Software development trends to look for in 2016

Last year, I wrote a blog post on what my enterprise technology New Year’s resolutions were — working with customers to help navigate the influx of consumer-focused companies entering the enterprise IT space. The push of consumer companies into the enterprise didn’t increase as I expected, but we did help some customers move their digital documents and knowledge bases to some of these consumer company’s enterprise offerings.

Moving into 2016, I find myself less focused on resolutions and more interested in what’s next for the industry. Here are the trends that I expect to see customers in the software development space more interested in in the coming year:

• Continued wave of everything natively mobile: The responsive Web will continue to not be enough. Companies will continue to move their products and offerings to native mobile apps and consumers will demand that their experience move with them through their devices. I started my purchase on my tablet, but completed the transaction on my phone.
• Acceleration of DevOps adoption: As I’ve written about here before, interest in DevOps has exploded this year, and with good reason — it’s an effective software development method that facilitates communication and collaboration between different parts of an organization. This is a trend that I see not only carrying into 2016, but continuing to grow exponentially. As companies become more integrated and continue to move large amounts of data to the cloud, the necessity for DevOps will only increase.
• Greater demand for increased privacy: Online privacy got a lot of attention this year, and not all of it good. It seemed that no one was exempt from damaging data breaches, from major banks to the now-infamous extramarital dating site Ashley Madison. With the influx of more sites and even apps that are responsible for safeguarding personal information (like Venmo mobile banking and ZocDoc) I expect that consumers will be demanding more efficient safeguard and companies will be charged with making those adjustments — and fast.
• Cloud computing will be a thing of the past: This isn’t because the cloud is going away, not by a long shot. Rather, “cloud computing” will simply become synonymous with “computing.” There are virtually no businesses that are not using the cloud currently in some capacity. But those that aren’t will need to get on board quickly, as it has become an essential part of not only working with customers, but also managing internal operations.

Only time will tell what trends will truly take off and what new advancements we’ll be reflecting on this time next year, but the one thing that I can guarantee is that when it comes to software technology, things can change quickly.