IT Essentials: Celebration and innovation

This year's achievements herald great things in 2025

The UK IT Industry Awards are the most exciting night of the tech industry calendar, and as fantastic as the event was, it’s what I learned there that excites me more.

Several leaders I talked to explained how they were using AI to overcome business problems that wouldn’t have been possible even five years ago; more told me all about massive, organisation-wide transformations, either coming soon or just finishing up; and there were even a few who had plans for agentic AI at scale.

This is what I love about the technology industry, and tech professionals: they never stand still. Even at the capstone event of the year, where 12 months of hard work, sweat and innovation come together, they’re already excited about the next project.

Creativity has never been lacking in our sector, but the introduction of generative AI – with massive backing from vendors – has galvanised work on a whole new slew of projects that were just waiting for the right tool, time and person.

Next year’s awards are going to be really interesting, and I consider myself very lucky to be involved with them.

I also want to note that this year’s event was also special in another way, boasting the most diverse shortlist we’ve ever had at the UK IT Industry Awards.

For the first time ever, both the winner and highly commended IT Leader of the Year – perhaps the most prestigious prize at the awards – were women. Congratulations to Gemma Hyde from The Crown Prosecution Service and Gayathri Shyamsundar of the Financial Conduct Authority.

But, the work hasn’t stopped. Women are finally getting the recognition they deserve, but are still tragically underrepresented in IT.

In his opening speech, Rashik Parmar, CEO of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT – which is a co-owner and operator of the awards with Computing – highlighted the fact that only 21% of the UK’s tech professionals are women, versus 50% of the overall workforce.

That’s why we run events like the Women and Diversity in Tech & Channel Festival in early November, and the Women in Tech Excellence Awards, coming later this month. Whether you’re just starting to get involved in the DEI space or have been overcoming your targets for years, we’d love for more professionals to get involved.