While the exact terminologies for the Software Development trends of 2024 aren’t very different from what you might have seen a few years ago. The capability threshold of these technologies has seen some dramatic improvement. That’s exactly what our focus is going to be on this blog!
It’s hard NOT to use software while running a business these days. Whether you are running a large-scale enterprise business with a custom product built by a team of software development experts or operating from a small 4x4 space using Excel/Google Sheets to manage the inventory and a small POS device to accept online payments, software is everywhere.
The adoption of new and improved software is growing at full pace, and you might think that businesses will soon catch up to everything the market is offering, right? Wrong! There’s always something new happening in the software development industry, and there’s always a new disruptive feature emerging that businesses can absorb to give themselves a competitive edge.
With that being said, here are the Top 10 software development trends of 2024 that you need to check out, given how much they have progressed in the last year(s).
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Software Development Trends of 2024
Most of the technologies we are about to discuss are not limited to a specific industry, these trends encompass a range of industries and offer a wide range of use cases. These technologies can be adopted and used individually or in collaboration with other trends on the list to provide an all-round solution for a specific business pain point -
[1] AI Adoption
We’re pretty sure you knew this was going to be on the list as soon as you read the title! Artificial Intelligence has been “THE” topic for the last year and a half now even though the technology and concept have been around for a few decades now. At this point, you might be thinking what caused this massive influx of users? Simple answer - democratization of AI with large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT showed the masses the potential of AI and how it can enhance their everyday lives.
From automating marketing campaigns to human-like customer support capabilities, or streamlining complex business data, organizing it automatically, and fishing out crucial data for analysis, AI is capable of doing it all for your business and the use cases are only growing as days go by.
Even on the development team’s end, the access to AI dramatically increased the efficiency of a single developer. As AI models continue to improve, the time-consuming part of writing complex code is shrinking down from hours & days to minutes. All the developers have to do is brainstorm the logical road map, feed the information to the AI model, and voila! You have the code ready. Github’s Copilot and Devin.ai are some of the most popular examples of these assistants in recent times.
[2] Low Code/ No Code Development
While custom software development is now easier thanks to the co-pilots we just discussed, not every business is developing a software solution with the intention to “disrupt the market” or “beat their competitors” by featuring a single extra feature. Many businesses simply want a software solution to automate their day-to-day operations without paying tens of thousands of dollars for it. At the same time, purchasing an off-the-shelf product with little to no room for customization and several unnecessary features is not appealing enough to seal the deal either. So what’s the best option here? This is the point where Low Code / No Code development steps in.
Allowing developers to drag and drop chunks of pre-written code to develop a software solution without going through every single line of code saves a lot of development time and minimizes the risk of repeated bugs and issues. No-Code / Low-Code development has managed to find a sweet spot between flexibility and ease of implementation which is preferred by several entrepreneurs.
[3] Cloud Computing
While cloud computing has been gaining traction for a long time now, the Covid phase really helped businesses understand its true potential. While most industries were struggling to keep their total sales on par with last year, Cloud Computing was booming. With the global adoption of the “Work From Home” culture, almost every industry needed a remote way to access their business data and perform computational operations. Cloud computing filled in that necessity.
Right now, even after the pandemic era, businesses continue to work using Cloud Computing resources as it is a more cost-efficient and reliable way to operate with significantly lower overhead costs compared to setting up your own business infrastructure. On top of that, with some of the world’s most renowned brands backing this technology with their cloud computing platforms (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform being the flag bearers), it is quite safe to say that cloud computing services is on its way to becoming the industry staple, some might argue it already is.
[4] Progressive Web Apps
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a hybrid between a website and a native mobile application, taking the best of both platforms and fusing them into one. Websites do not block a significant amount of your storage, but as a trade-off, you cannot access it without an established connection, and while offline access is possible in mobile apps the storage space is concerning for users especially when you get to know that on an average a person has approximately 80 apps installed on their mobile device (DataProt, 2023).
And not just the users, PWAs are a blessing for business owners as well, considering it takes a fraction of the resources for development compared to a native application. Another major pro of PWAs is the fact that they have cross-platform support meaning the developers do not have to test them across each device/resolution screen individually.
[5] Blockchain
What started to gain popularity as a platform for exchanging cryptocurrency has quickly become one of the most sought-after and popular ways to transfer digital assets from one medium to another in a decentralized and secure manner.
Leveraging a decentralized network that allows users to view and record activities but does not allow anyone to modify or delete anything. This mitigates the risk of forgery of any sort, as everything has an unbiased record that is visible to everyone out there.
