3 Key Trends for Infrastructure and IT Operations Leaders in 2025

Organizations are experiencing more business area teams taking the lead in identifying, selecting and implementing technology solutions for their goals and needs. In fact, 26% of business area staff is dedicated to technology and 73% of line of business managers want business technologists on their teams. Perhaps, most importantly, 79% of CIOs are reporting business-led IT as successful. 

This type of setup enables those closest to the problem to identify which technological solution will be most effective at accelerating innovation and responsiveness. 

To support this move towards business-led IT, I&O leaders must ensure a robust, scalable and user-friendly IT infrastructure wherein even nontechnical users can deploy technology solutions independently. Consider self-service infrastructure platforms, cloud services, and automated workflows — all supported by strong governance, security and compliance frameworks – as potential ways to support this type of infrastructure.

Today’s emerging technologies, especially transformative technologies like AI, will greatly augment many of the IT roles. Within two to three years, I&O leaders expect GenAI to significantly impact their function. 

I&O teams are struggling to develop the necessary talent and skills in an ever-evolving world with leaders noting “keeping pace with new skills and competency needs of the function” as the top challenge of planning and executing talent strategies. 

The combination of augmented skills and an inability to meet future business skill requirements leaves I&O leaders struggling to attract, engage and retain a workforce that can grow with the business.

To avoid lock-in with single vendor strategies, I&O leaders have multisourced technology solutions. Unfortunately, this has led to increasingly complex infrastructure. Most organizations are deploying applications in two (or more) on-premises data centers, two (or more) colocation providers, three (or more) IaaS providers and three (or more) PaaS providers. In fact, 81% of those who use cloud rely on multiple providers. 

I&O leaders must balance legacy infrastructure with modernization and grapple with unpredictable customer demand from both internal and external teams. Unsurprisingly, I&O leaders cite availability of people resources as one of the top three threats they expect to face in the next year. These teams are also under pressure to enhance the resilience, flexibility and performance of services built on the infrastructure.

This technology diversification has left I&O teams spread thin fielding increasingly dynamic and complex demands. 

To effectively respond to these 2025 trends, I&O leaders will need to leverage their visibility into the organization’s technology to collaborate with peers and reduce risky technical debt, build a workforce that can meet the shifting needs of the organization and implement adaptive governance to help I&O meet unexpected demands.