AI Research

Info-Tech Research Group’s Best of 2025 Report

Published

6 hours ago

September 16, 2025

In 2025, even as AI dominates headlines, research usage trends from Info-Tech Research Group reveal that CIOs are still focusing on evergreen frameworks and trusted resources to keep their organizations stable. The newly published Best of Classics in 2025 report from the global IT research and advisory firm analyzes the most frequently accessed research and tools, offering insight into how IT leaders are strengthening organizational fundamentals. The report’s findings highlight that organizational resilience depends on these core practices, which enable CIOs to balance rapid innovation with operational maturity.

TORONTO, Sept. 16, 2025 /CNW/ – As AI-driven disruption accelerates across industries, CIOs are leaning on proven frameworks and evergreen tools to provide stability and resilience. Info-Tech Research Group has published its Best of Classics in 2025 report, showcasing the most in-demand and consistently used resources by IT leaders this year. The findings show that while emerging technologies capture attention, the most trusted resources remain those that strengthen IT strategy, governance, project management, risk practices, and service delivery.

Research usage trends from Info-Tech Research Group reveal that CIOs are still focusing on evergreen frameworks and trusted resources to keep their organizations stable. The newly published Best of Classics in 2025 report from the global IT research and advisory firm analyzes the most frequently accessed research and tools, offering insight into how IT leaders are strengthening organizational fundamentals (CNW Group/Info-Tech Research Group)

These findings emphasize a dual focus for IT leaders; CIOs are leaning on evergreen frameworks like IT strategy, data governance, and project management to support innovation, while also seeking guidance on AI roadmaps and risk management. This simultaneous demand shows that the successful adoption of emerging technologies depends on well-managed fundamentals.

“Change is the headline, and fundamentals are the path forward to stability and long-term value creation,” says Info-Tech Research Group’s Chief Research Officer, Gord Harrison. “CIOs must prepare their organizations for AI-fueled change while ensuring the basics are executed well. By keeping strategy, governance, and process maturity at the forefront, leaders can mitigate risks, align with business priorities, and build a strong foundation for responsible AI adoption.”

Key Challenges IT Leaders Face in 2025

Despite growing investment in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, CIOs continue to encounter systemic challenges that can hinder progress. Info-Tech’s Best of Classics in 2025 report shows that many organizations struggle with the following challenges:

Balancing AI adoption with operational maturity and risk management.
Fragmented governance models that slow decision-making.
Resource constraints and competing priorities that delay project delivery.
Resistance to change that limits transformation outcomes.

Info-Tech’s Top 12 Research from the Best of Classics in 2025 Report

To help address these persistent challenges, Info-Tech’s report details the most relied-upon classic resources as actionable priorities for CIOs and IT leaders:

Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy: This research is popular because it helps CIOs develop a mission-driven IT plan that aligns directly with business priorities, sets clear guiding principles, and translates them into an actionable roadmap. The result is stronger executive communication, better initiative prioritization, and governance structures that ensure IT consistently delivers business value.
Standardize the Service Desk: Leaders repeatedly turn to this research to build a solid foundation for IT service by assessing maturity, designing incident and request workflows, and documenting standard operating procedures. This improves efficiency, eliminates redundancies, and delivers faster, more reliable support for both users and technicians.
Tailor IT Project Management Processes to Fit Your Projects: Right-sizing project management practices to match the scope and risk of each initiative is critical. By applying lightweight approaches to small projects and rigorous frameworks to complex ones, IT leaders are able to increase throughput, reduce delays, and strengthen executive confidence in delivery.
Establish Data Governance: CIOs are using this resource to create an enterprise-wide governance program that aligns with business strategy and value streams to ensure data produces measurable business results. The outcome is stronger data quality, reduced risk, and a culture of data-driven decision-making.
Optimize IT Governance For Dynamic Decision-Making: This research provides guidance on redesigning governance structures to reflect how the organization truly operates by clarifying decision rights, defining accountability, and equipping committees with effective charters. It’s popular because it leads to faster, more transparent decision-making that avoids bottlenecks and supports business performance.
Design Your IT Organization For The Future: CIOs rely on this research to architect an IT structure that consistently delivers on enterprise objectives by aligning capabilities to business priorities, clarifying roles, and building adaptable teams. The outcome is a high-performing IT function that closes service gaps, boosts performance, and attracts and retains talent.
Implement AI For Customer Experience: Leaders use this resource to transform the customer journey from reactive to proactive by targeting high-impact AI use cases, defining requirements and governance up front, and designing scalable pilots. This enables greater personalization, faster resolution times, and stronger customer loyalty while managing risk.
Build an Information Security Strategy: This comprehensive blueprint remains essential because it helps organizations develop a holistic, risk-aware, and business-aligned security program. By gathering requirements, assessing risks, conducting a gap analysis, and creating a flexible roadmap, security leaders are able to strengthen cyber resiliency and ensure security investments generate measurable business value.
Build a Robust and Comprehensive Data Strategy: IT leaders continue to access this research to align data initiatives with business goals by engaging stakeholders, defining guiding principles, and mapping projects to measurable outcomes. The result is stronger executive support, better decision-making, and long-term business value from data investments.
Design an Enterprise Architecture Strategy: CIOs turn to this resource to build EA strategies anchored in business value by defining vision, goals, principles, and services that connect enterprise objectives to IT outcomes. This approach clarifies EA’s role, strengthens stakeholder support, and enables architects to guide projects in real time.
Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy: This research helps leaders create a coherent portfolio approach that balances supply and demand, secures executive buy-in, and aligns processes to strategic goals. IT leaders and project managers use it to maximize project value, improve throughput, and deliver initiatives that consistently meet business expectations.
Rationalize Your Application Portfolio: CIOs frequently leverage this blueprint to establish an evergreen application portfolio management program that eliminates redundancy, reduces costs, and improves scalability. By assessing the current state, creating a central inventory, and aligning applications with business priorities, IT leaders are simplifying oversight, retiring low-value apps, and building roadmaps that deliver measurable ROI while supporting digital transformation.