The use cases for this technology encompass a wide number of industries, however, the finance and healthcare industries are reaping the most benefits right now with solutions such as - smart contracts within finance and other industries and bringing together different segments of a medical setup like the doctors, pharmaceutical team, insurance company, etc, to streamline a patient’s experience and make the entire process as seamless as possible.
[6] 5G Network
Although 4G was quite impressive for its time, 5G has entered the scene and overshadowed its predecessor. While most people will relate this boost to a smoother experience with entertainment activities, there are many use cases of 5G in the business domain as well.
With 5G, the latency drops down to as low as 1 milliseconds, previously with 4G, it was approximately 50 milliseconds. While for downloading large files this time difference might not feel like an issue, when we talk about real-time operations like meetings, remote handling machines for autonomous driving, or even remote surgery, this improved latency has a dramatic enhancement in the operator’s experience.
The increased bandwidth also allows businesses to add more sensors and devices to their network without any quality compromise on the connectivity, while also performing analytical activities and generating insights in real-time.
[7] IoT
IoT has been playing a key role in connecting AI to the real world in many ways, starting from smart homes to enhanced surveillance and inventory management systems in a warehouse. IoT devices have been around for decades now, but with the current buzz around AI, the ceiling for IoT’s use cases has been pushed much higher.
Another enhancement of IoT that has been gaining some traction lately is IoB (Internet of Behaviour). This builds upon the concept of IoT and allows businesses to understand user behavior upon coming into contact with IoT devices. This data can be leveraged to improve the overall user experience across commercial and personalized operations.
[8] AR/VR
While both terms are quite popular, many individuals might be unsure about the exact differences between the two, so let’s quickly discuss that first. As the name suggests Augmented Reality is used to place virtual objects within the real-world environment. Say, for example: lately you might have noticed while purchasing some items from Amazon you get the option to place them in your room so that you can get an idea about how it feels once you receive the product, that’s augmented reality.
Whereas virtual reality takes the concept of AR, a step further by creating complete environments from scratch that can be anything from a fantasy world to a hyper-realistic simulation of the real world and much more. The more renowned use cases for VR again circle around the entertainment segment however, it has many business applications as well, let’s focus on them for now.
Virtual tours for remote property visits in the real estate industry use this technology to allow potential buyers to have a near-perfect experience of visiting the property they are considering buying, remotely. Previously the only option these clients had was either to rely on the videos and pictures, which might not give a perfect idea of all the intricate details, or to fly in and check the property physically, which is certainly not the most efficient way.
Another very important use case is using Virtual reality in flight simulators or any other transportation options to train operators in a safe and risk-free environment. The learners can use these simulators to practice various situations over and over again as many times as they want before they are confident and approved by a supervisor to be ready to practice the same in real-life scenarios.
[9] Microservices
Microservices function with the concept of breaking down the entire project into smaller, more manageable modules, where one module is dedicated to providing a single functionality in a well-defined manner. It is a massive improvement over the previous industry staple called - the monolithic architecture that followed the standard procedure of building a single service and stacking features on top of it as and when new requirements emerged.
Microservices improve several bottlenecks that monolithic architecture faces, including - fault isolation, selective upgrades instead of upgrading the whole product, and technological diversity. Read our blog: “Serverless vs Microservices - Which Architecture Fits Your Business Needs?” for more details.
With the wide use of cloud computing, the relevance of microservices also grew exponentially mainly because cloud computing allowed businesses to subscribe to on-demand infrastructure as and when required, while previously a separate server was required for each individual module.
[10] Outsourcing
Outsourcing has been the go-to mantra for businesses across every scale whenever there’s a need to build entire software solutions or a specific product vertical that requires a certain set of skills. The reason to outsource these development projects and not hire a technical team to do so varies from company to company. In some cases, the organization has a technical team but it is difficult for them to keep up with all the latest upcoming technologies given the fact that they also need to look after the ongoing business processes.
While in some cases, there isn’t a technical team to begin with, this is mostly observed with early-stage startups where there isn’t enough budget for it, making outsourcing their only feasible option. No matter how you look at it, hiring a team of experts, discussing your needs, and receiving your solution after a certain period will always be cheaper than curating, interviewing, training, and accommodating a team. There is so much that can go wrong.
For more details read our blog on: “Why Outsource Software Development?”
Conclusion
So, do any of the trends discussed above resonate with your business objective? We bet the answer is more than one! The use cases discussed here are just the tip of a massive iceberg of opportunities that are free for you to explore.
In case you have a clear understanding of your requirements but are struggling to translate them into use cases leveraging the trends, or if you have chalked out the use cases but don’t know how to put these thoughts into action, we suggest you get in touch with our software development experts using the button below! We will offer you an hour-long session for absolutely free where we can discuss your insights and help you understand how they will translate into a functioning and robust solution.
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