Today’s technology is causing fast-paced digital transformations to happen across nearly every business sector and niche, including healthcare, manufacturing, and entertainment. In order to survive in this rapidly evolving world of innovations and changes, it is mandatory to keep up with the pace of things. This includes the software development industry.
The year 2020 has already shown the world that it’s best to prepare for the unexpected. However, there are a few predictions about the rest of the year that every software development company, such as BairesDev, should expect and prepare for in order to excel in the field.
Top Trends in Software and Application Development
- Artificial intelligence will continue to dominate the field. – While artificial intelligence is not necessarily a new thing this year, the speed at which it is being adopted across industries of all kinds makes it not only a trend in the world of software development but many others as well.
A recent study claims that the global artificial intelligence software market will grow by an estimated 154-percent every year and revenue will reach approximately $126 billion by the year 2025. The growth of this industry is expected to maintain its pace. In terms of software development specifically, businesses must adopt AI into their products if they want to stay relevant.
The last few years have seen an exponential increase in the adoption of this technology into everyday lives. From smartphones and voice-activated home assistants to Big Data and Data Science practices in the office, artificial intelligence is in nearly every software of today’s word. AI provides businesses with many benefits, including streamlined operations, reduced costs, boosted productivity levels, better performance, and improved customer service options.
It’s safe to expect that technological advances throughout the year will also create new opportunities for businesses to implement artificial intelligence in their software and mobile application development processes as well as improved chatbots, advanced customer behavior analysis capabilities, and a reduced need for human resources departments thanks to the accuracy, reliability, and speed of automation with AI.
- Continuous delivery is a must. – As technology reaches speeds previously unknown this year, companies must strive to keep up with the rapid pace with their code delivery. Continuous delivery is the process through which code is integrated, tested, built, and fully configured immediately after developers finish writing it followed by deployment.
Continuous delivery can sound like rushing through the process to some but it actually helps software development teams reduce their number of errors that make it through to production as they are constantly in a testing state. Code errors are typically caught immediately and sent directly back for fixes.
- 5G can improve mobile experiences. – 5G provides smartphone users with a better user experience thanks to improved mobile broadband as well as faster upload and download speeds. 5G offers much more than just improved speeds as well. Its enhanced characteristics will bypass the limitations of 4G and allow developers to create new functionalities, more robust apps, and extend augmented reality and video capabilities.
Security and the precision of data are also majorly improved with this new network. With the number of 5G connections expected to reach between 20 and 100 million by 2021, it’s a safe bet to say that this will have a major impact on application and software development throughout the year.
- The popularity of progressive web applications will keep growing and possibly become the new standard. – Progressive web applications are a mix of the functionality of a mobile application and a website that act as a native solution. These apps are accessible through any browser and live on the smartphone’s home screen which means that a visit to the app store is not required.
Progressive web apps offer users immersive experiences with enhanced performance, quick load times, reduced data use, as well as engaging and improved user experience.
- Outsourcing of software development projects will reign supreme. – As brands continue to try to differentiate themselves from the competition, customer experience will overtake price and product this year as the key differentiator. Most industries have already seen a shift towards experience being the number one priority for customers, especially in the software industry.
As quality and innovation are required to beat the competition, many companies and brands have already and will continue to turn to software development outsourcing companies to take care of their software, website, and application needs. Outsourcing providers are constantly updating the skills of their team members to keep up with the times while acting as a well-oiled machine for achieving all of the goals of their customers.
As more and more companies look outside of their in-house teams to create products for this experience-based economy, the importance of outsourcing companies will only continue to grow.
Given the incredible speed at which trends are rising and technology is advancing, there is no question that these trends will not be the only ones to become the most popular ones for the rest of the year. Many of these trends are already among us but have such potential to grow that they will only get bigger this year. Software development teams must continue to rise to the challenge of the ever-changing industry and keep up with these incredible advancements for their clients and end-users alike.
Laila Azzahra is a professional writer and blogger that loves to write about technology, business, entertainment, science, and health.