This year’s top 10 emerging technologies for 2025 Forrester’s report has positioned generative artificial intelligence (Genai) as a technology that leaders should consider in about a year. According to Forrester, the near-term technology balances AI acceleration with security needs. “Genai language and visual content, Turingbots, and IoT security remain on our top 10 list from 2024,” the analyst firm noted.
But the 2025 report also features agent-based AI and synthetic data, making it one of the top 10 emerging technologies that Forrester believes will offer a measurable return on investment (ROI) in the next two years.
Leveraging Emerging Technologies to Drive Innovation is one of the sessions at next month’s Forrester Technology and Innovation Summit in London, where Forrester Vice President and Research Director Oliwia Berdak will host a panel discussion with other Forrester analysts looking at the trends.
Discussing how IT leaders should evaluate new technologies, she said, “With some technologies, the ecosystem really matters. The technology itself might be ready, but if the real world stops adopting it, then we have a problem.
“If the blocker is really around the regulatory framework or the fact that it’s a big industry problem, maybe the best solution is to work with industry associations and try to build some of the underlying infrastructure that needs to be there.”
Emerging technologies Forrester believes will deliver a return on investment in the next two years include languages for genealogy, IoT (Internet of Things) security to combat cyberthreats to connected devices, synthetic data, and Turingbots that are improving software development.
The mid-term technologies identified by Forrester include agent-based AI, edge intelligence, and autonomous vehicles. Such technologies, according to Forrester’s analysis, are stalling due to real-world complexity, meaning there is a growing gap between the theoretical capabilities of AI and real-world deployments. Berdak suggested that IT leaders consider “implementing some early proofs of concept to understand how they use these technologies in their organization and industry.”
Looking at agent AI, the analyst firm says the business benefits are largely incremental today. Forrester expects the transformative benefits of agent AI to be years away. It predicted that organizations will begin to integrate agent AI systems into their businesses over the next few years. However, wholesale process replacement and transformation will take time.
Quantum computing is not a new technology that appears in Forrester’s short- to medium-term investment outlook. But it expects the benefits of mature quantum security to be available to most within a few years.
While the real threat that quantum computers pose to decryption is still a decade away, Forrester notes that there is little chance that breakthroughs, including Microsoft’s recent announcement of the Majorana 1 chip, will accelerate that timeline. This encourages organizations that have zero tolerance for the risk of their data being harvested and decrypted later to start investing in quantum security.
Humanoid robots are a technology with a long-term perspective, with a return on investment of more than five years. Asked how IT leaders should plan for the development of such technologies, Berdak said: “It depends a little bit on what kind of leader you are and your innovation or R&D (research and development) budget.”
She said many organizations don’t have the ambition to be first to market. “They want to be fast followers, so they’ll never spend money on technologies that at this point we think might be five or 10 years away.”
But for Berdak, the emergence and adoption of Genai is such that expertise takes time. “If you can position yourself as a leader, as someone who has actually gained expertise in this technology, then when the technology is ready, you’re in a really good position to accelerate some of these efforts, as opposed to someone who has never done anything with the technology.”
