Assessing the 2025 Cloud Technology Landscape: Predictions for Your AI Strategy and More

It’s the most wonderful time of the year once again! No, we’re not just talking about the holidays. We’re talking about closing out 2024 after four very busy and rewarding quarters. This also means we’ve been having conversations with our customers and partners about what to expect in the year ahead (especially pertaining to their ever-evolving AI strategy). Believe us when we say our predictions are the real gift this holiday season.

As soon as November and December arrive, we like to ask Nasuni’s top voices, bold thinkers, and industry innovators how the technology landscape is going to transform over the next 12 months. It’s a chance for them to say which trends will endure and which will be passing fads. We challenge them not to play it safe, but instead to use their insight and expertise to make strong statements about the future of cloud, data, and infrastructure.

Before we share our forecasts for 2025, let’s take a moment to review how well we did last year.

Looking Back: How Accurate Were Our 2024 Predictions?

Gen AI did get its moment in the spotlight. This time last year, the clamor around building an AI strategy was at its loudest. And, yes, some of our predictions were about AI too. But did we back the right horses?

“Ignoring SaaS and AI trends is not an option,” explained Matthew Grantham, Head of Worldwide Partners. And he wasn’t wrong. It was the VARs who became obsessed with their customers’ needs and goals, and remained agile in the face of new cloud priorities, that came out on top.

Our Chief Innovation Officer of Data Intelligence and AI, Jim Liddle, also had a lot to say about AI. But while everyone else was zigging, Jim was—as usual—zagging. It paid off. He correctly identified the need for companies to get on top of the data quality, governance, access and storage requirements of AI to use it to gain a competitive advantage.

Yet more tech layoffs occurred as squeezed budgets bit. At Nasuni, we kept our heads throughout the AI frenzy, not letting it distract us from significant shifts in the wider market. David Grant, Nasuni’s President, called it when he said, “Responsible growth will be key for tech during a challenging economic climate.” 2024 was another big year for layoffs in the sector, with even market leaders feeling the impact of budget squeezes, and companies including Cisco, Dropbox, Intel and Dell letting go of staff members.

Data sharing continues to fuel industry innovation. Chris Addis, our Vice President of Sales in EMEA, mentioned: “Take the brave next step and share data and learnings with the market to supercharge industry development.” He correctly predicted that centralizing and securely sharing data would help industries discover new trends and bring innovative products to market more quickly in 2024.

Looking Ahead: What’s on the Horizon in 2025?

Multimodal AI will experience widespread enterprise adoption. Jim Liddle, Chief Innovation Officer

Multimodal AI is able to process multiple different types of data including images, audio, video and structured data to get a broader and deeper understanding than from text alone. Jim expects it to transform how organizations treat business data that is embedded within charts, graphs and images: “Multimodal AI will unlock a lot of use cases and benefits for a company’s file assets.”

If Jim says it’s one to watch, you’ll definitely want to keep it top of mind for your own AI strategy.

Multimodal AI will improve decision-making, reduce costs and supercharge innovation. Jim Liddle, Chief Innovation Officer

Multimodal AI analyzes multiple data types simultaneously, breaking down silos between structured and unstructured data. Combining these lets businesses generate better analytics and make more informed decisions. There are cost benefits as well. Multimodal AI automates data processing tasks, reducing the costs of data handling. Jim’s advice? Adopt early to differentiate yourself by fueling the innovation of new services and business models built on previously hidden insights.

AI will soon come to your data, not the other way round. Michael Sotnick, SVP Business and Corporate Development

This year’s AI strategy predictions have to work pretty hard to be remarkable, and our partner team is leading the charge. Michael anticipates that leading cloud providers such as Microsoft, AWS, and Google will continue to fight it out over AI, but that the nature of their fight will fundamentally change. He says we’re standing on the brink of “a transformative shift” as the hyperscalers start bringing cloud-based AI directly to the data’s location. This reduced movement of data will make AI widely accessible even to highly regulated sectors for the first time.

The growth of RAG-based AI will accelerate. Michael Sotnick, SVP Business and Corporate Development

Many of Nasuni’s customers are already taking advantage of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) based AI, and Michael expects its popularity to soar in the coming year. RAG is uniquely valuable because it uses data from within an organization to fine tune LLMs trained on external data. The insights it generates as a result are both hyper-relevant and hyper-specific to that company, letting it become more self-sufficient.

If the past year has shown us anything, it’s that in order for this proprietary data to be successfully leveraged by AI, it first needs to be located, cleaned, and curated. We developed our ‘Fit-for-AI’ framework to help our customers audit, consolidate, secure, and prepare data ready to drive even more value in 2025.

The ‘V for Value’ in VAR will return with a vengeance. Matthew Grantham, Head of Worldwide Partners

The ‘V for Value’ in VAR is set to make a triumphant comeback in 2025. “Customers no longer need volume approaches to technology but instead want forward-looking vendors and insightful channel partners,” explains Matthew. Jaded after mass tech adoption, and having been burnt by over-promising, companies are ready for a more pragmatic approach. They’ll place their trust in outcomes-driven channel partners who they can rely on to deliver long term value.

How to Leverage the Cloud in 2025

We don’t have a crystal ball at Nasuni, but we do have the next best thing: access to some of the most visionary minds working in cloud, data, and artificial intelligence. Of course, even we can’t predict everything. However, our combined experience and focus on our customers make sure that moving into the future doesn’t feel like heading out into uncharted waters.

Nasuni is a leading agile and scalable hybrid cloud platform that can help you consolidate your data and prepare it for all that AI has to offer – today and well into the future. We have a proven and trusted process for getting the most out of your AI strategy and navigating new territory, so let’s set sail into 2025 together.