The infrastructure landscape is set for major shifts in 2025, driven by the rising adoption of OpenTofu, hybrid cloud strategies becoming a necessity, and AI-driven automation simplifying complex environments. Nonetheless, the slow processes surrounding cloud resource management, the increasing complexity of internal platform development, and mounting regulatory pressures will continue to test organizations as they scale their infrastructure.

Wojciech Barczynski, VP of Engineering at Spacelift, a specialized continuous deployment and orchestration platform for infrastructure-as-code (IaC), believes this is the year of OpenTofu. “What we see nowadays is very quick and accelerated adoption of OpenTofu across small, medium startups and enterprise companies,” Barczynski comments. The open source alternative to Terraform aims to offer enhanced security, state encryption, and quality-of-life improvements for engineers.

Other key predictions identified by Barczynski include the acceleration of hybrid cloud adoption as companies seek cost-effective, regulatory-compliant solutions by balancing on-premises and cloud workloads. Generative AI (GenAI) and machine learning are also set to play a crucial role in the coming year. Barczynski predicts they will help engineers navigate the growing complexity of infrastructure, offering automation and real-time issue detection.

Despite these advancements, Barczynski warns that challenges remain. Cloud resource management continues to be slow due to the increasing intricacy of software stacks. The disparity in growth between development teams and platform teams also hinders progress. Likening cloud infrastructure to tectonic plates, Barczynski explains that it is difficult to modify and bound by rigid security and compliance requirements. This friction continues to challenge organizations striving for agility in their cloud operations.

The push to build internal development platforms (IDPs) has also proven more complex than many companies anticipated. Rather than simple UI layers, these platforms function as operating systems on top of existing infrastructure, requiring significant engineering effort. Barczynski points out that solutions like Spacelift help teams offload this burden by providing orchestrated IaC management, allowing developers to focus on higher-value work.

Another key challenge Barczynski discusses is the complexity of navigating regulatory pressures. European frameworks like the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) are raising compliance standards, forcing organizations to ensure that their cloud and hybrid environments meet stringent security and operational requirements.

To address these challenges, Spacelift is focusing on three key initiatives. The company is working to accelerate OpenTofu adoption by providing enterprise-level support and professional services. It has also introduced Ansible integration to enable customers to manage both cloud and on-premises infrastructure from a unified control plane. Lastly, Spacelift is enhancing its application programming interface (API) and provider to streamline integration with platform engineering tools like Backstage.

Discussing future goals, Barczynski hopes for a unified API to manage costs and monitoring across all cloud environments and on-premises setups. While initiatives like open FinOps are progressing, Barczynski notes that a truly cross-platform cost and monitoring solution remains an industry-wide goal. Through its ongoing investments, Spacelift remains focused on helping organizations navigate the evolving landscape of infrastructure management in the coming years.

Guest: Wojciech Barczynski
Company: Spacelift
Show: 2025 Prediction Series

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.