CEOs From AWS, Cisco, SAP And More On Their Top Priorities In 2025
From delivering responsible AI-based offerings, to simplifying and furthering enterprise cloud transformations, some of the industry’s most renowned CEOs share what is on the top of their to-do lists in 2025.
AI has officially moved past the buzzword stage. AI and generative AI are being embedded into existing tech products. It’s also responsible for the launch of countless new cloud services. IT vendors are using AI to boost customer satisfaction and empower their channel partners.
It's the reason why CEOs from the likes of Amazon Web Services, Cisco Systems, SAP, Hitachi Vantara and Nutanix, all put AI at the top of their priority list in 2025.
Here's what some of the world's most prominent tech CEOs had to say about their plans to develop intelligent AI-based tech offerings, offer training around AI, and harness AI to help customers with their business transformation plans.
And check out CRN's CEO Outlook 2025 for more thoughts from these leaders and how they and their companies will be working the channel in 2025.
Matt Garman
CEO
Amazon Web Services
My top priority for 2025 is accelerating customer success with generative AI by empowering our partner ecosystem to innovate, scale, and drive business transformation across industries. We're committed to delivering cutting-edge technologies while involving our partners in everything we do. This means not just providing the technology, but also the tools, training, and support our partners need to be trusted advisors across industries. We're focusing on long-term partnerships, joint innovation, and creating opportunities for partners to grow their businesses alongside AWS. Whether it's through our AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, enhanced Marketplace offerings, or expanded services opportunities, we're dedicated to our partners' success. By strengthening these partnerships, we aim to help organizations of all sizes harness the latest technologies to solve their most pressing challenges faster, operate more efficiently, and create new possibilities that were previously unimaginable.
Chuck Robbins
Chair and CEO
Cisco Systems
To keep a relentless focus on innovation. The past 12 months have been incredible in terms of what we’ve been able to deliver for our customers. As AI keeps reshaping industries and businesses of all sizes, it's up to Cisco and our partners to stay at the forefront of this transformation. We're committed to leading the way, making sure we not only meet today's needs, but also anticipate the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.
Sheila Rohra
CEO
Hitachi Vantara
My top priority for 2025 is driving the transition to energy-efficient, sustainable data management through the thoughtful application of AI and innovative infrastructure solutions. This includes retrofitting existing data centers, implementing distributed architectures, and ensuring our technology solutions optimize performance while minimizing environmental impact. Our focus will be on delivering measurable results through pragmatic approaches that balance innovation with sustainability.
Rajiv Ramaswami
President and CEO
Nutanix
Giving customers choice. The current focus on AI related spending is biased towards training the largest LLMS, which is naturally skewed towards the public cloud. However, inference costs will begin to increase exponentially as organizations train a LLM once and use it across many applications, so we expect to see more demand to fine tune and run models on-premises and at the edge. As a result, this will lead to a more balanced spend between public and private cloud, including edge. We think we are well positioned to capture some of the private cloud spend, aided by our recently announced GPT-in-box solution, in combination with our ISV, SI and ecosystem partners such as Nvidia. A big advantage of our inference endpoint is that it's able to run anywhere the customer needs it to and they can use it as much as they want.
Christian Klein
CEO
SAP SE
My top priority for 2025 is advancing SAP's commitment to delivering intelligent, AI-driven solutions that enable our customers to run more efficiently and adapt to a rapidly changing business environment. By embedding advanced AI capabilities into our core offerings and simplifying cloud transformations, we aim to help businesses unify their operations, harness their data more effectively and achieve measurable outcomes at scale. This effort depends on close collaboration with our partners and continued investment in empowering our teams to deliver value across the customer lifecycle.
