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Top IT predictions in APAC in 2025

Enterprises across the Asia-Pacific region are expected to focus on securing their AI workloads, invest in energy efficient infrastructure and rethink their platform strategy, among other tech trends in the new year

The new year is expected to bring significant advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), with nearly half of businesses planning to increase their AI investments. However, this growth also brings new security concerns and will require organisations to focus on safeguarding their AI systems and defending against AI-driven attacks.

Data will also be a key focus area, with enterprises undertaking projects to free up siloed datasets, along with the increasing importance of intelligent software testing and quantum security. In this round-up, we review the key IT trends, including AI and other developments, that are likely to shape the industry across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in 2025.

Focus on AI safeguards

The new year will see a seismic shift in how organisations across APAC embrace AI, according to Reuben Koh, Akamai’s director of security strategy for the region. With nearly half of businesses are gearing up to significantly increase their AI investments, AI security cannot be ignored, he said.

“Organisations will need to focus on two key areas: safeguarding their AI systems from vulnerabilities and defending against increasingly sophisticated AI-driven attacks. Cyber criminals are already leveraging AI to make their methods more effective and evasive, which means businesses must ramp up their security frameworks to counter these evolving threats,” he warned.

The hype surrounding large language models (LLMs) will also face a stark reality check as security vulnerabilities come to the forefront. While some exploitable flaws have already been publicly disclosed, Koh expects an uptick in their frequency and severity.

“LLMs present a significant attack surface for malicious actors, and the nature and locations of these vulnerabilities will become increasingly evident. As the risks become clearer, organisations will need to weigh the promise of LLMs against the potential security pitfalls, leading to a more cautious approach in their AI strategies,” he added.

Data thrust back into the spotlight

A less sophisticated algorithm powered by a large dataset will outperform a more sophisticated algorithm trained on a smaller dataset, driving more enterprises to free up siloed datasets in a bid to improve the output of their analytics and AI investments, according to Pure Storage.

To harness the full potential of AI and analytics, enterprises will need to prioritise initiatives that enhance data quality, streamline access and foster collaboration among teams. This will pave the way for more informed decision-making, improved customer experiences and sustainable growth.

Quantum security heats up

Quantum computing projects are spreading across APAC, with governments and venture capital firms investing heavily in local initiatives. While quantum attacks on common encryption methods are not yet feasible, nation-state-backed threat actors are expected to intensify their “harvest now, decrypt later” tactics, targeting highly classified data with the intent to unlock it when quantum technology advances, according to Simon Green, Palo Alto Networks’ president for the region.

This poses a risk to governments and businesses, with the potential to jeopardise civilian and military communications, undermine critical infrastructure and overcome security protocols for most internet-based financial transactions.

To counteract these threats effectively, Green urged organisations to adopt quantum-resistant defences, including quantum-resistant tunnelling, comprehensive crypto data libraries, and other technologies with enhanced crypto-agility.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently released final standards for post-quantum cryptography. Transitioning to these algorithms will help secure data against future quantum threats. Organisations that require high security should explore quantum key distribution (QKD) as a means of ensuring secure communications.

“As quantum computing continues to become more and more of a reality and potential threats loom, it will be essential to adopt these measures to keep pace with the rapidly evolving cyber landscape, prevent data theft, and ensure the integrity of their critical systems,” Green said.

Building trust in the new world of work

The future of work will be tech-enabled where job roles continue to evolve alongside technological advancements, much like the transition from fax to email, according to Tay Bee Kheng, president of ASEAN at Cisco.

Work will happen in tech-enabled spaces, with people naturally seeking the flexibility that technology brings to their personal lives in their work routines. This shift will raise questions around the value that the physical office will add to work, she noted.

As employees shift their mindset from going to the office to do heads-down work to using this as an opportunity to connect and collaborate with their teams, employers need to cultivate an environment that supports this type of work.

“Whether it’s about the type of work, the location it’s performed, or who it’s done by, trust is a crucial element at every stage of the process. Employers must trust that they have hired the right people for the right roles, and they will deliver the goals set for them. Likewise, employees must trust that their efforts will be recognised and rewarded by their employers, with opportunities for growth and development.

“Trust will become a reciprocal relationship, and the ability to foster this trust will distinguish high-performing teams and companies from the rest,” she said.

Rethinking customer experience

Beyond the workplace, customer experience (CX) will undergo a profound transformation, said Ricky Kapur, head of APAC at Zoom, noting that customers will expect to be recognised and have their needs met across all touchpoints.

At the same time, delivering personalised CX will shift from being the responsibility of contact centres alone, to an AI-first “total experience” approach that involves every department shaping and delivering CX, Kapur said.

