DEVOPSdigest

As part of DEVOPSdigest's annual list of DevOps predictions, industry experts — from analysts and consultants to the top vendors — offer thoughtful, insightful, and often controversial predictions on how DevOps and development technologies will evolve in 2025.

Some of these predictions may come true in the next 12 months, while others may be just as valid but take several years to be realized. Still others may be wishful thinking or unbased fears. Some predictions even directly contradict each other. But taken collectively, this list of predictions offers a timely and detailed snapshot of what the IT industry and the DevOps market are thinking about, planning, expecting and hoping for 2025.

DEVOPSdigest already presented a series of predictions about how AI will impact the software development life cycle (SDLC) in 2025 and beyond. Now DEVOPSdigest is publishing additional predictions about DevOps and development, with separate lists of predictions for Low Code/No Code, Open Source and DevSecOps to follow after the holidays. Meanwhile, APMdigest(link is external) is posting a series of Observability predictions for 2025(link is external), which may also be of interest to the development community. In addition, separate lists for Cloud/FinOps, DataOps, Data Centers and AI/GenAI will follow after the holidays on APMdigest.

A forecast by top DevOps experts, here are the predictions:

2025: ACHIEVING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF DEVOPS

As we head into 2025, businesses have a real opportunity to unlock the full potential of DevOps. In recent years, the time and effort required to establish even basic DevOps practices have significantly decreased, thanks to advancements in automation and tooling. With economic pressures mounting, companies are looking to do more with fewer resources, which makes investment in DevOps processes not just a choice but a necessity.
Micah Adams
Director of Platform Engineering, Focused Labs(link is external)

By 2025, DevOps is going to feel smarter and smoother than ever. AI will take over a lot of the heavy lifting in CI/CD pipelines—think code suggestions, automated testing, and built-in security checks — making development faster and less stressful. Security (DevSecOps) will become second nature, with security baked into every step of the process. Containers and microservices will remain the go-to for building scalable apps, and I expect Kubernetes to remain on the throne as the de-facto orchestration platform. Meanwhile, technologies such as serverless and WebAssembly (Wasm) will offer alternate approaches for specific use cases. As observability and service mesh technologies mature, managing complex microservices architectures will become significantly easier. These advancements will help DevOps teams tackle challenges like monitoring distributed systems, enhancing application performance, and ensuring secure communication across services.
Arun Balachandran
Sr. Marketing Manager — Applications Manager, ManageEngine(link is external)

DEVOPS EVOLVES FROM REACTIVE TO PROACTIVE

In the coming year, DevOps will evolve from reactive troubleshooting toward predictive, proactive operations. This shift will allow teams to anticipate issues, drive efficiency, and unlock new value for the business, solidifying DevOps as a core strategy for sustainable growth.
Micah Adams
Director of Platform Engineering, Focused Labs(link is external)

DEVOPS: THE NEW FINANCIAL GATEKEEPER

DevOps teams become the new financial gatekeepers: The rapid rise of cloud-native infrastructure will force a dramatic shift in technology cost management in 2025, moving budgetary control from IT finance teams directly to engineering teams. This transformation is inevitable as traditional financial oversight cannot keep pace with modern cloud environments, where 72% of containers live less than five minutes and infrastructure changes by the second. Technical teams will adopt container cost management solutions and infrastructure-as-code platforms for spending optimization, while cloud financial management platforms evolve to serve both technical and financial stakeholders. This democratization of cost management will fundamentally change how organizations optimize their technology spending, with DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams making real-time financial decisions that previously took weeks of finance team analysis.
Bill Lobig
VP, Product Management, IBM Automation, IBM(link is external)

AGILE FACES FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

We'll see a growing challenge for agile leaders to justify ROI as well as incorporating AI into their projects: In today's complex business landscape, agile leaders face an unprecedented challenge. Gone are the days when we could justify agile transformations simply by promising faster software delivery and improved quality. Now, the financial imperative is crystal clear: every initiative must demonstrate tangible value. The two critical imperatives for modern project leaders are straightforward but profound: first, maintain strict budget discipline in an expensive economic environment, and second, strategically incorporate AI into product development. This isn't just about technological innovation — it's about fundamental business survival. The real complexity lies in navigating these new expectations. Organizations are struggling to establish clear financial feedback loops and determine ownership of these transformative processes. We're essentially reimagining how work gets done, breaking traditional product development molds while trying to maintain financial accountability.
Phil Heikoop
Head of the Agile Practice, Adaptavist(link is external)

DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE

Developer experience defines platform winners: In 2025, the platforms that thrive will be those offering exceptional developer tools and clear documentation. Time-to-production will become a critical metric, with success tied to how fast teams can unlock value. The focus will shift toward solutions that streamline complex deployments, making them feel effortless and intuitive.
Gilad Shriki
Co-Founder, Descope(link is external)

DEVOPS ORCHESTRATION

DevOps orchestration represents a significant evolution in deployment automation. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, these systems will analyze deployment patterns, infrastructure usage, and application behavior to make autonomous decisions about resource allocation and deployment strategies. This advancement will reduce human intervention in routine operations while improving reliability and efficiency.
Tristan Stahnke
Principal Application Security Consultant, GuidePoint Security(link is external)