The firm’s Best of Classics in 2025 report also highlights the top diagnostics, SoftwareReviews vendor quadrants, training programs, workshops, industry research, keynotes, and AI marketplace reports that remain essential to the success of IT leaders. Together, these resources are providing CIOs with evergreen frameworks and structured methodologies to support transformation while maintaining resilience. The blueprints outlined in the report also include tools to assess governance maturity, concierge services to streamline vendor analysis, training programs to build leadership and AI skills, and workshops to solve pressing IT problems with measurable outcomes.

“Even as emerging technologies shift priorities, the fundamentals remain the backbone of IT leadership,” explains Harrison. “Info-Tech’s research classics deliver enduring value by ensuring organizations don’t just move fast, but also move wisely.”

Info-Tech’s Best of Classics in 2025 report brings together the most relied-upon blueprints, diagnostics, vendor guides, and training programs that CIOs use to keep their organizations grounded. Collectively, these resources provide practical tools and structured methodologies that help IT leaders align strategy with execution, strengthen governance, and sustain transformation efforts while preparing for the accelerating AI revolution.

For exclusive and timely commentary from Info-Tech’s experts on any of the associated research, and access to the complete Info-Tech’s Best of Classics in 2025 report, please contact [email protected].

About Info-Tech Research Group

Info-Tech Research Group is one of the world’s leading research and advisory firms, serving over 30,000 IT and HR professionals. The company produces unbiased, highly relevant research and provides advisory services to help leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. For nearly 30 years, Info-Tech has partnered closely with teams to provide them with everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

To learn more about Info-Tech’s divisions, visit McLean & Company for HR research and advisory services, and SoftwareReviews for software buying insights.

Media professionals can register for unrestricted access to research across IT, HR, and software, and hundreds of industry analysts through the firm’s Media Insiders program. To gain access, contact [email protected].

For information about Info-Tech Research Group or to access the latest research, visit infotech.com and connect via LinkedIn and X.

SOURCE Info-Tech Research Group

Media Contact: Sufyan Al-Hassan, Senior PR Manager, Info-Tech Research Group, [email protected] | +1 (888) 670-8889 x2418

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AI Research

Pentagon research official wants to have AI on every desktop in 6 to 9 months

Published

1 hour ago

September 16, 2025

Alexandra Kelley

The Pentagon is angling to introduce artificial intelligence across its workforce within nine months following the reorganization of its key AI office.

Emil Michael, under secretary of defense for research and engineering at the Department of Defense, talked about the agency’s plans for introducing AI to its operations as it continues its modernization journey.

“We want to have an AI capability on every desktop — 3 million desktops — in six or nine months,” Michael said during a Politico event on Tuesday. “We want to have it focus on applications for corporate use cases like efficiency, like you would use in your own company … for intelligence and for warfighting.”

This announcement follows the recent shakeups and restructuring of the Pentagon’s main artificial intelligence office. A senior defense official said the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office will serve as a new addition to the department’s research portfolio.

Michael also said he is “excited” about the restructured CDAO, adding that its new role will pivot to a focus on research that is similar to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Missile Defense Agency. This change is intended to enhance research and engineering priorities that will help advance AI for use by the armed forces and not take agency focus away from AI deployment and innovation.

“To add AI to that portfolio means it gets a lot of muscle to it,” he said. “So I’m spending at least a third of my time –– maybe half –– rethinking how the AI deployment strategy is going to be at DOD.”

Applications coming out of the CDAO and related agencies will then be tailored to corporate workloads, such as efficiency-related work, according to Michael, along with intelligence and warfighting needs.

The Pentagon first stood up the CDAO and brought on its first chief digital and artificial intelligence officer in 2022 to advance the agency’s AI efforts.

The restructuring of the CDAO this year garnered attention due to its pivotal role in investigating the defense applications of emerging technologies and defense acquisition activities. Job cuts within the office added another layer of concern, with reports estimating a 60% reduction in the CDAO workforce.

