2025 is sure to bring new challenges, as well as many exciting opportunities. Check out this roundup of some networking insights from industry experts, analysts, journalists, vendors and telecom executives, exploring the trends taking hold in 2025.
Data Center Physical Infrastructure Market Growth Forecast to Accelerate in 2025 from AI Boom
“The continued strength in orders and historically high vendor backlogs gives me significant confidence that revenue growth will accelerate in 2025, but also points to sustained growth in the years to follow.”
The long-term impacts of AI on networking
“Every current enterprise with a view on AI networking says that too much attention is paid to the “networking” part and not enough to the “AI.” Like any network mission, AI demands an understanding of both technology and traffic implications before you can start running cables and connecting things.”
The quest for AI-driven gains will demand major business transformations
“Many organisations have a complex landscape of legacy IT systems with distributed data stores. Previous tactical decisions made to support business growth and to seize specific opportunities may now hinder, rather than facilitate, an organisation’s ability to gain value from AI.”
Paul Jevons, Director, expert in tech-enabled transformation – Analysys Mason
The year of AI-driven industrial cloud strategy
“the rise of AI-driven cloud strategies creates both hurdles and opportunities. Suppliers must balance customization and scalability, address talent gaps, and foster collaborative ecosystems. Industrial enterprises are poised for significant transformation in 2025, and suppliers who align their strategies with this shift will thrive.”
Redesigning the operating model
“Telcos can begin to lay a new, streamlined foundation for success with a comprehensive, digital-driven redesign of the entire operating model. In such an overhaul of the organization, telco leaders should act as if they are starting entirely from scratch, devising an enterprise unencumbered by current constraints while making clear that the transformation is one of their top priorities.”
Andrea Travasoni, Luca Fiandro, and Venkat Atluri with Marco Labianca – McKinsey
Worldwide Enterprise Connectivity 2025 Predictions
“By 2027, 70% of Enterprises Will Adopt Cloud-Native Networking for Digital and AI Workflows Across on Premises, Edge, and Multicloud, Amplifying Cloud Providers’ Role as End-to-End Connectivity Suppliers.”
Ongoing Shift Towards Cloud Native Networks
“As the move away from traditional hardware-based infrastructure towards the cloud gathers pace, telecom operators will continue to adopt networking solutions empowered by technology such as containerization, virtualization and microservices.”
Bernard Marr, world-renowned futurist and Forbes contributor
AI workloads for vertical industries will drive demand for true AI Edge
“Considering the cost and scarcity of resources required for AI training and inference, Vertical industries like manufacturing will look to optimize where data is stored and workloads are executed.”
Emergence of AI-Ready Infrastructure
“Enterprises are expected to adopt AI-ready infrastructure, including AI-specific switches and GPUs, to support the increasing complexity of AI workloads. This shift will necessitate significant investments in upgrading data center networking capabilities.”
Hyperscale and/or AI cluster island consolidation
“I believe we’ll see some consolidation around the islands approach, in which most clusters will not exceed 8K GPUs. This means there will be a lot more clusters to build.”
How do You Think 2025 will Impact Networking?
2025 promises to be another interesting year for networking. Maybe even a turning point. Network operators are pressed more than ever to modernize their networks, and plan for supporting new services. For enterprises looking to reap the benefits of AI technologies will require investment in tremendous capacity and inter- and intra-data center connectivity. Looking ahead, those responsible for networking will have a chance to implement further advances and innovations that promise new possibilities for the connectivity experience.
So, what do you expect to be the big challenges and changes for the various areas of networking in 2025?
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