What are the top three technology predictions for 2025?

Quick answer: the top technology trends to watch are AI moving from a novelty to a working part of the development workflow, continued consolidation around a small number of dominant cloud/platform patterns, and growing pressure on teams to demonstrate DevOps maturity (automation, deployment frequency, recovery time) as a competitive differentiator, not just an internal efficiency measure.

Welcome to 2025 — what is this year going to bring? Well, I'm glad you're here, because I've got three top predictions of what I think is going to happen in 2025. I'm Neil Millard from tech-answers.club, DevOps Professional of the Year last year, and I help IT professionals with software delivery, DevOps, and careers advice.

It's a long time since I started in IT, in 1995 — 30 years ago. I was a trainee for two years, an engineer for two years working on desktops, two years on server software, and then I went contracting. But like any great planning, we need to know where we are first — I fly helicopters, you may have noticed on the channel, and we have aviation maps that tell us where we can go, where we're not supposed to go, and the bit in the middle where you have to ask permission. Last year I covered a lot of what was happening in open source and things (I've got another video about those changes), but meanwhile, let's get on with it.

What are the new things we can look forward to? Could it be to do with communication, the way we talk to each other — mobile phones were the biggest change in that area, maybe something else. Containers — let's containerize everything, I don't know if you've tried this, sometimes it works really well and sometimes it's really, really hard. Maybe there's something in there for us. Or is it to do with CI/CD pipelines — my pet project is automating CD pipelines so you can build your software, get it tested, get it deployed, and focus on what you love doing, which is writing code.

Well, all of those things could be achieved with AI. AI launched onto the scene in 2023 and it's been growing in popularity and power ever since. Imagine waking up to find your entire Ops pipeline has been optimized overnight, your code is reviewed, your infrastructure is scaled — your coffee, well, you still have to make that yourself — but in 2025 AI agents are going to transform how we work in ways that will make ChatGPT look like a calculator. Let's dive in.

Prediction one: multi-agent systems

Three simple words, but what it means is we can use a multi-agent system together with AI. There's software like CrewAI, where AI agents can become autonomous systems, and those autonomous systems can plan complex tasks, execute multiple steps without human intervention, arguably learn from their mistakes, and — this is the biggie — collaborate with other AI agents. When it's talking about breaking tasks into smaller tasks, it can hand those off to separate agents — it's all AI at the back end, but you give it a different context, a different instruction, and it can come back with better results, and that collaboration will really bring the whole thing together.

Will they replace you? Probably not. When we're talking about technology it's always about doing or delivering more with the same resources — we have a food processor at home, and apparently it says on the box you can make mayonnaise with it. Even if a klutz like me in the kitchen can make mayonnaise with a food processor, that's providing an output I couldn't achieve without that technology. AI is the same — it's not about replacing you, it's about augmentation and focusing on work that wouldn't otherwise get done. AI can't create genuinely original stuff, it just takes stuff it already knows about and rehashes it together, and if it trains too much on its own output there's a horrible feedback loop that causes it to collapse — "model collapse," they call it. Studies show that after five or six training loops down the line, AI suddenly starts spitting out garbage because it's just regurgitating its own stuff. So humans cannot be replaced by AI.

Prediction two: cloud repatriation

Remember when everyone said cloud is the future? Well, plot twist, apparently it isn't always. There's stuff you need to know about moving to the cloud — infrastructure costs, data transfer costs (transferring from here to there, and everything is data), storage costs once you've transferred it, and then there are hidden operational costs — somebody's got to pay for the people actually creating, running, and keeping this thing from breaking.

So let me show you the real cost comparison. Modern hardware efficiency, great. Predictable workloads, great. When you're at scale with modern hardware and predictable workloads, cloud is not always the answer. Picture this: your data, your hardware, and therefore your rules — you've got complete control over the infrastructure, customization and optimization are all possible because you control everything, and there's lower latency for specific use cases — you can put specific stuff next to other stuff, put your database right next to your application servers, even on the same switch. In the cloud you don't have that much control — it's like owning versus renting, but for your servers.

So we're talking about cloud repatriation. Some of the bigger players have already done it — they moved over to the cloud, ran it there, and are now moving stuff back to the main data centre. The thing is, it's not all or nothing — you can have smart workload distribution and cloud-bursting strategies (I spoke about that in another video), where we take a hybrid of a static workload that gives us the baseline, and use the cloud for the spiky stuff, those big traffic-spike moments. It's like having a vacation home in the cloud — you only use it temporarily. If you're thinking about cloud repatriation, I've put together a decision matrix at tech-answers.club — there's a free link down there where you can get that cloud repatriation matrix.

Prediction three: robot revolution

Imagine never having to iron your clothes again. Show a robot a tangled shirt and — mind blown — a simple robot could hold up the ironed shirt, and that might change the entire economy. Maybe this is the year of the robot revolution. Why is ironing a really good example? Because if a task is really complex but requires precision, and is repetitive but variable — you don't always wear the same clothes, and they don't always need the same level of ironing — and it's a high-demand service (I ask you, who loves ironing? Some people might, but most people see it as a chore), then it's a genuinely hard robotics problem. Trying to iron fabric is really hard — it's like trying to teach a helicopter to hover; a standard helicopter can't do it, which is why we gave it four blades and called it a drone. Really tricky.

But what happens when we give robots the power to master those tasks? Service industry transformation. We've already got lots of robots in factories, because factory tasks are repetitive and easy to do, without a lot of finicky precision changes — everything's where it's supposed to be, and making a car out of metal is quite simple, but with fabric it's all wobbly, foldy, and tricky. So we could see a service-industry transformation that disrupts the jobs market like the Industrial Revolution did several hundred years ago. What will happen is new roles get created, because somebody's got to look after all these robots — regular jobs will decline, but new jobs will take their place, jobs only humans can do, so there'll be a ripple effect across the economy: some employment decrease, but tech jobs increasing, and people having more time for training and leisure. Because prices will drop due to automation, there'll be more disposable income, meaning more spending on professional services.

So what do we do about the low-level, unskilled jobs the robots could easily take? There's a thing called universal income, and I think it's a solution — it's a bit like a DevOps pipeline, but for society. It automatically distributes wealth: it takes wealth from companies because their costs are dropping from using robots instead of staff (and they're not going to drop their prices, so we tax them instead) and distributes that to the populace. It also provides an economic stability mechanism — a bit like the benefit system in the UK, except the biggest issue with the benefit system is it costs a ton of money just to run. If everybody gets a universal income, you don't have that management overhead of deciding who's "worthy" — everybody just gets it — and with that extra money in your pocket you'd be encouraged to take on training, and part-time work might become the norm. Still waiting for the four-day week myself.

So what would you do with your free time if robots handled all your chores? Let me know in the comments below. Remember when cloud computing seemed radical? This one's coming faster than we think — the question isn't if, but when, and I think 2025 could be the year.

Do you have any tech questions I can help with? I've been an IT expert for over 20 years (well, apparently 30, according to the intro) — head on over to tech-answers.club and we can talk about all sorts of fun things. Thanks for watching, and if you got this far, be sure to subscribe and like the video, and I'll see you in the next one.