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AI Research

Pentagon CTO wants AI on every desktop in 6 to 9 months

Published

1 hour ago

September 16, 2025

Alexandra Kelley

The Pentagon aims to get AI tools to its entire workforce next year, the department’s chief technical officer said one month after being given control of its main AI office.

“We want to have an AI capability on every desktop — 3 million desktops — in six or nine months,” Emil Michael, defense undersecretary for research and engineering, said at a Politico event on Tuesday. “We want to have it focus on applications for corporate use cases like efficiency, like you would use in your own company…for intelligence and for warfighting.”

Four weeks ago, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office was demoted from reporting to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg to Michael, a subordinate.

Michael said CDAO will become a research body like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Missile Defense Agency. He said the change is meant to boost research and engineering into AI for the military, but not reduce its efforts to deploy AI and make innovations.

“To add AI to that portfolio means it gets a lot of muscle to it,” he said. “So I’m spending at least a third of my time—maybe half—rethinking how the AI-deployment strategy is going to be at DOD.”

He said applications would emerge from the CDAO and related agencies that will be tailored to corporate workloads.

The Pentagon created the CDAO in 2022 to advance the agency’s AI efforts and look into defense applications for emerging technologies. The office’s restructuring earlier this year garnered attention. Job cuts within the office added another layer of concern, with reports estimating a 60% reduction in the CDAO workforce.

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AI Research

Panelists Will Question Who Controls AI | ACS CC News

Published

2 hours ago

September 16, 2025

The Editors

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become one of the fastest-growing technologies in the world today. In many industries, individuals and organizations are racing to better understand AI and incorporate it into their work. Surgery is no exception, and that is why Clinical Congress 2025 has made AI one of the six themes of its Opening Day Thematic Sessions.

The first full day of the conference, Sunday, October 5, will include two back-to-back Panel Sessions on AI. The first session, “Using ChatGPT and AI for Beginners” (PS104), offers a foundation for surgeons not yet well versed in AI. The second, “AI: Who Is In Control?” (PS 110), will offer insights into the potential upsides and drawbacks of AI use, as well as its limitations and possible future applications, so that surgeons can involve this technology in their clinical care safely and effectively.

“AI: Who Is In Control?” will be moderated by Anna N. Miller, MD, FACS, an orthopaedic surgeon at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and Gabriel Brat, MD, MPH, MSc, FACS, a trauma and acute care surgeon at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, Massachusetts.

In an interview, Dr. Brat shared his view that the use of AI is not likely to replace surgeons or decrease the need for surgical skills or decision-making. “It’s not an algorithm that’s going to be throwing the stitch. It’s still the surgeon.”

Nonetheless, he said that the starting presumption of the session is that AI is likely to be highly transformative to the profession over time.

“Once it has significant uptake, it’ll really change elements of how we think about surgery,” he said, including creating meaningful opportunities for improvements.

The key question of the session, therefore, is not whether to engage with AI, but to do so in ways that ensure the best outcomes: “We as surgeons need to have a role in defining how to do so safely and effectively. Otherwise, people will start to use these tools, and we will be swept along with a movement as opposed to controlling it.”

To that end, Dr. Brat explained that the session will offer “a really strong translational focus by people who have been in the trenches working with these technologies.” He and Dr. Miller have specifically chosen an “all-star panel” designed to represent academia, healthcare associations, and industry.

The panelists include Rachael A. Callcut, MD, MSPH, FACS, who is the division chief of trauma, acute care surgery and surgical critical care as well as associate dean of data science and innovation at the University of California-Davis Health in Sacramento, California. She will share the perspective on AI from academic surgery.

Genevieve Melton-Meaux, MD, PhD, FACS, FACMI, the inaugural ACS Chief Health Informatics Officer, will present on AI usage in healthcare associations. She also is a colorectal surgeon and the senior associate dean for health informatics and data science at the University of Minnesota and chief health informatics and AI officer for Fairview Health Services, both in Minneapolis.

Finally, Khan Siddiqui, MD, a radiologist and serial entrepreneur who is the cofounder, chairman, and CEO of a company called HOPPR AI, will present the view from industry. HOPPR AI is a for-profit company focused on building AI apps for medical imaging. As a radiologist, Dr. Siddiqui represents a medical specialty that is thought to likely undergo sweeping change as AI is incorporated into image-reading and diagnosis. His comments will focus on professional insights relevant to surgeons.

Their presentations will provide insights on general usage of AI at present, as well as predictions on what the landscape for AI in healthcare will look like in approximately 5 years. The session will include advice on what approaches to AI may be most effective for surgeons interested in ensuring positive outcomes and avoiding negative ones.

Additional information on AI usage pervades Clinical Congress 2025. In addition to various sessions that will comment on AI throughout the 4 days of the conference, various researchers will present studies that involve AI in their methods, starting presumptions, and/or potential applications to practice.

Access the Interactive Program Planner for more details about Clinical Congress 2025 sessions.

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