In our recent Tech Trends survey, we asked developers worldwide what types of development projects they’re working on. I’ll talk in a separate post about what types of projects (still) dominate. Two types of development showed the most growth, however, and they’re similar: Cloud and Big Data. Both show at least 30% growth in use/intent since 2013. Neither are surprising, but there are insights around both that can benefit those who produce products and services for developers.
First, and this is the most significant insight when planning developer products, services, and associated marketing, developers need more tools around these complex technologies. While every cloud vendor, for example, strives to make its services easier to use, none are perfect. (Just check out the CodeProject message boards and articles to illustrate this.) Vendors of all stripes have the opportunity to provide real value to developers, whether it be through integrating products with multiple leading cloud platforms, providing a layer on top of those platforms to minimize complexity, or adding analysis and lifecycle tools to help plan, build, instrument, troubleshoot and optimize applications.
Developers need more cloud and big data tools: much growth still to come.
Cloud development should come as no surprise. While it does remind me of the days in the mid- to late nineties when 2-tier (client/server) apps were the rage (back in my Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal days), of course it’s more complex than that today. (It’s interesting to consider the oft-repeated definition of the “cloud” as “someone else’s server.”) Still, for the purposes of this discussion, marketers should take heed that there remains a lot of interest in cloud development — and thus, much market opportunity remaining.
Big Data isn’t going away, either. (Follow my good friend Andrew Brust’s updates on ZDNet to get a sense of the ongoing momentum.) In May 2013, analysis reported that 90% of the world’s data has been created in the preceding two years, and the volume of data continues to increase. Who is tasked with making this data accessible and actionable? Developers. They’re working with data analysts and data visualization experts to process this data, and they need as much help as they can get: thus, market opportunity.
This is, of course, just a brief snapshot of these key trends. Marketers should take note to harness these two major areas of developer interest in both product planning, positioning and marketing.
