A developer position left vacant for three months, a ransomware alert handled urgently on a Friday evening, an automation project stalled due to lack of internal skills: this is the daily reality for many IT teams in 2024. The IT trends of this year are not just a list of trendy technologies. They reflect regulatory constraints, skill shortages, and architectural choices that commit companies for several years.
European AI Act: what IT teams need to map now
Competitors talk about generative artificial intelligence from the perspective of creative uses. On the ground, the issue that has been mobilizing CIOs since the summer of 2024 is Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, published in the Official Journal on July 12, 2024, and entered into force on August 1, 2024. This text requires each company to map its AI uses and classify them by risk level: unacceptable, high risk, limited risk, minimal.
In practical terms, we are talking about systems already deployed in many organizations: application scoring, automated CV filtering, customer service chatbots powered by generative models. Practices deemed to be of unacceptable risk (social scoring, certain forms of real-time biometric surveillance) have been prohibited in the EU since February 2, 2025, with fines of up to 35 million euros or 7% of annual global turnover.
Obligations increase in intensity until 2027-2028 for high-risk uses: documented risk management, usage logs, human oversight, compliance assessment, and CE marking. For SMEs that use AI tools without even realizing it (a scoring plug-in integrated into their CRM, for example), the first practical advice is to create a complete inventory by the end of 2025.
Useful resources for keeping up with IT news on Bargento, particularly regarding the sectoral implications of these new rules, can be found.
Cybersecurity skills shortage: recruiting differently in France
The difficulty in recruiting cybersecurity profiles is not just talk. In France, as in the rest of the EU, the shortage of IT and cybersecurity specialists persists despite digital training plans. Companies find themselves balancing between vacant positions for months and expensive external services.
What changes in 2024 is the approach to recruitment. Several European organizations are beginning to adopt a skills-based recruitment approach rather than one based on degrees. The idea is to assess what a candidate can do (configure a firewall, audit a network, write a security policy) rather than filtering based on a specific master’s degree.
Priority skills to target for IT recruiters
- IoT risk management: with the proliferation of connected objects in professional environments, feedback on the maturity level of teams varies, but the demand for profiles capable of securing these ecosystems is skyrocketing
- AI regulatory compliance: knowing how to read the AI Act, classify a system, and document its operation is becoming a distinct skill set, separate from pure AI development
- Incident response: beyond prevention, companies are looking for operational profiles capable of containing an attack in a few hours, not days
Training internally is often more realistic than recruiting. Short certifications (cloud security, vulnerability analysis) allow existing system administrators to move up to hybrid positions.
Cloud and hybrid architecture: the real trade-offs of 2024
Moving to the cloud is no longer a trend; it is a given. The on-the-ground question in 2024 revolves around the choice between public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid architecture based on very concrete constraints: latency, data egress costs, sovereignty.
Many French companies that have massively shifted to the public cloud between 2020 and 2023 are discovering high exit bills when they want to bring some workloads back. Hybrid architecture, which keeps sensitive data on a controlled infrastructure while leveraging the scalability of the public cloud for peak loads, is emerging as the dominant operational compromise.
Three criteria for deciding between public and hybrid cloud
- Volume of data exchanged: if your applications move large volumes between the cloud and your premises, egress costs can negate the savings made on infrastructure
- Regulatory requirements: certain sectors (health, finance, defense) require that data remain within national territory, which directs towards a qualified SecNumCloud host or a private infrastructure
- Internal skills: managing a hybrid cloud requires DevOps and network profiles that not all SMEs have, hence the interest in managed services
Green IT and digital sobriety: going beyond the rhetoric
It is read everywhere that Green IT is a trend. On the ground, the reality is more nuanced. Digital sobriety starts with purchasing decisions: extending the lifespan of existing equipment rather than renewing every three years. A workstation whose lifespan is extended by a year represents a greater environmental gain than any energy optimization software.
The other concrete lever is the sizing of cloud infrastructures. Many companies over-provision their instances out of caution, leading to unnecessary energy consumption. A regular audit of allocated resources (right-sizing) can reduce both the bill and the carbon footprint without sacrificing performance.
Extra-financial reporting obligations (CSRD) now push mid-sized and large companies to document the environmental impact of their information systems. This is no longer just a communication issue; it is a compliance matter that engages IT teams as much as CSR teams.
IT in 2024 is less about adopting new technologies than about managing simultaneous constraints: AI regulation, talent shortages, cloud cost control, and measurable sobriety. The teams that succeed are those that treat these issues as operational projects, with deadlines and identified responsibilities, not just as lines in a technology watch.
