Top 10 software development trends in 2022

More and more companies have realized the importance of digitalization in an ever-changing environment of business and have already begun adopting new technologies. As organizations emerged out of a crisis, CIOs are reviewing their development strategies in favor of digital transformation.

Here we have gathered the top 10 current trends in software engineering that companies must take a deeper look at in 2022.

Brought on by radically changed market conditions and significantly affected companies of all sizes, digital transformation will continue and somewhere even speeds up. It’s clear that digital technologies will continue to play a crucial role in enterprise strategy and success.

Digital transformation isn’t a one-off event. It’s a huge stepping stone to implement digitization into every field of operations. Many IT departments will strive to save costs by modernizing legacy systems. So 2022 is going to be the year of getting rid of obsolete and ineffective technologies and processes, and replacing them with more intelligent ones. As a result, the demand for development outsourcing and software upgrade services will grow.

Internet of Things is deemed to be the most-hyped technology that could reshape the way enterprises operate thanks to its ability to create additional sources of data and provide its real-time updates. Following the worldwide Covid-19 lockdowns, enterprises that have lost revenue are looking for ways to innovate.

Now the Internet of Things is no more a hype but a necessity to run a successful business. Major industry verticals like healthcare, manufacturing, retail & wholesale, transportation & storage, and government have already adopted IoT tools in their infrastructures.

Organizations are investing in IoT technologies to drive cost optimization and operational efficiency, allowing them to benefit from emerging trends and stay on top of the market.

Businesses everywhere strive to work towards their digital transformation. Many organizations are moving away from traditional on-premises software and leveraging cloud-based solutions.

Cloud infrastructure continues to grow, bringing businesses agility, cost-efficiency and automation. As Gartner said, “more than 85% of organizations will embrace a cloud-first principle by 2025 and over 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms”.

Cloud technology is becoming an essential part of organizations, both large and small. Since cloud services tackle many issues, deploying infrastructure in the cloud and configuring all interactions becomes an additional challenge for businesses. Optimizing your company and migrating the infrastructure to cloud platforms such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or AWS requires a lot of time and expertise, leading to growth of demand for cloud development services.

In the age of digitalization, big data and analytics have become increasingly important to make correct and timely decisions for large businesses in a wide range of industries. The ability to gather and analyze large volumes of data allows organizations to gain tangible business benefits, from improved efficiency in operations to product optimization and customer services.

According to Statista, the global big data analytics market will grow with a compound annual growth rate of almost 30 percent in the coming years, with revenue reaching over 68 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.

Big data processing and application of consolidation methods require a lot of resources, special software and data processing specialists. Including such specialists in the staff in 2022 will allow for providing more comprehensive services. Data Science has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years for converting meaningful data into marketing and business strategies.

Concerning the development market, the popularity of Python as the most popular language for data processing and the demand for data scientists are expected to keep growing.

When it comes to web development, JavaScript continues to be the dominant language despite gradually appearing new technologies.

According to Statista and 69% of the software developers surveyed, JavaScript is the most popular programming language used by software developers worldwide in 2021. And 4% of software developers answered they are planning to adopt or migrate to JavaScript.

A wide range of frameworks and their capabilities make JavaScript the most promising software development trend in 2022. JavaScript remains an excellent choice for companies that want to get a modern web solution with good maintenance. So the demand for custom JavaScript development services will continue to grow.

Microservices and containers have succeeded in tremendous popularity in the past years and remain so. Microservice architecture allows facilitating the work, as each component is separately developed and individually maintained. This has changed software development across the globe and lightened the work for developers by providing self-sufficiency, scalability, and lifecycle automation to applications.

The demand from clients is only growing as using microservice architectural style for developing applications saves considerable time in complex systems development and their maintenance.

Increased interest in cybersecurity in 2022 emerges from the challenges connected with protecting the ever-expanding digital footprint of modern organizations. Investing in customized software development, be it brand-new solutions or tailor-made integrations with current COTS software, could inhibit and deter hackers from attempting to infiltrate a network and protect businesses.

IDC's 2022 Security Services BuyerView Survey, which surveyed 1,500 organizations across the world, with 1,414 of them confirming they were doing the cybersecurity transformation.

Due to the growing number of potential threats and attacks, cybersecurity and relevant specialists should become a normal part of doing business in 2022.

Blockchain technology has brought a revolution and continues to gain momentum. A lot of digital leaders and startups in various sectors of the market have already implemented the technology to supply chains and finance operations.

Gartner has estimated that by 2023, blockchain will support the global movement and tracking of $2 trillion of goods and services annually. Businesses now just can’t ignore this powerful technology. The blockchain is almost certain to affect businesses in the following few years.

Businesses choose blockchain as the best way to get rid of intermediaries in transactions and having a single trust source of historical information. Not to be at risk of losing a competitive edge by falling behind, enterprises should consider speeding up their transformation and implementing blockchain into their business processes.

As our world is getting more and more digitized, organizations have begun investing time and money in the latest development trends, thus increasing the demand for outsourcing services. This happened because companies are not able to handle all of their IT needs by themselves. And software development outsourcing allows companies to have access to such resources as new technologies, knowledge, and capabilities, as well as focus on their core competencies to maintain the competitive edge needed in today’s marketplace.

The relationship between businesses and outsourcing companies is significantly strengthening as the level of provided services has grown a lot and cooperation is much better and more qualitative. This trend of software development outsourcing is expected to expand its market in 2022 to meet the clients' demand who are looking for specialists to modernize their businesses.

The outsourcing services distribution provides access to a vast pool of highly skilled software development teams, with no geographical borders, even at a lower cost, and with a possibility of short-term collaboration within one project. For businesses, identifying the right service provider for outsourcing is the best thing to gain profits and advantages.

As the pandemic transformed our workforce and brought to remote work, for many organizations, such an environment has become their permanent work option. And the practice of remote working definitely will not go away. Now, having even internal employees work remotely, companies now have a possibility to hire staff regardless of their location, which enables them to enhance efficiency and bring new opportunities for growth and expansion.

In 2022, the rise of remote work will contribute greatly to the growth of outsourcing. If companies were opposed to hiring a remote team abroad, now they are more likely to be interested in outsourcing certain functions to individuals or other companies. Eastern Europe is already a popular destination for IT outsourcing, because of a wealth of talent and cheaper prices. The region is not only strengthening its place in the top IT outsourcing destinations, but is likely to claim a large market share in the coming years.

These are the most crucial of the latest software development trends that will shape the business strategies for both outsourced software development companies and enterprises following the path of digital transformation. These trends show how you should expand your teams and which professionals to hire.

In 2022, companies choosing to invest time, money and other resources to keep up with the changing market are the ones to gain a competitive advantage.