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Software increasingly makes the world go round. Without this critical digital infrastructure, the economyand society at largewouldnt function. But as recent events like last years CrowdStrike outage have shown, enormous leaps in software power and complexity, including the integration of AI into the development process, ratchet up the potential for things to go sideways, fast. How can software teams better harness the supercharged new tools at their disposal? Heres a look at five things that lie ahead. 1. As consumers lose patience with outages, developers make software more resilient For consumers, the CrowdStrike outage is just the tip of the iceberg. Other recent software disruptions include American Airlines holiday stoppage, the global shutdown of Metas apps, and a Microsoft 365 failure. When we commissioned a survey of U.S. consumers in 2024, their resentment was palpable. More than half had been impacted by software outages. And for 70%, releasing bad code is equal toor even worse thansupermarkets selling contaminated food. Business leaders are worried too. When asked late last year, almost 90% of global executives expected major IT outages in 2025. The irony is these outages arent the result of hackers or security compromisestheyre due to preventable glitches and oversights in the development process itself. The way out of this mess? Moving forward, more companies will fully embrace modern DevOps practicestools and processes that make software delivery more reliable and efficient. An emerging discipline just a few years ago, DevOps is quickly becoming table stakes across industries. The most crucial safeguard: automating the software development pipeline. If every engineer must follow the same steps for planning, writing, testing, deploying, and maintaining code, the entire process is smoother, faster, and safer. 2. AI transcends the hype Roughly 60% of developers deployed AI in 2024, up almost 20% from the previous year. But so far, we havent seen the expected AI productivity gains. That will change going forward. As software teams figure out how to operationalize AI, the technology will start to show its real value. After all, AIs role in the development lifecycle goes well beyond writing code. Developers now have access to AI-native software delivery platforms that weave AI agents into every stage of the development process, not just coding. For example, a DevOps assistant lets software teams instantly create pipelinesand easily modify them. 3. Security threats (and responses) While invaluable to developers, AI has also been a boon to hackers. For instance, state-backed actors from China, Russia, and Iran have been using OpenAI tools to sharpen their skills and deceive targets. Indeed, the majority of hackers agree that businesses adopting AI have created new attack vectors. One vulnerability increasingly exploited: APIs, the doors and windows into code that allow apps to talk to each other. In the past two years, 57% of organizations were hit by an API security breach. And in a survey we conducted, more than two-thirds of businesses said genAI poses a risk to API security. For companies, fighting back requires taking stock of APIs and detecting and preventing attacks. The key steps: conducting an API inventory, ensuring that APIs meet specific security standards, and using smart tools to spot threats. Equally important: integrating security into the developer pipeline. This so-called shift left isnt newprogressive companies have been working for years to get developers in on the ground floor of security initiatives. But well see shift left strengthenpart of a broader effort to close the gap between Dev and functions like FinOps and continuous integration/continuous delivery. 4. DevOps platforms offer developers a one-stop shop As DevOps matures, a significant problem has surfaced: too many tools. Point solutions, handy tools and automations that make developers lives easier, are starting to overwhelm them. They add to daily toil instead of alleviating it. Currently, the average developer is asked to manage 14 different vendor tools. This context shifting between different interfaces, workflows, and licenses leads to confusion, cognitive overload, and development inconsistency. This all points to the need for a robust, integrated platform bringing the needed developer tools into one place. Critically, however, all the solutions need to be best of breed. Developers arent forgiving and would rather build their own tools than use inferior ones. For all these reasons, expect platform engineering to go mainstream this year. Indeed, Forrester predicts that in 2025, half of enterprises will abandon individual software tools for DevOps platforms. 5. Cloud costs tools become mission-critical For developers, getting a handle on cloud services costs has always been a headache. AI has taken that frustration to a whole new level. Because the latest AI applications use so much processing power, cloud costs can quickly escalate, leading to huge surprise bills. For the average business, cloud spending has leaped 30% in the past year, largely because of generative AI. Thats one reason why FinOpsanother emerging discipline that bridges the gap between finance and engineeringis icreasingly important. With developer visibility into cloud spending and accountability for it, companies should see significant savings and efficiency gains. But that hinges on new tech and on harnessing AI as part of the solution. AI-powered tools let anyone easily pinpoint cloud waste by asking questions in plain language. Armed with that knowledge, developers can get recommendations on the right fixes. The best cloud cost management tools also automate fixes, forecast cloud spend, and enforce rules for cloud usage. The result is significant savingsas much as 50% at Fortune 1000 companies I know. For software developers, big opportunities lie ahead, along with growing threats. Teams that stay vigilant and take advantage of the best tools will be better positioned to see real productivity gains from AI while avoiding the security and quality pitfalls. Jyoti Bansal is CEO of Harness. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
