It's not easy to neatly wrap up a year. Some businesses saw tech wins, others experienced failures. Some executives moved on to new roles and others remained amid ongoing transformation efforts.

To sum it up, 2018 was a year of change. In the first half of the year, GDPR's pending implementation sent businesses scrambling to become compliant. An election cycle sparked questions of impacts on technology regulation. And advanced, future technology cast an omnipresent shadow on those still operating legacy systems.

The stories that resonated most this year focused on the future.

• What will become of industry's struggling incumbents?

• How are companies modernizing and using advanced technology?

• What is on the forecast for disruption in the coming year?

Take a look at CIO Dive's best of 2018 stories and let us know what you think by emailing us at [email protected].

1. 7 'scary' and disruptive technologies to watch out for

   Companies that don't prepare "will be pushed aside," said Daryl Plummer, distinguished VP analyst and fellow at Gartner. Read More »

2. Estée Lauder CIO gives IT a makeover to keep pace with fast-changing beauty trends

   "We don't talk about digital transformation," Michael Smith said. "I don't like that term, because it's a buzzword, and it means 15 different things to 15 different people." Read More »

3. Highest-paying IT certifications and why they matter

   Companies turn away from "four-year-degree-itis" to widen the talent pool. Read More »

4. How Spotify is migrating from an in-house Docker orchestration platform to Kubernetes

   The company started small, experimenting with a few services on Kubernetes clusters then moving up to more complex workloads and self-service migration.Read More »

5. Gartner serves up 2018 Hype Cycle with a heavy side of AI

   The Hype Cycle can serve as an early warning system for executives, and jumping on technologies in the two to five year range could pay big dividends down the road. Read More »

6. Dell is considering its future strategy. What could it mean for CIOs?

   Evaluating the risk profile associated with all vendors is part of the CIO's job, and ultimately Dell's business decisions cause IT leaders to ask, "what does this mean for my relationship with Dell?" Read More »

7. Starbucks is brewing up blockchain for 'bean to cup' tracking

   The coffee company has an inventive supply chain not limited to a single system of process. Read More »

8. When it comes to digital strategy, companies can either eat or be eaten

   "I'm the first chief digital officer of PwC," Joe Atkinson said. "I may also be the last because if I accomplish what's on my agenda, then we won't have a set of projects to digitize the firm. It will simply be the way we do business." Read More »

9. What a sale of GE Digital assets would mean for the enterprise

   There are likely avenues for how a sale would play out — sell in pieces or as a block — and the who buyers will be. Read More »

10. 4 early, real-world quantum computing applications

    From traffic optimization to ad placement and election modeling, quantum researchers are steadily using the tech for everyday problems. Read More »