DEVOPS ASSEMBLY LINES

DevOps Assembly Lines will transform how organizations build and maintain deployment pipelines. These intelligent systems will automatically understand application architectures, dependencies, and security requirements to generate optimized CI/CD pipelines. This automation will significantly reduce pipeline setup time and ensure consistent implementation of best practices across projects.
Tristan Stahnke
Principal Application Security Consultant, GuidePoint Security(link is external)

PLATFORM ENGINEERING

Platform engineering in 2025 will become the new "black dress." Seen as an answer to many different challenges, platform engineering provide a more cohesive approach for IT to operate DevOps principles, but needs people to change roles and responsibilities. Otherwise, it will just become another management fad that did not work — because changing your title does not imply changing your behavior.
Roy Illsley
Chief Analyst, Omdia(link is external)

Platform engineering will unburden developers. Soon, we will see a significant shift: everything beyond application development will be abstracted to the portfolio level through centralized platforms. This marks the decoupling of "Dev" from "Everything else." Integrating Dev, Ops, and Sec was necessary to reduce the siloed teams, but doing so at the application development level has introduced significant complexity. The "shift left" movement correctly identified the need for earlier involvement in critical processes but also unnecessarily burdened engineers. Developers are now overextended, taking on invisible tasks that consume significant time but remain unseen by the broader organization. These include orchestrating and maintaining tools, processes, and fast-changing requirements. To overcome this challenge, we must shift towards platforms that handle these operational and security responsibilities at the portfolio level, allowing developers to focus solely on building high-quality applications. This will improve efficiency, enhance quality, and restore the velocity lost in the current approach.
Brian Wald
Global Head, Field CTO, GitLab(link is external)

In 2025, platform engineering will continue to develop as more engineering teams invest in internal developer platforms (IDPs). The goal here is practical: give developers tools that let them focus more on building and less on managing infrastructure. Advancements in artificial intelligence, serverless architecture, and DevOps are enabling more efficient, flexible platforms that can adjust to changing needs in real time.
Hadi Chami
Developer Advocate & Manager, LEADTOOLS by Apryse(link is external)

Efforts to kickstart Platform Engineering have stagnated somewhat — with some reports such as the Accelerate DORA 2024 report suggesting that momentum is slowing in this area. Expect more rigor to be applied in this area in 2025 as large organizations look to the panacea of guardrails' self-service infrastructure for their developers.
Matt Saunders
Head of DevOps, Adaptavist(link is external)

CROSS-FUNCTIONAL ENGINEERING GROUPS

Standalone DevOps teams will be phased out by cross-functional engineering groups: In 2025, organizations will move away from standalone DevOps teams towards more holistic groups that include representation from all engineering disciplines. The continued evolution of platform engineering will see DevOps, site reliability engineering, database administration, and other modern software delivery roles come together as one, unified team. This will eliminate the remaining silos between software delivery teams to accelerate innovation to a whole new level.
Nick Durkin
Field CTO, Harness(link is external)

DEV TOOL CONSOLIDATION

Development technology stacks will continue to consolidate rapidly. In the coming year, we will see a race to acquire or develop more of the development lifecycle. Companies will look to consolidate git repositories, CI/CD, testing, bug tracking, and much more into one platform or suite instead of the traditional best-of-breed approach.
Simon Taylor
CEO and Co-founder, HYCU(link is external)

To support cross-functional engineering teams, organizations will increasingly adopt unified platforms that provide all of the capabilities required across the software delivery lifecycle; from CI/CD, to chaos engineering and cloud cost management. To maximize the value of these platforms, they will expose these capabilities through Internal Developer Portals (IDPs) that enable engineers to self-serve the solutions and data they need. As this shift gains momentum, tools consolidation will be a major priority throughout 2025.
Nick Durkin
Field CTO, Harness(link is external)

DEVELOPER PORTALS

In 2025, we will see a rise in platform engineering and developer portals. As Kubernetes becomes essential for application deployment and infrastructure management, it slows developers down. This creates a need for platform engineering teams to streamline access and interactions. Developer portals centralize tools, documentation, and resources, making it easier for engineers to work without requiring deep Kubernetes expertise. This trend will enable developers to work autonomously, reducing operational overhead and fostering collaboration between development and operations teams. As platform engineering matures, organizations will alleviate Kubernetes bottlenecks, driving innovation and creating a more developer-friendly environment for application deployment and management.
Itiel Shwartz
CTO and Co-Founder, Komodor(link is external)

SERVERLESS INTEGRATES INTO PLATFORM ENGINEERING

I expect serverless architecture to become further integrated into mainstream platform engineering. While serverless technology has been prevalent, the focus will shift towards streamlining workflows through low-code and no-code platforms. These solutions make it easier for teams to build applications without diving deep into infrastructure setup, enabling rapid deployment and scaling.
Hadi Chami
Developer Advocate & Manager, LEADTOOLS by Apryse(link is external)

Go to: 2025 DevOps Predictions - Part 2