2025 was a whirlwind year of conversations with technology and business leaders around the world. Through roadshows, advisory boards, and customer visits, I had the privilege of hearing firsthand how organizations are adapting to new pressures, new expectations, and new possibilities.
My conversations continue to confirm application and data workflow orchestration has moved beyond the IT backroom. It’s now recognized as a core business capability that underpins growth, reliability, and trust.
Three major themes consistently emerged. Leaders everywhere are rethinking orchestration in big ways: they’re tying it directly to business outcomes, figuring out how to make Generative AI truly useful and trustworthy, and finding new ways to scale fast without losing resilience or control. Together, these shifts highlight how orchestration has become indispensable to business performance and how organizations are evolving to keep pace.
1. Business outcomes now drive orchestration priorities
For years, workflow orchestration was treated as an operational tool – something that kept systems running behind the scenes. That’s no longer true. Today, many of our customers are rethinking orchestration and how it will directly impact their business results.
Whether it’s ensuring revenue continuity, meeting regulatory audit requirements, or reducing downstream risk, customers now define orchestration success by its impact on outcomes, not infrastructure metrics. When workflows fail or data arrives late, the impact is immediate and sometimes quickly visible to teams across the enterprise.
This shift has elevated orchestration to the executive level. IT leaders are sitting at the same table as business decision-makers to discuss how workflow orchestration can reduce time-to-market and contribute to building customer trust. As one leader told me, “Workflow orchestration has become a business enabler that helps us move faster and bring new things to market.”
2. Generative AI raised expectations—and the bar for trust
If I had to name the single most consistent topic in 2025 customer conversations, it would be AI – both GenAI and Agentic AI. Ninety percent of executives I spoke with wanted to talk about it. Discussions are no longer hypothetical but have moved into operational adoption.
Expectations are evolving fast. Customers don’t just want access to AI; they want interaction that feels intuitive, adds value instantly, and integrates seamlessly into how they work. AI isn’t just expected to surface insights. It’s expected to offer guidance and automate action.
But with these expectations comes a new demand for trust. Leaders are building governance models, data review boards, and explanation frameworks to ensure AI innovation is responsible, transparent, and aligned with enterprise goals. The key takeaway? Generative AI is only valuable when it’s actionable, governed, and built for scale.
3. Scale, resilience, and guardrails must evolve together
Hybrid and multi-cloud complexity reached new heights in 2025. One customer told me they manage over 5,000 SLAs every day, and any delay can ripple instantly through critical customer-facing systems. Partial or disparate automation no longer cuts it.
That’s why organizations are focusing on platforms that deliver end‑to‑end visibility while giving teams the autonomy to innovate quickly, but with guardrails that maintain control, security, and compliance.
The challenge isn’t choosing between speed and control. It’s enabling both. Successful enterprises are designing operating models where orchestration becomes the connective tissue that holds business operations together across distributed and event-driven environments.
Looking ahead
The most rewarding part of 2025 was hearing how our customers are shaping the future through their innovations and challenges. Their insights are more than feedback. They’re shaping our roadmap. As we move into 2026, I’m excited to keep listening, learning, and collaborating to help organizations orchestrate what’s next.
Connect with me on LinkedIn and share how your organization is redefining workflow orchestration. Your experiences guide how we innovate and build the capabilities that power your outcomes.
BMC named a Leader in 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms
These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.
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