Infotech Lead India: India application development (AD) software market is expected to grow 22.6 percent over 2011to reach more than $227 million in 2012, Gartner said in its latest report, “Market Trends: Application Development Software, Worldwide, 2012-2016.”
The market will be driven by evolving software delivery models, new development methodologies, emerging mobile application development and open source software.
Cloud is transforming the way applications are designed, tested and deployed, resulting in a significant shift in AD priorities.
Cost is a major driving factor, in addition to agility, flexibility and speed to deployment. Ninety percent of large, mainstream enterprises and government agencies will use some aspect of cloud computing by 2015, according to Gartner.
“Application modernization and increasing agility will continue to be a solid driver for AD spending, apart from other emerging dynamics of cloud, mobility and social computing,” said Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst at Gartner. “These emerging trends are directing AD demand towards newer architectures, programming languages, business model and user skills.”
Mobile AD projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4:1 by 2015. The changes are driven by emerging mobile applications, systems and devices.
Mobile AD projects are one of the top three CIP priorities at the enterprise level. Gartner research found that CIOs expect more than 20 percent of their employees to use tablets instead of laptops by 2013, hastening the process of change as AD tools and applications evolve to address the requirements of these new devices.
Another element that drives AD shift is open source software. It will create pressure on market leaders during the next three to five years. Gartner predicts that at least 70 percent of new enterprise Java applications will be deployed on an open source Java application server by the end of 2017
“Open source software tools will continue to erode revenue for some AD categories in design, testing and Web development,” said Raina. “This is being driven primarily by the success of Eclipse and NetBeans, as well as by overall revitalization of the market by new small software providers looking for technical and market disruptive approaches for offering products. Limited budgets and economic conditions compelling enough to focus on cost reduction, also fuel the use of open-source software in various development projects.”
