Insights Of The Year

The end of the year is here and it means it’s time to reflect on the most significant changes that shaped the tech industry in 2025 as well as to define new priorities for the year ahead. Today, to stay competitive, companies must not only recognize how fundamentally the industry is changing, but also learn how to adapt and improve within it.

The five shifts that defined 2025

1. This year at IT Nation Evolve™, specialists noted a new fundamental shift in the MSP (Managed Service Provider) industry, which they’ve called “curve jump”. For example, the introduction of RMM was a second curve jump, similarly, today the third curve jump is a shift to automation, defined by AI. According to Service Leadership data, it expects to bring a 21,6% improvement in service efficiency over the next five years since AI can take on workflow that was limited by human capacity.
2. Instead of using AI as a product, successful companies embedded AI as a solution since the MIT research showed that 95% of companies saw zero return from GenAI because it wasn’t used right. In 2026, AI will be a problem-solving tool, helping companies to tackle backlog issues and improve their performance, rather than a standalone feature.
3. In 2025, the cloud adaptation changed, now companies leverage several clouds at once with cloud vendors’ help to work across clouds easier. As a result, the next year spendings on cloud infrastructure is going to rise as well as modernization of tools is going to enhance.
4. According to Pluralsight’s most recent Tech Skills Report, tech practitioners ranked cybersecurity as the most crucial skill, while executives ranked it as the second most important growth area for their business. The reason is not only shortage of skilled specialists, but also an increasing amount of challenges, such as AI-powered attacks, stricter regulatory demands, and escalating supply-chain and identity risks.
5. Engineering shifted from writing code to orchestrating systems since AI assistants and platform engineering removed much of the manual, repetitive coding work, allowing developers to focus on higher-level design and problem-solving.

What will separate strong tech teams in 2026 from everyone else, once the 2025 shifts are ‘table stakes’?

By 2026, the shifts that defined 2025 will no longer be competitive advantages, they will be baseline expectations.

1. Teams that experimented, and teams that optionalized AI and integrated it into development to solve problems will be divided by how far they will go.
2. Strong teams will try to close the skills gap, which increased by 8% according to the World Economic Forum, without even questioning the importance of investing into cybersecurity. They already know that cybersecurity is a big issue, and the more AI is developing, the more threats arise.
3. High-performing teams will be defined by their ability to validate AI outputs, data integrity, and system behavior.
4. Teams that fail to systematically develop skills will slow down regardless of how advanced their platforms are. Additionally, strong teams know that hiring is not only more expensive than upskilling, but also time-consuming.

To conclude,

2025 set a new baseline for technology teams. In 2026, success will belong to those who not only adapted to these shifts, but moved ahead of them.