“This shared accountability across departments will help foster a supportive environment for agents, balancing AI-driven efficiency with the human touch to deliver personalised CX that meets rising customer expectations.

“Together with enhanced agent performance and hyper-personalised anticipatory services, these changes will fuel a long-awaited rebound in customer satisfaction. Proactive outreach, once a nice-to-have, will become a baseline expectation, enhancing satisfaction and reducing churn,” he added.

Looming energy crisis in datacentres

While generative AI and quantum computing are revolutionary technologies, they are fuelling a surge in data volume. Datacentres, already struggling to keep pace, will face an even greater challenge with a faster pace of digital transformation, according to Terry Maiolo, vice-president and general manager for APAC at OVHcloud.

Maiolo noted that the computational demands of AI and quantum workloads will require substantial processing power and storage capacity, with the resulting heat output driving higher energy consumption by cooling systems, exacerbating overall datacentre energy usage.

“By implementing advanced cooling technologies such as water cooling, datacentres can significantly reduce their water and electricity consumption, thereby minimising their environmental impact,” Maiolo said. “We are already seeing markets like Thailand take steps, with others like Vietnam announcing plans to follow in the coming years.”

Intelligent software testing will be critical

With the faster pace of software development today, organisations cannot test everything due to limited resources and time. Intelligent software testing will become critical, enabling developers to visualise and evaluate how code changes could alter systems and software. This will help development teams to identify potential impacts, assess risks and make informed decisions about which tests to prioritise, ensuring quality is maintained even under tight constraints, according to Damien Wong, Tricentis’ senior vice-president for the region.

Wong noted that the CrowdStrike incident has shown that effective testing must go beyond system silos to encompass all business processes. “Companies need to recognise that business processes increasingly span multiple interconnected applications and systems, and the real risk lies in failing to account for the ripple effects of changes across these integrations,” he warned.

Hybrid cloud infrastructure no longer sufficient

If 2024 was a pilot year for generative AI, the new year will see businesses seeking to scale up their deployments of the technology in an increasingly hybrid IT environment. But simply deploying hybrid cloud infrastructure won’t be enough – businesses will face a “mission-critical need for multi-cloud or hybrid capabilities for data and analytics”, according to Remus Lim, Cloudera’s senior vice-president for the region.

Noting that businesses will need to bring AI models to where the data resides, as well as move data and workloads across their organisations to drive insights, Lim said there will be greater emphasis on hybrid data management platforms that integrate both on-premise and cloud data sources to provide wider access to diverse datasets while maintaining control, security and governance over model endpoints and operations.

Enterprises to rethink platform strategy

Most engineering leaders are familiar with Conway’s Law and will strive not to ship products that mirror their organisational structure. But that’s not the case for technology suppliers which have been shipping products based on departmental work functions, according to Scott Harrell, CEO of Infoblox.

This has resulted in platforms that work in isolation for NetOps (network operations), CloudOps (cloud operations) and SecOps (security operations) teams, creating delays in workflows as teams raise support tickets to accomplish daily tasks.  

To address this, Harrell said enterprises will need to rethink their platform strategy, one that demands horizontally as well as vertically integrated platforms. “Many customers have already started to converge their organisations to reflect this need, with NetOps and SecOps members rotating into CloudOps teams.

“You can see this happening in some areas of the market, like the move from secure service edge to secure access service edge, where a NetOps function such as branch routing is converging with SecOps or the addition of digital experience monitoring capabilities to SecOps platforms,” he added.

The rise of agentic AI

Unlike chatbots and co-pilots, AI agents can autonomously navigate tasks and make real-time decisions directly in the flow of work – moving from mere assistance to taking action based on live data and context, marking a major step forward in enterprise AI, according to Gavin Barfield, vice-president and chief technology officer for solutions at Salesforce ASEAN.

“In 2025, purpose-driven AI agents designed to address specific workflow needs and provide measurable benefits will help organisations move beyond experimentation to achieve tangible outcomes. For this to happen, generative AI needs to be grounded in the right data and delivered in the flow of work to offer meaningful impact,” he said.

Concurring, Sunil Wahi, vice-president of solution engineering for applications at Oracle APAC, noted that 70% of organisations are already planning to integrate or explore the use of AI agents, citing research from Informa TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group.

Acting on behalf of employees, these agents will also help bridge gaps in the labour force, addressing challenges such as AI skill shortages and talent scarcity faced by many organisations in the region.

As AI agents solidify their role as allies in the workplace, fears of AI being more foe than friend will also dissipate. While about 53.5% of employees in APAC worry that AI could take away their jobs in 2024, the focus will shift from replacement to partnership next year, Wahi noted. “Employees will discover that AI agents enhance their work, freeing them to focus on more strategic and meaningful roles that only humans can fulfill,” he said.

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