In the present era, software has become highly dominant across the entire industrial, business, and social spectrum. There have been many changes across the entire global scenario, which has put software in a dominant situation. With automation and mechanization taking the front seat, more and more quality software is in demand to drive the hardware that drives various solutions, which industries have invented for gainful benefit in society. Hence, let us examine some of the trends that have the potential to change the software scenario in 2015.
- Software to Transform Software Itself : –
One of the factors that is slated to change software in 2015 is software itself. For example, WhatsApp and similar services were able change and disrupt the global SMS industry with the help of very small teams. Hence, it can be said that the world is being eaten by software, with the help of smaller teams.
- Huge Surge in The Use of Open Source : –
Similarly, when it comes to infrastructure and services, it is easy to understand that deploying a website a decade ago, could take up a huge amount of capital upfront. However, today, a virtual server can be set up in minutes. Furthermore, it is even possible to narrow down upfront costs to nearly zero. Moreover, today, the dominating force is open source. Open source dominates with the help of Linux, MySQL, Apache, and programming languages such as Python and Ruby. In 2015, we are going to witness a higher surge in the use of open source.
- Developers Will Become More Effective : –
Programming languages have marched upwards from the use of Assembly to Java and further on to scripting languages such as Ruby as well as Python. Thus, presently, we have excess computing resources, and in 2015, these resources will make developers more effective than before.
- Demand for Software to Outpace Supply : –
It is assumed that beyond 2015, there will be more and more special-purpose tools for non-programmers. These tools let non-programmers create software, so that the overall demand for developers can be reduced. Some of these examples are WordPress, Weebly as well as Shopify. Hundreds of other examples abound in this area. Thus, the demand for software will continually outpace the supply, wherein software will ‘eat’ software development.
- Shift to The Cloud : –
It is expected that 2015 onwards, software development will become the number one technology priority, as more and more businesses will shift to the cloud in the coming decade. This will leave more and more resources free to the companies to pursue their core business areas while devoting only specialized resources to building and revising applications on such cloud platforms. Hence, software development using cloud platforms is going to become increasingly strategic.
- Mix of Free and Premium Software : –
Yet another development today involves the move towards free entry level versions of commercial software. This is called “Freemium Software”, which developers look up as good testing grounds for potential commercial products. This is actually a mix of “free” and “premium”, and it has become increasingly common to see these on the menus that you can choose from. The next few years beyond 2015 will see an increase in this trend.
- More Resources Go to App Development Over Web Development : –
Despite all the hype about the mobile web, it seems that the mobile web is declining in favor of mobile apps. Mobile apps get home screen placement versus mobile web users who prefer apps to using the mobile web. The result is that mobile web is losing whereas apps are winning. Thus, although people are spending more time on the mobile versus the desktop, more and more people are spending their mobile time using apps and not the web, which is a worrisome trend for the web. Since mobile is the future, the mobile web should be winning, however, the converse is happening, and 2015 will see more resources go to app development over web development.
- Mobile Apps Will Be Preferable Over Web Apps : –
At the same time, comparing mobile apps to web apps, the web app seems to be lagging behind on the global front, considering GPS, broadband, Wi-Fi, and monetization issues. The future from 2015 onwards seems to belong to mobile apps, however, at least until mobile browser technologies improve.
- Client Server Relationship on Its Way Out : –
Finally, in the world of cloud computing, the client-server relationship is taking its last breath. Today, the cloud is all about self service. It just takes a credit card number to use a web service, and you may not want to build up a lasting relationship a particular cloud provider. Hence, you only pay for what you want and that’s it. That’s the evolving trend for the future beyond 2015.
Thus, we can expect that the software scenario will only radically transform in the coming years. In our final take, developers stand to benefit as well as semi-technical and non programmers will have more resources at their disposal for the final transformation wherein software will have a definitive role to play in human affairs on a day-to-day basis.
