The growing reach of AI across business operations is reshaping the demands placed on data centers in every industry. This BizTechReports briefing synthesizes insights from four recent reports to explore how data centers are evolving—consolidating platforms, securing new power sources, adopting more flexible investment models, and redesigning infrastructure to support AI at scale.

The 2025 ISG Provider Lens global Life Sciences Digital Services report finds that clinical trials, manufacturing, patient engagement and other activities in the industry are being transformed to meet changing expectations. Telehealth is making some operations more flexible, while increasing regulation and sustainability goals are creating demand for new solutions. Contract research organizations (CROs) play a growing role in the industry, often at the forefront of innovation.

For decades, health benefits administration has been one of the most opaque and cumbersome functions within the enterprise. Mid-sized employers in particular—those with limited HR teams, growing workforce demands, and tight budget constraints—face steep challenges in delivering benefits that are both cost-effective and consumer-friendly.

Eighty percent of enterprise software and applications will be multimodal by 2030, up from less than 10% in 2024, according to Gartner, Inc.

For mid-market employers navigating a tightening labor market and rising healthcare costs, managing employee benefits has become an increasingly difficult balancing act. Benefits programs are often critical to employee retention and recruitment, but they remain complex to administer, difficult to personalize, and opaque in terms of cost transparency.

As AI, edge computing, and IT/OT integration reshape the future of manufacturing, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) face both unique challenges and outsized opportunities. Bobby Cook, Senior Director of Global SMB Strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software, brings deep insight into this fast-moving sector. With a focus on aligning enterprise-grade technology with the scale and budget of SMBs, Cook discusses how digital transformation is becoming essential for operational efficiency, competitive resilience, and long-term innovation. In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore strategic, operational, financial, and technological imperatives driving SMB modernization. NOTE: The feature below has been organized into the strategic, operational, financial contexts that emerged in the interview.

According to the IDC report, Asia/Pacific Managed Cloud Services Market Forecast, the managed cloud services (MCS) market in Asia/Pacific is projected to grow from US$10.8 billion in 2023 to US$22.6 billion by 2028, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.8%. This growth is being driven by increasing enterprise adoption of hybrid and multicloud environments, as organizations prioritize IT resilience, digital transformation, and AI-led modernization.

As generative AI reshapes the automation landscape, mid-market enterprises are under pressure to modernize—without the disruption or cost traditionally associated with large-scale transformation. In this exclusive BizTechReports interview, Mahesh Vinayagam, CEO and Founder of qBotica, explains how combining generative AI with robotic process automation (RPA) is changing the game.

Small and mid-sized manufacturers—long considered the backbone of industrial supply chains—are facing a moment of reckoning. Pressured by rising costs, aging infrastructure, and relentless global competition, these companies are being forced to modernize or risk irrelevance. Yet for many, the traditional digital transformation playbook—engineered for billion-dollar enterprises—is ill-suited to their operational and economic realities.

The ISG Buyers Guides for Cybersecurity, produced by ISG Software Research, provide the rankings and ratings of 57 software providers and their products that address enterprise cybersecurity needs. The research is designed to help enterprise security leaders make informed decisions on selecting and deploying tools to foster a safer digital environment. The research finds that a growing majority of organizations will use advanced security software in the coming years as generative AI transforms the capabilities of these products.

The U.S. mortgage sector is at a crossroads. For decades, the process of getting a home loan has been synonymous with paperwork, stress, and a lack of transparency. But the convergence of artificial intelligence, rising consumer expectations, and housing market volatility is forcing the industry to evolve. With affordability challenges mounting and younger, tech-savvy buyers entering the market, lenders are being pushed to rethink not just how they operate—but why.

Forrester initially projected that technology spending in the Asia Pacific region would grow by 6.5% in 2025 to reach US$722 billion, up from US$678 billion in 2024 and on par with the growth experienced last year. The imposition of broad-based tariffs by the US, however, is expected to increase technology costs, disrupt supply chains, and dampen overall IT investments across the region. As a result, initial tech spending forecasts now appear optimistic, with heightened uncertainty expected to lower growth by 1 or 2 percentage points, depending on specific country exposure and IT spending categories.

APeJC data management software market is driven by the integration of AI and GenAI into enterprise workflows, which requires scalable, real-time data pipelines for analytics and automation. Organizations are also increasingly prioritizing cloud-native platforms and metadata-driven integration tools to modernize their infrastructure and unify data across silos. This momentum is further reinforced by heightened regulatory scrutiny and the growing need for secure, intelligent data governance frameworks.

The U.S. mortgage industry—long known for its paperwork-heavy processes and lack of pricing clarity—is facing mounting pressure to modernize. As artificial intelligence matures and consumer expectations shift, lenders are rethinking how home loans are originated, processed, and priced.

Traditionally, mortgage lending has been resistant to change. High costs, opaque pricing structures, and a reliance on manual underwriting have persisted despite the rise of digital experiences in retail, travel, and other financial services. But today, AI and automation are beginning to challenge those conventions.

Generative AI is reshaping the way mid-market organizations approach automation, shifting its role from a back-office efficiency tool to a front-line driver of growth, customer engagement, and digital agility. A new wave of service providers is accelerating this transformation by merging generative AI with robotic process automation (RPA), enabling adaptive systems that support both human interaction and structured execution. As these capabilities become more accessible, companies in the $500 million to $2 billion revenue range are finding new, less disruptive paths to modernization.

As digital expectations rise and economic pressures mount, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are reevaluating their technology strategies. Increasingly, these organizations are turning to local broadband service providers (BSPs) not just for internet access, but for integrated digital experiences that rival those offered by enterprise providers. Behind this shift is a fundamental change in how infrastructure, service models, and community relationships intersect—and at the center of this transformation is Calix, a platform, cloud, and managed services company that enables BSPs to evolve into trusted broadband experience providers.

The global AR/VR headset market posted a strong rebound in the latest quarter, growing 18.1% year-over-year, according to new data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker. The resurgence was led by Meta, which captured 50.8% of the market.

Enterprises are transforming workforce management with software that uses AI and automation to address labor challenges and opportunities, according to new research from global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III).

Local and regional broadband service providers are rapidly becoming essential players in the digital transformation of small and midsize businesses (SMBs). No longer confined to delivering basic internet access, these providers are evolving into strategic partners that help businesses improve resilience, security, and customer experience.

The new ISG State of the Agentic AI Market report says 50 percent of organizations engage a service provider to deliver improved data management, but more than half still struggle with legacy data residing in old applications. To accelerate data management adoption and value, providers are designing agentic AI solutions that effectively bypass many legacy data challenges.