ISG Provider Lens™ Future of Work Services - Collaboration and Next-gen Experience Services - Brazil 2025

The age of artificial autonomy: redefining the global workforce and digital workplace

The future of work is shaped by an unprecedented convergence of technological, demographic and economic forces that are fundamentally altering the nature of organizations and human work. In 2025, ISG identifies significant renewals in the global workplace technology market, with a total value of $22.3 billion, especially in the Americas, APAC and EMEA. These investments reflect a transformation toward work environments that integrate human, digital, and physical elements. Simultaneously, the global digital sustainability market is expected to reach $30.3 billion by the end of 2025, driven by a compound annual growth rate of 16 percent, and could reach $41 billion by 2027. Operational technology solutions dominate this market, highlighting the growing demand for sustainable practices in daily operations. These trends and related implications point to a future where innovations in technologies such as GenAI, hybrid cloud computing and advanced networking solutions lead to operational efficiency and agility. In addition, five macro trends will impact the transformation of the global labor market by 2030: technological change, geoeconomic fragmentation, economic uncertainty, demographic shifts and the green transition. These trends, acting individually and collectively, are creating a scenario of structural transformation that will require profound strategic adaptations from global organizations.

The global projection published by the World Economic Forum in 2025 states that 170 million new jobs will be created by 2030, while 92 million will be displaced, resulting in a net increase of 78 million jobs. This statistic represents more than a simple reorganization of the labor market; it signals a paradigm shift in the relationship between technology and human labor, where technological change is expected to have the greatest impact on jobs by 2030, both creating and displacing them. With an ever-changing labor landscape, companies must adapt their technological infrastructures and adopt sustainable and inclusive practices to ensure competitiveness and resilience in the global market.

The technological landscape and its organizational implications

GenAI is emerging as the main catalyst for this transformation, promoting a significant acceleration in the automation of work activities. This evolution represents a fundamental reconfiguration of organizational functions, where GenAI is improving professional work methods, a phenomenon already documented and observable in the analyses of this study.

Leading large companies in the market are at the forefront of this transformation, anticipating trends and adapting their strategies and services to current demands. Microsoft, for example, a strategic partner of the companies analyzed in this study, anticipates that 2025 will be the year of reconstruction — the moment when companies will stop experimenting with AI to rebuild themselves around it. This view is supported by empirical data demonstrating the acceleration of business adoption: the current and planned use of AI among companies jumped to 75 percent in 2024, compared to 55 percent in 2023. McKinsey reports that its organizations are using GenAI to create text outputs; they are also experimenting with other modalities. More significantly, customers report value creation within business units that use GenAI, signaling the transition from experimentation to strategic implementation.

Emergence of autonomous agents and multiagent systems

One of the most significant developments in the current landscape is the emergence of AI agents as a new class of digital workers. Agents can think or reason, remember, train and even know when to ask for help. This capability represents a fundamental evolution from traditional automation to truly autonomous systems that can manage entire business processes.

ISG’s analysis of the agentic AI market reveals that this technology is emerging as a new form of business automation, enabling systems to act more independently and in a coordinated manner. Agentic AI is designed to execute business processes through autonomous actions, controlling multiple processes with essential characteristics that include autonomy, goal orientation, contextual awareness, limited decision-making, scheduling logic and evolutionary behavior.

This adoption is not merely technological but represents a fundamental reengineering of organizational processes. ISG research shows that most use cases for agentic AI are concentrated in IT, with 52 percent of applications being industry agnostic, while 70 percent of use cases are distributed across three main industries: financial services, retail and manufacturing. Agents will change how firms manage end-to-end processes, from sales to supply chains, creating constellations of agents working continuously in the background to execute or automate entire business processes.

The successful implementation of these systems requires a strategic approach to governance and trust. ISG data indicates that only 25 percent of AI agent solutions enable independent operations, while 45 percent act in an advisory role, highlighting that governance must evolve to include real-time monitoring and escalation logic. To harness the power of autonomous systems responsibly, companies must implement robust monitoring and strategic training. Additionally, the coordination among agents represents a growing area of investment, with emerging protocols for collaboration between multiple autonomous systems.