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E-Commerce
At Nvidias developer conference on Thursday, a large group of energy companiesalong with a few technology companiesannounced plans to collaborate on building AI models and apps aimed at improving the generation and distribution of electric power. The initiative, called the Open Power AI Consortium, is organized by the Palo Alto-based Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Founding members include Nvidia, Microsoft, AWS, and Oracle. Notably absent from the group are all of the leading developers of frontier AI models, such as Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. This is about getting the right data, and getting it clean, so that it can be used for AI, Jeremy Renshaw, who leads the consortium at EPRI, tells Fast Company. Renshaw says energy companies have mountains of data, but organizing it in a way that AI models can process is key. But already, more than two dozen regional power companies in the U.S. have signed on, including Con Edison, Duke Energy, New York Power Authority, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison, Tennessee Valley Authority, and Westinghouse Electric Company. EPRI president and CEO Arshad Mansoor said in a statement that the consortium will create an AI model, datasets, and apps to enhance grid reliability, optimize asset performance, and enable more efficient energy management.” It will also foster a collaborative environment where utilities, startups, academics, and national labs can work together to address power-sector challenges using AI. The consortium doesn’t include representatives from government agencies, but Renshaw said hed like to see their inclusion. We intend to include anyone involved in the making and moving of electricity, he says. Government is important because they do the permitting, licensing, and they provide regulations. The announcement comes amid growing concern in the tech sector over the strain that AI workloads can place on data centers. (Google even pledged last year to buy energy from small modular reactors developed by Kairos Power to support its growing AI ambitions.) Axios climate reporter Alex Freedman notes that the power demands of the so-called AI boom have become a top priority for energy company CEOs in the U.S. Freedman highlights an ongoing debate within that sector over whether the power demands of AI will prolong the use of fossil fuels. Should that prove to be the case, AI could further push back constructive work toward climate goals.
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E-Commerce
It’s World Happiness Day, otherwise known as International Day of Happiness, but if you’re not feeling the love, you’re not alone. Many Americans aren’t that happy, according to the World Happiness Report 2025, which ranks happiness across nations. In fact, America doesn’t even crack the top 20 happiest countries in the world, and instead now sits at No. 24earning its lowest ranking yet. (Spoiler alert: Finland once again is the happiest.) The report, which asked people from 140 countries to evaluate their life, looked at six major factors to predict happiness: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and perceptions of corruption. Each person ranked their own happiness over the past three years from 2022 to 2024. While all those factors are important, the key to happiness is often attributed to Harvard University’s landmark 85-year Study of Adult Development, which discovered that close relationships are the strongest predictor of happiness throughout our lives. The young and the hopeless Perhaps one reason for America’s plummeting levels of happiness can be understood through the eyes of Gen Z, who are currently experiencing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation (as are many Americans, but not to the same extent). The report found young people worldwide were increasingly lonely, with 19% reporting in 2023 that they have no one to count on for social support, a 39% increase from 2006. The decline in the U.S. in 2024 was at least partly attributable to Americans younger than age 30 feeling worse about their lives, Ilana Ron-Levey, managing director at Gallup, part of the World Happiness Report 2025, told CNN. Todays young people report feeling less supported by friends and family, less free to make life choices and less optimistic about their living standards. It also found that in the United States and parts of Europe, lower levels of both happiness and trust have greatly contributed to more polarization along political lines. The silver lining? One positive finding was that people often underestimate other people’s kindness; that is to say, people are often kinder than we think, and doing nice things for others actually makes you happier. What are the world’s happiest countries? Here are 2025’s top 20 happiest countries in the world. Finland Denmark Iceland Sweden Netherlands Costa Rica Norway Israel Luxembourg Mexico Australia New Zealand Switzerland Belgium Ireland Lithuania Austria Canada Slovenia Czech Republic The five countries where people were most unhappy? At the bottom of the list: Afghanistan, once again the last-place holder; Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. The report is the result of a partnership between Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and an editorial board.
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