Romanus Prabhu Raymond, Director of Technology, ManageEngine
From years of working closely with CIOs and CTOs, it’s clear that 2025 is a promising moment for technology leadership, because enterprises finally are realising that ‘digital transformation’ today is really just a correction of years of accumulated complexity. Technology conversations are shifting away from tools and toward fundamentals: Clarity of purpose, simplicity of systems, and sustained value creation.
When constraints forced better discipline
In the early days of enterprise computing, every technology choice mattered. Limited compute, limited resources and limited budgets forced us to think carefully. Somewhere along the way, abundance replaced thoughtfulness, and we started compensating for weak processes and unclear thinking by throwing more tools, more vendors, and more layers at the problem.
Every major technological shift, from client-server to the internet to cloud, created the same temptation – Adopt first, understand later. The organisations that suffered were not the ones that moved slowly, but the ones that moved without clarity. AI, automation, and data initiatives are simply the latest mirrors reflecting this pattern.
Technology leaders are now business leaders
CIOs and CTOs are no longer custodians or guardians of technology. They are co-owners of growth, resilience, and enterprise value. The clearest signal are the questions they’re being asked. Instead of “Is the system stable?”, they now answer to “What’s the ROI on AI?”, “What risks have we eliminated?” and “How fast can we bounce back”. Technology leadership is now judged in the same arena as revenue, margins, and market share.
It has also become unmistakably clear is that ROI can no longer be assumed or deferred. Major tech initiatives are now expected to show value through concrete outcomes like revenue boost, cost reduction, cycle-time improvement or risk avoidance. This is a healthy development.
Why AI’s most important lessons will come from India
While much of the world debates AI supremacy through models and compute, India is solving a harder problem: How to deploy intelligence safely across messy, human, large-scale systems. For decades, Indian organisations have run heterogeneous, mission-critical environments built on partial automation and continuous human oversight. This has developed a leadership muscle of hybrid decision-making: Knowing precisely when to automate, when to intervene, and when to override systems safely. So Indian CIOs and CTOs are not just adopting AI, they are learning how to govern it under real constraints of scale, regulation, and reputational consequence.
The most effective leaders I see are embedding security, privacy, compliance, and responsible AI controls directly into the way systems are designed and operated, rather than treating them as external checks. Most organisations we work with force every AI initiative to compete for funding against other priorities – clear use cases and defined success metrics.
What CIOs and CTOs are now accountable for
CIOs are now trusted to co-own business outcomes because they now have the visibility to connect technology decisions directly to operational and financial impact. They’re accountable for tracking benefits, reallocating spend, keeping investments aligned with CEO/board priorities and guiding the organisation towards sustainable outcomes. That said, we’ve also seen enterprises spend millions on AI initiatives only to discover broken workflows underneath. That’s a clear miss of operational discipline.
CTOs, meanwhile, are applying the same discipline at the platform and engineering level. They build architectures that can absorb constant change without breaking. Modern architecture is really just about time. How long does it take to implement a change without breaking the system? How many people understand the core? How dependent are you on external actors to keep the lights on? ROI here is measured less by individual projects and more by reuse, reliability, reduced technical debt, and sustained delivery velocity.
CIOs and CTOs speaking the same language
Perhaps the most encouraging shift we see is how CIOs and CTOs are increasingly working together. They now share a common language around increasing business value, while maintaining an intentional split in their focus. CIOs tend to be inward-facing, driving enterprise change – process simplification, workforce productivity and service reliability. CTOs are more outward-facing, translating emerging technologies into differentiated digital capabilities.
Organisations struggle when this split is unclear or competitive. CIOs and CTOs together must design operating models in which experimentation is safe, ROI is clear and governance is built into systems by design.
Looking toward 2026
By 2026, the years of experimentation will be over. Boards, employees, regulators and customers will expect technology decisions to show durable and shiny outcomes. CIOs will increasingly operate like capital allocators who shift spending away from low-yield initiatives toward platforms and capabilities that compound over time. And CTOs who can explain organisation architecture in the language of time, risk, and leverage will gain abounding influence. 2026 will only reward clarity, courage, and restraint.