Transformation of skills and human capital

Technological transformation is fundamentally redefining the landscape of skills needed in the labor market. Employers expect that 39 percent of the key skills needed will change by 2030, down from 44 percent in 2023. This decline suggests that a growing focus on continuous learning, upskilling and reskilling programs has enabled companies to better anticipate and manage future skill requirements.

Technological skills are projected to grow in importance faster than any other skills over the next five years. At the same time, there is a growing appreciation of distinctive human skills. Human strengths such as conflict mitigation, adaptability, process automation and innovative thinking are also growing, showing that the future belongs to those who can combine deep AI capabilities with skills that machines cannot replicate. This transformation has not gone unnoticed by the companies that participated in this study. We have observed significant movement and investment in upskilling and reskilling the workforce, a strategy that is absolutely in line with the current trend.

The Brazilian scenario: opportunities and structural challenges

Brazil has unique characteristics in the future of work landscape, combining significant opportunities with specific structural challenges. Annual projections indicate that professionals with technology training will make up one-third of the country’s annual demand, a significant annual talent deficit. This talent gap reflects broader structural challenges in the Brazilian education system, where there are at least 2.4 candidates for every place in IT courses, and only 24.85 percent are accepted into public institutions. In private institutions, 39 percent of students drop out oftheir courses, according to Brasscom.

Despite these challenges, the Brazilian technology sector shows significant dynamism. The software subsegment grew by 21.6 percent in 2023, reaching a production of R$43.8 billion, while services registered a significant increase of 25.1 percent in the same year, reaching a total production of R$104.3 billion. Particularly noteworthy is the growth of cloud computing, which increased by 25.1 percent, totaling R$46.5 billion in 2023.

Brazilian digital infrastructure and investments

Brazil is strategically positioning itself to capture opportunities in the global digital economy. Cloud computing continues to be the highlight, with a forecast growth of 24 percent per year and revenue generation of R$181.1 billion over the next three years. Big data & analytics are expected to grow 12 percent per year until 2025, generating a revenue of R$94.6 billion, while AI is expected to grow 18 percent per year until 2025, generating a revenue of R$49.7 billion.

Data center infrastructure is emerging as a critical component of this strategy. The Brazilian market had investments worth more than $2 billion in data center rentals in 2024, with expectations of reaching $3.50 billion by 2029. This expansion is crucial, as data centers host computing resources to support services such as voice recognition, predictive analytics, image processing and recommendation systems.

A distinctive competitive advantage for Brazil is its energy matrix. For Brazil, the widespread availability of clean and renewable energy is a unique competitive advantage for data centers. The country has an energy matrix based on hydroelectric sources and has seen solar and wind energy grow as supporting sources.

Strategies, governance and risk management in the AI era

Leading technology services companies are adopting differentiated strategies to navigate this transformation. We have identified various approaches in defining the future vision of corporations, ranging from those focused on collaboration between humans and AI agents, breaking down silos, promoting collaboration, and capitalizing on building platforms and capabilities to accelerate the adoption of multiagent systems to transformation through AI applications and managing tensions between technological efficiency and human values.

Regardless of the strategy, successfully implementing autonomous AI systems requires robust governance and risk management models. We have identified that organizations are intensifying their efforts to mitigate the risks related to GenAI, but this is only the beginning of the journey. The issue of trust is central to widespread adoption. While GenAI is advancing at a remarkable speed, most organizations are setting their own pace for achieving ROI with AI, which tends to be slower. The convergence of these trends points to a fundamental redefinition of work and organizations. Intelligence on demand will rewrite the rules of business and transform knowledge into actionable work. This transformation will require a new organizational mindset combining machine intelligence with human judgment, building AI-powered yet human-led systems.

Convergence of dominant capabilities, residual characteristics and implications for emerging markets

Consolidated analysis of leaders in digital workplace services reveals an architectural transformation grounded in the convergence of three dominant technology vectors: AI as a fundamental infrastructure, UX as a value metric and sustainability as a systemic competitive differentiator. This strategic tripartite division manifests itself through proprietary platforms that transcend traditional automation, implementing autonomous ecosystems capable of self-remediation, demand prediction and continuous resource optimization.

The AI-centric architecture is the prevailing paradigm, materializing through portfolios with domain-specific prebuilt agents, request deflection, efficiency gains and customer satisfaction. Proprietary ecosystems integrate multimodal virtual assistants, cognitive automation and predictive analytics, eliminating operational silos through codefree orchestration. The transition from traditional service level agreements (SLAs) to experience level agreements (XLAs) represents a fundamental paradigm shift, prioritizing business outcomes over traditional operational metrics through experience management offices (XMO) that consolidate full journey scores.

