How Will The Software Development Industry Change In The Next 5 Years?

Author: Julia Voloshchenko, PR professional and Editor-in-Chief of the Usetech blog. Expert in media relations and branding. I write about technology and business.

Every year, the impact of technology on all areas of human work is increasing, and companies that want to be leaders in their field need to follow trends and implement them in their business. This also applies to the software industry, which is now actively developing and investing.

According to Statista, revenues in the software market will reach $659 billion in 2023 and will grow over the next 5 years. In addition, despite the market downturn in 2020 due to the pandemic, from 2022 there is an increase in investment in data automation software. Speaking of which, software that automates processes is becoming in demand in HR-tech.

Key market trends are emerging that are worth paying attention to, because these services will be in demand among customers. More and more companies are updating their service portfolio and investing to stay competitive. Let’s take a look at the software market trends that will be in demand over the next few years.

Custom Software Development

The custom solution development model is gaining popularity, primarily because of its uniqueness. Software developed for specific business needs and requirements will provide greater efficiency and return than a ready-made solution that exists on the market. In addition, when a company transforms and grows, this solution can always be updated with the help of the development team.

Artificial Intelligence

Of course, one of the most popular technologies was and remains artificial intelligence. Experts predict the active development of voice recognition on devices, as well as coding with artificial intelligence. The integration of AI into existing solutions will increase their efficiency and expand the market of application and use.

“The one big buzz in the developer community now is AI-assisted coding. Some tools have been around for a while, but tools for AI-assisted coding changed dramatically over the past year, and some like Amazon CodeWhisperer have changed the game. This means there will be more experimentation over the next year or so and that could make a difference in both developing applications and the cost of developing them, as it saves time.” — notes Baruch Labunski, CEO at Rank Secure.

Gamification

The next direction in software development will be gamification. In short, gamification is the incorporation of game techniques into the non-game process. Most often, gamification is used in marketing or HR. For example, Maria Nikolaeva, Chief Marketing Officer at Usetech, talks about the Workcore employee loyalty and motivation program, which is based on gamification:

“Workcore is a tool for working with a company’s HR brand and employee motivation. It helps to reduce cost of hiring employees and increase their productive time in the company by encouraging useful activities in a game format. For example, for some actions (mentioning the company or participating in a conference) an employee gets internal currency, which can be spent on equipment or branded things with the company logo. The tool is based on Bartle’s classification of game types.”

Many large technology companies also use gamification in the development of websites or applications, or involve developers in the company with gamification.
Gamification is actively penetrating the field of marketing, allowing you to expand and improve the experience of customer interaction.

Cloud Technology in Enterprise Development

Gartner predicts demand for cloud-related services. It’s one of the popular ways to store data, used by a large percentage of technology and non-technology companies. Demand for cloud services began to grow during the pandemic as companies moved to remote and hybrid workflows. The cost of maintaining cloud solutions is less, but their reliability and security is higher than other solutions.

The rise in popularity of JavaScript and Python

Every year, there are surveys about the popularity of programming languages. For example, in 2022, StackOverflow surveyed 70,000 developers about which programming languages are popular. The top of the list was JavaScript (incidentally, it’s in the lead for the tenth year in a row).

“JavaScript is supported by most browsers, and a lot of libraries are written in JavaScript, which is why it’s in high demand. It’s followed by Python: it has compatibility with artificial intelligence and, like JavaScript, a lot of libraries written in Python.”
— Kirill Mylnikov, a developer at Usetech, points out.

“In terms of programming languages, the demand for languages like Python, JavaScript, and Java is rising due to their flexibility and versatility.” — also notes Precious Abacan, writer at Softlist.io.

These trends and technologies indicate that the future of the software industry will change over the next few years and place an emphasis on the marketplace. Companies that actively invest in new resources will keep pace with the times and technology.

Are you ready to use these technologies and languages in your business and increase your competitive advantage?