By Tobie Morgan Hitchcock, CEO and co-founder, SurrealDB

There were numerous technological advances, operational changes and major disruptions that defined 2024, but there's no avoiding the fact that AI dominated both the news cycle and corporate investment priorities. Meanwhile, organizations now have access to an amount of critical company data that makes 2020 feel like a lifetime ago.

To ensure the reward justifies the effort when it comes to AI investment, enterprises are going to be laser-focused in 2025 on using its capabilities to derive insights from the treasure trove of data they're sitting on. However, let's not get drawn into thinking AI is going to take over the business world next year - rather, it will serve as an incredible supporting act.

AI will make huge strides in software development - but not where you think

Despite the hype around AI-generated coding, software development is inherently about building new things that previously did not exist, which AI simply cannot do. In 2025, I expect enterprises to identify new AI use cases for developers, but building applications will mostly remain in the hands of the creative professionals using AI to supplement their work. I think the biggest gains for software developers next year will come in the form of AI-powered search and providing suggestions for where improvements can be made. However, at the end of the day, the actual developers will have to engineer these changes and create the code to ensure a human touch is present throughout the process.

I don't think that AI-generated code will eliminate the need for human involvement and oversight. In my opinion, AI is currently most beneficial for optimizing processes and providing suggestions, which human beings can then act on and improve upon. In 2025, I don't expect to see developers becoming overly reliant on AI-generated code because it's not where the technology provides the most immediate benefits. As AI-generated code improves, though, it'll be important for developers to maintain a crucial role in overseeing the results to ensure their integrity. I do not foresee a world where human involvement in generating code is redundant, primarily because it is such a creative and people-centric role.

Enterprises will prioritize developers' speed to market over spend in 2025

In the current economic landscape, enterprises are most focused on optimizing costs and improving speed to market in 2025. However, to compete against AI tools that can build simple applications incredibly quickly, they're prioritizing investment in solutions that cut developer timelines with cost as a secondary factor. I expect to see enterprises bet big on AI next year to make their time to market faster - and by simplifying their database workflows, they'll actually generate cost reductions as well

Building AI pipelines with security from the ground up will be a major focus for federal agencies

Many global factors, including geopolitical conflict and the rising ransomware threat, have caused federal agencies to rethink their data security. Agencies are heavily investing in system detection to monitor for the intrusion of potential bad actors, but as the complexity of these threats increases, they've discovered that applying quick fixes to existing systems does not provide the level of security needed for such critical data. In 2025, I expect to see an increased focus on building security software from the ground up (leveraging security-first platforms like Rust) as opposed to inserting solutions along the way, following White House guidance from earlier in 2024.

A shift in C-suite priorities will ensure more holistic view on cyber resilience

In 2024, we saw senior business leadership be conservative with their budgets due to apprehension around economic and political uncertainty, but they still invested in flashy cybersecurity tools to protect against the threat of cybercrime. In 2025, these leaders will reassess if their business is truly secured by these 2024 protections alone and begin to ask themselves what's actually important to keep their business running. We'll see investments begin to balance more between preventative solutions and holistic cyber resilience -  including immutable backup storage to ensure recovery in the event of an attack.

At the end of the day, I think 2025 will be transformational in terms of its impact on how organizations address their data and database management. Those who plan accordingly to prepare for the next wave of technological innovation will be much better suited to take advantage of all their data has to offer.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tobie Morgan Hitchcock is CEO & Co-Founder of SurrealDB. He is an experienced tech entrepreneur, developer, and software engineer, with 17 years' experience in the software and cloud-computing industries. In 2021 he founded SurrealDB, with the aim of building the ultimate cloud database for tomorrow's applications. He has experience in a wide range of different software stacks and development languages, with a focus on distributed databases, and highly-available architectures.