Majority of organisations are hosting up to half of their applications in a cloud environment and are also deploying agile IT delivery in their applications and infrastructure in a move to streamline operations, according to 2010-2011 World Quality Report by Capgemini and Sogeti.
The study, based on a survey of over 30,000 CXOs, IT directors, quality assurance managers and engineers across North America, Europe and Asia, found that majority of organisations (71%) are still investing in new application development projects, but IT investments are shifting from a daily operational focus towards building new applications that bring competitive advantage for business.
The report showed that organisations are increasingly turning to agile and cloud based delivery methods to modernise their applications as they look to benefit from cost reduction, increased agility and improved time to market.
The firm said that requirements for future quality assurance engineers are changing, and both developers and testers will be under increased pressure to provide greater efficiency, more consistent quality assurance methodology and better reuse of automated software. Testers of tomorrow will work in smaller teams that are expected to deliver executable code within 4 to 6 weeks.
Raf Howery, vice president of global channels and partners executive at Capgemini, said: "Following a severe recession, we see a surprising number of companies continuing to invest in new application development projects.
"However they are understandably selecting projects that deliver a quick and clear ROI. Agile delivery coupled with cloud computing technologies should help providing organisations with quicker time to market and higher application quality at significantly reduced cost levels."
