threaten momentum. Companies must balance rapid AI expansion with governance, security, and sustainability to succeed. Major Impact: AIOps adoption will triple, AI-powered software development will accelerate, and hybrid cloud will surge due to cost and compliance concerns. Meanwhile, the first major EU AI Act fine is expected, and 75% of agentic AI architectures will fail due to complexity. Actionable Takeaway: Enterprises must strategically invest in AI, optimize infrastructure, and prepare for heightened regulatory enforcement. The future belongs to those who prioritize sustainable AI growth, security, and long-term value creation over hype-driven adoption.

The Forrester Predictions 2025 report provides strategic insights into how AI, automation, and security trends will impact enterprise technology. As companies move from AI experimentation to large-scale adoption, they face challenges in ROI realization, infrastructure complexity, and regulatory pressures. Key Predictions from Forrester: 1. AI ROI Struggles & Enterprise AI Reset Many companies are realizing that AI deployment costs are higher than expected, and 49% of AI leaders anticipate returns only after 1-3 years. As a result, businesses may scale back investments prematurely, leading to lost competitive advantages. Forrester advises companies to align AI projects with long-term strategic goals rather than chasing quick wins. 2. AIOps Adoption Will Triple to Manage Rising Technical Debt With 50% of tech leaders entering 2025 with severe technical debt, companies are turning to AIOps (AI-powered IT operations) to automate system monitoring, improve reliability, and enhance incident remediation. Forrester expects AIOps adoption to triple by 2026. 3. AI-Driven Software Development with TuringBots Generative AI-infused development tools, TuringBots, are set to revolutionize software development lifecycles (SDLC). 30% of teams will accelerate software delivery by automating coding, testing, and documentation using AI-powered models. 4. EU AI Act Will Trigger the First Major Generative AI Fine With the EU AI Act taking effect in 2025, Forrester predicts that a major generative AI provider will receive the first regulatory fine. Businesses must ensure AI compliance, transparency, and risk management strategies to avoid penalties. 5. Agentic AI Architectures Will Largely Fail Despite the hype, 75% of enterprises attempting to build autonomous AI agents will fail, turning instead to consultants and AI vendors for implementation. The complexity of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), data architectures, and multimodal models makes enterprise-wide AI automation difficult. 6. Private Cloud & Hybrid Adoption Surges Security, cost, and data sovereignty concerns are driving a resurgence in private cloud adoption. While major public cloud providers will continue to dominate, enterprises will increase investments in private cloud infrastructure, particularly for AI model training and compliance-driven workloads. What This Means for Enterprises in 2025: AI-driven transformation is no longer optional, but companies must make smarter AI investments rather than chasing quick adoption. The report underscores the importance of governance, security, and sustainable AI deployment strategies for long-term growth.

AI Trends, AI ROI, AI Security, AIOps, AI Compliance, Hybrid Cloud