Carl Lehmann is a senior research analyst in the 451 Research Applied Infrastructure & DevOps and Cloud Native research channels within S&P Global Market Intelligence. He leads coverage of process automation and integration in hybrid IT and cloud-native architectures, as well as how hybrid IT affects business strategy and operations. His research covers digital automation platforms (including workflow and business process management suites), robotic process automation technology, process discovery and mining technology, and hybrid integration platforms (including integration PaaS and application programming interface management). Previously, Carl was a principal analyst at BPMethods, where he advised clients on business strategy and process management using the practices in his book “Strategy and Business Process Management: Techniques for Improving Execution, Adaptability, and Consistency," published by Taylor and Francis Group. Carl was also a senior VP of strategy and product management for a B2B integration firm (now OpenText) and served 10 years as VP of research for IT advisory firms Gartner and META Group advising Fortune 500 clients. Carl's career began as a project manager for AT&T and a product manager for Digital Equipment Corporation (now Hewlett Packard Enterprise). He is a graduate of Boston University School of Management.
Businesses are broadly adopting generative and agentic AI tools for use in software development, most commonly by licensing commercial pretrained models, with an emphasis on tasks such as security testing and documentation, as well as code generation and completion.
Voice of the Enterprise: DevOps provides actionable data and insights to understand the key dynamics driving agility and collaboration between developers and IT operations for rapid software iteration and more efficient IT operations.
Combining 451 Research’s industry-leading analysis with a proprietary global panel of IT decision-makers, Voice of the Enterprise: DevOps tracks the disruption in the market and exposes the major opportunities for enterprises, IT vendors, suppliers and investors.
This online survey was conducted Sept. 4 through Oct. 24, 2025. The margin of error for top-line statistics is +/- 5 points at the 95% confidence level.
Businesses are broadly adopting generative and agentic AI tools for use in software development, most commonly by licensing commercial pretrained models, with an emphasis on tasks such as security testing and documentation, as well as code generation and completion.
Crosstabs (Excel tables | Download link in sidebar to the right) – Crosstabs of complete worldwide and regional survey results datasets, including key metrics and segmentation.
Charts and Figures (PowerPoint charts | Navigate charts in sidebar to the left | Download link in sidebar to the right) – PowerPoint slide deck of complete top-line survey results in charts and figures.
Data Insights Deck (PowerPoint charts | Coming soon) – PowerPoint slide deck of advanced charts supporting deeper analysis and insight.
In 2026, AI will mature into agentic operations and human-supervised development, driven by hybrid infrastructure, custom silicon and open governance for industrial-grade enterprise reliability.
Vendors in the integration-platform-as-a-service market continue to expand their scope to meet modern integration demands across data, applications, business processes, IoT/edge devices and hybrid IT estates. What began as cloud-first, connector-centric middleware has matured into multipurpose hybrid integration platforms (HIPs) that combine multicloud and on-premises connectivity, unified API management, event-driven and real-time integration, embedded observability and governance, and intelligent automation to support both IT and citizen integrators. Competition in the HIP market is intensifying as vendors differentiate themselves through low- or no-code tooling, AI-augmented design, mapping and error detection, edge and IoT protocol support, composable APIs, event management, data fabrics and meshes, and tighter security and compliance controls.
The cloud sector continues to transform as hyperscalers, managed service providers, global systems integrators, hardware vendors and independent software vendors advance overlapping visions for IT infrastructure and application modernization enabled by automation and powered by the disruptive promise of generative AI. Developer services, integration, automation and business processes take on new importance as modern enterprise IT environments mature and we transition from the "era of cloud" to the "era of AI."
Platform engineering is at an inflection point — moving from early adoption to mainstream practice, expanding in scope and budget and being fundamentally shaped by AI capabilities. This report highlights some of the key findings, revealing the rise of formal platform engineering roles, an expanding scope and ongoing challenges in developer adoption.
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