Global application development (AD) software market is expected to grow 1.8% over 2011, reaching more than $9bn in 2012, according to Gartner.
According to ‘Market Trends: Application Development Software, Worldwide, 2012-2016’ report, the AD software spending will be driven by software delivery models, new development methodologies, mobile application development and open source software.
Cloud is changing the way applications are designed, tested and deployed, resulting in a significant shift in AD priorities, the report revealed.
Gartner principal research analyst Asheesh Raina said application modernisation and increasing agility will drive AD spending, apart from other emerging dynamics of cloud, mobility and social computing.
"These emerging trends are directing AD demand towards newer architectures, programming languages, business model and user skills," Raina said.
"The trend is compelling enough to force traditional AD vendors to ‘cloud-enable’ their existing offerings and position them as a service to be delivered through the cloud."
"AD for cloud demands rapid deployment, a high focus on user experience and access to highly elastic resources for software testing, while requiring comparatively less underlying infrastructure for developing applications."
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The mobile AD projects targeting smartphones and tablets will cross the native PC projects by a ratio of 4:1 by 2015, the report revealed.
Driving the AD shift, open source software will become a key element of the software quality landscape beyond the developer level, putting pressure on market leaders during the next three to five years.
The report claims at least 70% 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,"Raina added.
"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."
