Six technology leaders share their insights and predictions for the critical challenges and opportunities that will shape the technology landscape in 2025 in this exclusive VMblog predictions series. From cybersecurity fundamentals to AI-driven innovations, these industry veterans offer their expert perspectives on what businesses need to prepare for in the coming year.

Key Predictions Overview:

Cybersecurity Fundamentals Remain Critical
Tom Marsland, VP of Technology at Cloud Range, emphasizes that organizations will continue to struggle with cybersecurity basics in 2025. Despite rapid technological advancement and AI evolution, fundamental challenges persist in vulnerability management, access control, security awareness training, and data backup/recovery. This is primarily due to resource constraints, lack of prioritization, and increasing IT environment complexity.

Unstructured Data Management Growth
Steve Leeper, VP of Product Marketing at Datadobi, predicts continued growth in unstructured data management systems. Organizations face challenges with endless storage expansions, increased cloud storage adoption costs, new workloads including generative AI, and growing regulatory requirements across industries.

AI and Cybersecurity Evolution
Evan Powell, CEO and Founder of DeepTempo, presents six key predictions:

1. Increased cybersecurity spending alongside rising breach losses
2. Continued AI adoption by attackers despite skepticism
3. Growing concerns about vendor lock-in following major acquisitions
4. Expanded use of data lakes for security intelligence
5. Enhanced focus on cyber contagion and defense in depth
6. Rising burnout among cybersecurity teams

Digital Signatures for AI Era
Mohit Kumar from GlobalSign forecasts a significant boost in digital signatures adoption for both B2C and B2B use cases. This growth is driven by the need to verify the authenticity of media content in an AI-dominated landscape, affecting industries from media companies to insurance and manufacturing.

End-User Computing Trends
Paul Craddock, Global Solutions Engineer at Stratodesk, identifies three major trends:

1. Increased adoption of zero trust network access and enterprise browser technologies
2. Windows 11 migration as Windows 10 reaches end-of-life
3. Growth in digital employee experience solutions driven by hybrid work needs

AI Security and Authentication
Jason Crawforth, Founder and CEO of SWEAR, predicts unprecedented challenges in safeguarding digital asset integrity due to AI manipulation tools. He anticipates blockchain-based digital protection tools becoming industry standards for ensuring digital asset authenticity.