Sustainability evolves from regulatory compliance to a driver of competitive innovation through proprietary ESG methodologies, integration of IoT and AI, and circular life cycle management models. Smart solutions implement integrated sensors, energy resource automation and predictive analytics for space optimization, creating responsive environments that reduce environmental impact while increasing organizational productivity.

The emerging layered delivery model integrates user profiles, technology platforms, multichannel service centers, predictive services and reliability automation. Extreme personalization through micro-profiles and real-time sentiment analysis sets a new standard for engagement, while always-on self-healing solutions, anomaly detection and silent interventions dramatically reduce IT interactions. Disruptive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) for field support minimize travel, maximizing operational efficiency.

Less prominent features reveal the accelerated commoditization of traditionally differentiated capabilities. Traditional field services (IMAC), telecommunications management, BYOD, desktop virtualization, patch management and application provisioning appear as basic integrated features, important in the context of the service provided, but without significant strategic differentiation. Traditional service desks, physical tech bars, digital lockers, traditional hot desking and basic facility management suggest an accelerated transition to completely autonomous models, indicating the obsolescence of legacy operating paradigms.

Strategic partnerships with cloud providers and manufacturers are a critical differentiator, achieved through coinnovation and joint development of proprietary solutions. The ability to orchestrate complex technology ecosystems, integrating legacy, cloud and internal solutions with operational agility, creates sustainable competitive advantages that are impossible to replicate in isolation. Technological convergence through integrated portfolios establishes significant barriers to entry through human-free capabilities.

Compliance and ethics in AI are core pillars supported by international standard frameworks, role-based access controls, secure programming interfaces and algorithmic fairness through continuous bias reviews. An AI-ready workforce represents a strategic investment, ensuring organizational relevance and sustainable models of collaboration between humans and AI.

For emerging markets, particularly in the Brazilian context, the analysis reveals strategic opportunities through local regulatory expertise, specialized on-site support and regionalized cultural adaptation. Compliance with the LGPD (General Data Protection Law) integrated with ESG creates a sustainable competitive advantage, while the continental size and infrastructure complexity favor suppliers with on-site delivery capabilities and distributed multilingual support.

Strategic implications and directions for the future of work

The future of work is being shaped by a confluence of technological, economic and social forces that require coordinated strategic responses from businesses, governments and educational institutions. The emergence of autonomous AI and multiagent systems, evidenced in the accelerated transformation of digital workplace models, represents a technological evolution and fundamental transformation in human organizational work and its operational nature. This evolution redefines the relationships between productivity, sustainability and EX, establishing new paradigms of organizational value.

For technology services companies, the central challenge transcends the development of advanced technical capabilities, focusing on creating governance structures and operating models that balance technological efficiency with human values. The ability to navigate this fundamental tension, evidenced in the transition from traditional operational metrics to user-centered experience outcomes, will determine which organizations thrive in the age of AI autonomy. Successfully implementing agent-based ecosystems requires technological excellence, cultural sensitivity, regulatory adaptability and a genuine commitment to social and environmental sustainability.

With its distinctive competitive advantages in clean energy and a dynamic domestic market, Brazil has the strategic potential to emerge as a significant regional technology hub in the global context of digital transformation. Brazil’s energy matrix, based on renewable sources, positions the country as a preferred destination for sustainable digital infrastructure, while its sectoral and cultural diversity offers a unique environment for the development of adaptive and inclusive AI solutions. However, realizing this potential critically depends on sustained investments in education, digital infrastructure and innovation policies that address current structural deficits in technological talent formation, particularly in the areas of GenAI and UX.

In conclusion, the digital workplace market is undergoing a structural transformation. The convergence of agent-based AI, operational sustainability and personalized experience defines new competitive paradigms that transcend sectoral and geographical boundaries. The accelerated commoditization of traditional services, combined with the emergence of advanced autonomous capabilities, establishes a scenario where strategic differentiation depends fundamentally on the ability to orchestrate complex technological ecosystems, while maintaining cultural adaptability, local regulatory compliance and a genuine commitment to the sustainable transformation of human work in the age of AI.

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