With the shadow of economic uncertainty affecting industries across the globe, software developers are finding varied pathways to navigate the present and prepare for the future. Industry experts are thinking about greater efficiency, integration, and automation to best position their companies heading into 2023.
Industry experts offer their predictions in several areas for the coming year, providing food for thought as you plan for the next year and advise your clients on what’s on the horizon.
Automation
Heath Thompson, President & General Manager, Information Systems Management, Quest Software:
“In 2023’s connected enterprise, software will need to seamlessly integrate data from a variety of sources in hybrid environments. To do so, organizations must utilize automation in 2023 to ensure that databases and pipelines remain connected and secured, which will free up IT teams to spend more time progressing on data-driven initiatives and less time troubleshooting. By prioritizing this, organizations will continue improving business operations and outcomes for their customers.”
Open-Source Software
Anil Inamdar, VP & Global Head of Data Solutions, Instaclustr (a NetApp company):
“As enterprises become more cost-conscious amid economic uncertainty, look for a surge in adoption of 100 percent open-source software development tools. Businesses that weren’t already won over by the enterprise-grade scalability, reliability, and performance offered by many open-source projects will take notice of the unbeatable price tag. One specific example in 2023: expect dev teams grappling with the complexities of high-scale distributed applications to adopt the new open-source Cadence project in greater numbers. The fault-oblivious, stateful, complex business logic code platform is particularly representative of the fully open-source development tools that’ll keep teams moving even as technology budgets take a hit.”
Cloud and Cloud Costs
Rob Faraj, Co-founder, Kubecost:
“As budgets likely tighten in 2023 amid uncertain economic conditions, dev teams will be forced to address cloud overspending. Expect Kubernetes-related cloud costs to be a particularly clear savings opportunity. Many dev teams lack the Kubernetes visibility required to accurately monitor how much they are spending and where exactly that budget is going. This has led to overprovisioning, especially in multi-tenant environments. That changes in 2023, as we’ll see more granular Kubernetes cloud cost monitoring, with real-time visibility and management to accurately assign developer team costs — and lead to more cost responsibility via showbacks, chargebacks, and other strategies.”
Andrew Davis, Sr. Director of Methodology and Training at Copado:
“Over the last few years, digital transformation initiatives have increased momentum, and the pandemic dislodged most internal resistance to such efforts in organizations, forcing companies to prepare for a new world of remote or hybrid work. It triggered substantial growth at most software companies, including those with their own ambitious growth goals for the coming year. Those growth goals manifest with marketing and sales efforts to help educate and engage development teams.
“Unfortunately, the pandemic, war in Ukraine, supply chain issues, and more have caused substantial global uncertainty. As businesses struggle to adapt and maintain as much business as usual, we’ll see the powerful influence of global cloud giants as they exert additional pressure in multiple ways. Global infrastructure vendors such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure will make it hard to compete from a capability and cost perspective, despite the predicted increase in cloud computing costs over the coming years. Similarly, cloud-based application providers like Salesforce and Workday, companies with the sales teams, capital, and capabilities to continue increasing their market share, will continue to do so.”
Integration
Vlad Kovacevic, CEO, Inovatec:
“API integrations and partner alliances are the future. Software designers should focus on creating best-in-class integrations to deliver an ecosystem of top-flight capabilities through a single interface. No single provider can stay at the leading edge of every potential client need. There are so many excellent specialized technology providers in disciplines like compliance, data analytics, e-signatures, and e-vaulting that it doesn’t make sense to try to implement all these tools in-house. Instead, focus your efforts on the user experience – what your specific users want and need – and leverage emerging technology to add the gold-standard technical capabilities that supplement your platform.”
Efficiency and Productivity
Leif Astrand, Vice President of R&D at Vaadin:
“As cloud migration continues, application developers are increasingly being asked to modernize existing Java applications. With a growing global shortage of developers and ongoing hiring challenges, the focus on efficient modernization will increase in 2023. Organizations can’t afford to rewrite all of their existing business logic and back-end services that often extend to many millions of lines of code. As a result, developers will turn to tools that make it faster and easier to build a modern and efficient UX without rewriting backend code. This efficient modernization approach will enable developers to have a bigger impact on their businesses.”
Prakash Vyas, Head of Portfolio at OutSystems:
“Amid increasing developer burnout and a massive talent shortage, I predict that IT leaders will prioritize fostering developer productivity in 2023. Technology like low-code can help developers feel satisfied with their teams’ productivity, access to tooling, and their ability to meet the expectations of the business – all things that can increase the chance they stay in their roles long-term. Because low-code enables higher productivity and better communication, 71 percent of low-code developers report they are able to stick to a 40-hour work week, which could be the secret to fostering more developer engagement and higher retention in 2023.”
Lucid Software’s David Torgerson, VP of Infrastructure and IT:
“In the coming year, companies will prioritize efficiency. Companies that have continued to struggle with communication and workflow issues since the pandemic are likely utilizing short-term solutions that have run their course. Hybrid work is here to stay, and leaders will need to adapt and take a stance on what the future of work means to them. This will be done through paying down tech debt that stemmed from the pandemic response, meaning prioritizing solutions with the highest ROI–those that enable effective communication, collaboration, and productivity– in order to create long-term agile businesses.”
