The year 2025 was characterized by economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and the unrestrained triumph of Artificial Intelligence. This prompted the editorial teams of Computerwoche, CIO, and CSO to take stock in their final TechTalk podcast episode of the year, focusing on the IT tops and flops of 2025.
Hardly any topic dominated the IT world in 2025 as much as AI, with both positive and negative impacts. One of the biggest flops of the year was the massive job cuts, which were justified in many places by referring to AI. According to an analysis by Surfshark, at least 200,000 people worldwide lost their jobs as a result of the AI boom, though the actual number is likely higher.
AI: Big Promises, Bitter Reality
Manfred Bremmer, Editorial Manager at Computerwoche, highlighted the irony that such rounds of layoffs were often a deceptive maneuver. In some cases, employees were later rehired because, after all, not everything can be automated. Bremmer also emphasized that this approach is anything but sustainable for the future, particularly due to the elimination of junior jobs.
His colleague Tristan Fincken pointed out another AI-specific flop: cybercriminals are increasingly using AI to automate attacks. While this makes attackers faster and more efficient, companies and security managers often struggle more with regulatory requirements than with technical solutions.
CIOs Remain Pragmatic
Jens Dose, Editor-in-Chief at CIO.de, highlighted a silver lining in the AI sector: despite grandiose AI promises in vendor marketing messages, many IT managers continued to focus on the basics such as data quality, data visibility, stable processes, and resilient infrastructure.
Innovative change management in the AI context also stood out positively—for example, at the Swiss telecommunications provider Mobilezone, which treated AI agents not like software, but like new employees.
Digital Sovereignty Between Ambition and Reality
The topic of digital sovereignty remained ambivalent in 2025. Jürgen Hill, an editor at Computerwoche, viewed the race for AI gigafactories in Europe positively. For instance, Schwarz IT invested eleven billion euros in a data center to create a sovereign alternative to US hyperscalers. The establishment of a Digital Ministry was also intended to better coordinate the digitalization efforts of the federal and state governments, although Hill had doubts about the agency’s effectiveness given the planned budget.
Schleswig-Holstein was considered a flagship project in terms of digital sovereignty: the federal state consistently relied on open source in its state administration and gradually phased out Microsoft. From 2026 onwards, this is expected to save over 15 million euros in licensing costs annually while simultaneously reducing dependence on tech giants.
In contrast, there was a significant flop in the Free State of Bavaria, which planned to commit to Microsoft 365 long-term. The cost: almost one billion euros over five years.
Security: Silver Linings Despite Regulatory Chaos
In the field of IT security, the results were mixed, according to Julia Mutzbauer, Editorial Manager at CSO. NIS2 was supposed to ensure uniform standards across the EU but caused uncertainty in practice: inconsistent national implementations, unclear responsibilities, and weakened requirements—for example, regarding vulnerability management—met with widespread criticism.
At the same time, there were also successes to report in 2025. International investigations led to the dismantling of the ransomware group 8Base, the shutdown of criminal infrastructures as part of Operation Endgame, and the decommissioning of dangerous malware. Additionally, a major money-laundering platform was taken offline through Operation “Olympia.”
