2025 trend highlights

Concept infographic on technology highlights for 2025 generated by Google Gemini (Nano Banana Pro).

The pace of innovation changed in 2025, said Tori Paulman, VP Analyst at Gartner. “What feels different this year is the pace. We’ve seen more innovations emerge in a single year than ever before. Because the next wave of innovation isn’t years away, organisations that act now will not only weather volatility but shape their industries for decades to come,” she said in a list of 2026 predictions.

Digital convergence

Alex Teo, VP & MD of Southeast Asia, Siemens Digital Industries Software, said that 2025’s defining technology moment centres on the operationalisation of the Digital Thread, a way to integrate product lifecycles digitally. "This approach unifies every stage of a product’s lifecycle and the convergence of physical and virtual worlds through digital twins," he elaborated.

"In recent years, companies have been forced to manage highly diverse and volatile supply chains, especially with the tariff reforms this year. With teams distributed across multiple geographies, many organisations needed a unified, multidisciplinary approach to build more connected and data-driven ecosystems. This shift is more predominant in Southeast Asia, where more than 60% of imports depend on global supply chains – an environment that often results in fragmented processes and functional silos. 

"In response, new solutions, such as cloud-based logistics management systems, are playing a greater role in enhancing visibility, efficiency, and resilience across complex transportation networks, helping organisations realise the tangible value of digital threads." 

Teo also illustrated his argument with a May 2025 customer implementation. Thanakorn Vegetable Oil Products (TVOP), a leader in Thailand’s edible oil industry, adopted Siemens’ AX4-based Transportation Management System to achieve end-to-end visibility, real-time shipment tracking, and exception management.

"This cloud-native platform enabled TVOP to streamline collaboration with internal teams and third-party logistics providers, reduce manual processes, and improve synchronisation of inbound and outbound operations, overall enhancing customer satisfaction. The integration marks a significant step toward building the logistics data foundation needed for a digital twin, demonstrating that digital transformation has gone beyond aspirations to deliver measurable improvements in speed, cost, and quality," Teo said.

"TVOP’s adoption reflects a broader shift underway in Southeast Asia, and signals how cutting-edge logistics innovations are being applied across one of the world’s most dynamic supply chain regions."

"The journey toward digitalisation is not solely about implementing new technologies. It is about reimagining how teams design, build, and deliver products. By breaking down silos, embracing openness, and connecting data across the lifecycle, companies can establish the foundation for smarter, faster, and more connected innovation – setting the stage for success in 2026," Teo said.

Agentic AI

Gavin Barfield, VP and CTO, Solutions, Salesforce ASEAN said that businesses are at an inflection point, brought about by the rise of agentic AI and the possibilities for enterprises. "2025 delivered enterprise AI that moved beyond simple prompts and reactive text generation into a new reality where digital agents don’t just talk — they act," he said.

"According to the Salesforce Agentic Enterprise Index, AI agent creation and deployment soared by 119% in the first half of 2025 alone, and employee-agent interactions grew 65% per month."

"Moving into 2026, agentic momentum is undeniable. This is the year when digitally ambitious businesses across the diverse ASEAN region are accelerating the pace to become an agentic enterprise: where AI elevates human potential like never before, empowering every employee to achieve more, every customer-facing moment to deliver more, and every company to operate with unprecedented intelligence and speed," Barfield added.

"The evolution will be characterised by the rise of localised, region-specific AI innovation and small language AI models (SLMs) suited for specific purposes or industries. This marks a clear opportunity for ASEAN businesses to repeat another bout of technological leapfrogging with agentic AI."

Analytics

Chiara De Gasperin, a Forrester analyst, said in a blog post that generative AI-driven automation is on the rise, but that most organisations are still exploring the capabilities, benefits, and risks. Vendors, on the other hand, are ahead of the curve, introducing generative AI tools to automate tasks such as generating charts, identifying trends, and summarising key insights.

While De Gasperin said no one solution can fully address the breadth of digital analytics use cases today, insights are being democratised. "Marketers, product managers, and other stakeholders are increasingly leveraging these tools to create and apply insights across departments. This broader set of users is making digital analytics solutions more holistic, with analysis of customer behaviour, UX/UI, and digital product performance," she said in the blog post.

UX/UI refers to the user interface and user experience.

Coding

"We need to bust the silo between data, AI and application development. And that means addressing the current chasm that exists between DevOps and ModelOps. The goal for every organisation is to develop intelligent application landscapes, but a significant obstacle in many IT departments is the common isolation of application development from AI initiatives. 

"This siloed approach becomes unsustainable when the business requires intelligent solutions. This year, we’ve seen the classic divide between pro-code and low code slowly dissolve. We need to see the same happen for DevOps and ModelOps in 2026," said Raymond Kok, CEO, Mendix.

Jobs

Both soft and technical skills rank highly in IT job searches, according to the JobStreet by Seek 2025 Job Search Rewind. Soft skills like customer service and relationship management remain in demand, alongside technical skills such as troubleshooting, computer science and Python programming. Overall, the IT sector saw a 169% increase in job applications year-on-year, ranking top as the industry with the highest growth in applications year-on-year, while the science and technology sector in second place experienced a 29% jump. Figures were compared for November 2023 to October 2024 against November 2024 to October 2025.

Video

"The security industry in 2025 was marked by a shift from traditional, reactive surveillance to intelligence-driven security ecosystems powered by AI, cloud, and integrated data platforms. Globally, and especially across Asia Pacific, organisations accelerated their digital transformation agendas, embracing video technologies not only for protection but also for operational efficiency, compliance, and improved user experience.   The video analytics market’s continued climb—projected to reach US$37.84 B by 2030—reflects how security has matured into a true business enabler," said Kiean Khoo, Asia Business Head, Milestone Systems, of the video surveillance space.

"Innovations such as predictive analytics, anomaly detection, and privacy-preserving technologies reshaped how organisations anticipate incidents, strengthen situational awareness, and extract meaningful insights from video data. These tools are expanding beyond security, influencing sectors from logistics to smart cities, and redefining expectations for efficiency and citizen services," he added.

"The industry also saw growing emphasis on AI and compliance, as regulators tightened guidelines on how video data is collected and processed. Trust, transparency, and fairness have become some of the critical differentiators."

Financial sector

"Across the Asia Pacific region, financial institutions are accelerating their adoption of artificial intelligence and embedding it directly into their core operations. What was once treated as a small-scale experiment in sentiment tracking has evolved into an essential engine for filtering vast volumes of information and transforming that information into clear, actionable insight," said Kelvin Phua, GM APAC, BridgeWise. 

"With AI, previously siloed datasets - from full-text corporate disclosures to historical bond records and shifting market signals - are now being connected, contextualised, and interpreted at speeds human teams alone cannot achieve.

“As markets become more complex and globalised, the challenge is no longer accessing information but turning that information into understanding.”

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