Tech priorities, skills and the AI outlook for 2025

Last year saw a big change in the concerns of IT leaders and IT professionals from BCS’ annual research on tech priorities, with AI making big gains and cloud concerns receding.

BCS has reported on future IT needs in various guises over recent years — and again, for 2025, we asked questions of two key groups: those who are IT leaders and those who are digital or IT professionals.
Each year we ask what responders consider to be the top technology issues to be addressed — the nuance in the question is that we ask leaders what they consider to be their organisation’s most important issues, but we ask professionals what they think should be prioritised by their organisations.

For IT leaders, in previous years, cloud and cybersecurity have consistently featured in the top two technology priorities, with an occasional swapping of order. In 2022, cloud was a top priority for 27% (58% featured it in their top three) and cybersecurity for 24% (57% in the top three). In 2023, this has changed markedly with cloud being the top priority for only 12%, but cybersecurity for 39%. In 2023, business process automation replaced the cloud as the second top priority — the first time it had dropped out of the top two since 2014.

In 2024 cybersecurity maintained its pre-eminent place as a concern: 38% of leaders make it the number one priority, with 26% of IT professionals concurring. However, AI was rated by 21% of leaders and professionals as the second highest issue. Amongst IT leaders in 2023 this was only 9%, with a figure of 10% in 2022.

In 2025 leaders’ top priorities are cybersecurity (33%), followed by AI at 24% — and joint third are business process automation and the ‘as-a-service’ model — both at 11%. This means that cloud has been relegated by leaders to fifth place, and by professionals to sixth place — a further indication of the maturing of cloud technologies and its almost complete embedding in business.

AI continues to be a big issue — as it makes inroads in addressing skills concerns and becomes more widely adopted, if not understood, by broader society. The following report has both quantitative and qualitative content to give a feel for what is concerning BCS members as 2025 dawns…