The Innovative Cloud Solutions Your Business Needs for 2025

With 2025 just around the corner, we’re on the cusp of rounding off yet another year. And you know what that means, New Year, a fresh start and the chance to evaluate new software! 

While you may not have the time to delve into the various tools and platforms you’re currently utilising to keep your business running, it’s our favourite thing to do! 

So instead of racking your brain trying to work out what’s the latest tool that will revolutionise the way you work, let us handle that. Read our comprehensive guide for the most innovative cloud solutions of 2025 below. 

What’s new in Microsoft Azure? 

Microsoft Azure is almost ubiquitous with cloud solutions and Microsoft are one of the key innovators in the AI space right now. They’ve recently doubled down on this focus at this year’s Microsoft Ignite conference. The event included numerous announcements, ranging from new hardware in the form of NVIDIA’s next-generation Blackwell GPU and custom AMD Epyc processor, to various new Microsoft Copilot innovations. But some of the most exciting announcements came from Microsoft Azure. 

So, to find the perfect solution for you this Christmas, read on. 

Azure Local 

For your remote and hybrid needs, Azure Local is now widely available. It brings Azure’s cloud capabilities to wherever you are and on whatever hardware you’re using. Azure Local allows you to manage and operate the hardware and infrastructure by yourself. It gives you more control over your data and operations while still being able to access and benefit from Azure cloud services. Azure Local brings the cloud to you, giving you control without having to surrender the Azure capabilities that make your life easier. 

Azure and AI 

AI has very much been the story of 2024, with the likes of Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and ChatGPT becoming an ever-increasing presence in our work and personal lives. Now, you can enable your business to further explore the future of AI with Microsoft Azure. 

Help your colleagues to automate more processes and make their lives easier in 2025 with Azure AI Agent Service. By leveraging the extensive toolset of Azure AI Foundry portal, this will enable product managers, AI engineers and software developers to create and manage their own AI Agents. Agents can be used to automate business processes of any complexity to make operations more efficient, and you and your colleague’s work lives easier.  

On that note, Azure AI Foundry was introduced during Ignite. The perfect gift for any software developer you know. Azure AI Foundry bridges the gap between AI technologies and practical business applications, enabling businesses to harness the power of AI efficiently and effectively. As nearly 70% of organisations have only moved 30% or fewer of their Generative AI experiments to production according to a Deloitte report, Azure AI Foundry’s all-in-one platform could help to take even more of those projects through to market in 2025. 

We asked our Azure Solution Specialist, Sam Barnes, to give an overview of the top Azure tools to look out for in 2025. Here’s what he said: 

“In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, the biggest opportunity in Azure isn't just AI, but the robust data platforms it offers.   

Great data is the foundation for not only generative AI but also for driving insightful business decisions.   

Imagine for one minute the possibilities available to you, such as:  

• Be more informed and boost profits by analysing consumer purchasing patterns   

• Predict trends and maintenance needs by monitoring manufacturing processes with IoT devices.    

• Optimise routes and predict the demand for forecasting by analysing historical shipping, traffic and weather data.   

This could be achieved with Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Databricks which are powerful tools.But with Microsoft Fabric, you could go further and unify your data warehousing, transforming it in lots of different ways and visualising it with services like Power BI.” 

What is GitHub Models? 

Staying within the theme of Azure AI, GitHub Models leverage the Azure AI Inference SDK to allow developers to experiment with AI models within the GitHub UI and integrate them into their applications. If you’re a developer that’s been planning to create AI-enabled applications in 2025, GitHub Models could be the perfect Christmas gift! 

While previously, developers had to jump between various sites, creating numerous accounts to experiment with different AI models, GitHub Models brings it all into one central location. Models offers a centralised catalogue of AI models for developers to utilise and implement into their application, making it simpler to develop with AI. 

We’ve put together a whole guide dedicated to developers, featuring other GitHub solutions, as well as tools from JetBrains, JFrog and more. You can check that out here to get the full picture. 

What’s the latest with AWS? 

You may not have heard us shouting about AWS very much in the past, but you can rest assured that we know our stuff when it comes to this cloud platform. As a cloud-powered gift, it doesn’t get much better. You can make your life easier through the on-demand delivery of AWS’s technology services to build applications without upfront costs or ongoing commitments. 

AWS use cases 

As businesses continue to go digital, there are a growing number of sources of data being produced that need to be dealt with to identify opportunities and actionable insights. AWS’s fully managed services are designed to collect, process and analyse data to help businesses make more informed decisions quicker. From Formula 1 transforming the sport of racing, to NASA processing images and data rapidly from Mars, there are plenty of case studies out there showing what can be achieved with AWS. 

AWS and IoT 

IoT on AWS can help to solve the problem of growing sources of data; offering a secure, easy to manage platform for IoT deployments. AWS users can take advantage of the benefits of the cloud and be at the edge. It connects devices to the cloud to enable the use of AWS services such as AWS Lambda, Greengrass, Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Machine Learning. These services are used to build applications that handle, analyse and act on data generated by devices, without having to manage any infrastructure. 

AWS Beanstalk 

One AWS service to look out for is AWS Beanstalk. This PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) makes scaling and deploying web apps and services simple. By automatically provisioning and managing environments that applications are deployed in, AWS takes over the complexity of managing servers, storage and networks to enable developers to focus on their code. Beanstalk is the AWS service designed for larger deployments, such as deploying a whole website or application. It uses EC2 instances and the existing AWS infrastructure to save a great deal of headaches. 

While Beanstalk is great for the bigger picture, AWS also offers services to enable developers to work on a more granular scale. AWS Lambda covers off small, yet important tasks to carry out the functions of an application by reacting to events or triggers and executing code to enable certain actions. 

AWS Partnership 

As an AWS Consulting Partner, we understand the demands ISVs and application builders face as well as the challenges in going to market. Not sure which AWS services the techies in your life would benefit the most from? Get in touch. We can help find the right software for your needs. 

Adobe Creative Cloud 

We haven’t forgotten about the creatives! For all your creative needs, from graphic design, to video editing and web development, Adobe Creative Cloud has a solution. With over 20 software applications and services bundled in a single, integrated platform, there’s a little bit of something for everyone in Adobe Creative Cloud. 

The benefits of Adobe Creative Cloud 

It enables content creation for virtually any medium, featuring tools that enhance efficiency, collaboration and brand consistency. And better yet, it suits in-person, hybrid or remote working scenarios and integrates with whatever platforms you already use, including Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, OneNote and many more. 

Spark creativity this Christmas period with Adobe Creative Cloud. 

Check out our other wishlists 

Are there other software tools and cloud platforms on your 2025 wishlist? Check out the other blogs in this series for some inspiration. We already have a guide on the top developer tools for 2025, while we’ll also have guides on collaboration and communication tools, security and compliance tools, and geospatial tools coming soon. Stay tuned for more. 

Get in touch with us about cloud solutions 

These are just a handful of the cloud solutions we have on offer. To discuss which tools are the right ones for you or learn more about how these tools could enable your business to work more efficiently, get it touch. The Grey Matter team can help you to find the solutions that fit your business. 

Get in touch with the contact form below or send us a message on the live chat.