By Scott Johnston, Chief Executive Officer at Docker

2020 Forecast: What's Next for Software Development

It's been a transformative decade for software development. Massive growth in open source, the proliferation of DevOps, the rise of the API economy, among other trends have changed the way developers work and brought new talent to the field. As developers continue to grow more influential in virtually every industry, the big question is: what's next?

Here's what we think 2020 has in store for the developer community:

• The Changing Definition of a Modern Application -- Today's applications are more complex than those of yesterday. In 2020, modern apps will power tomorrow's innovation and this requires a diverse set of tools, languages and frameworks for developers to create composite apps amalgamating serverless functions, containers, and native cloud services. Developers need even more flexibility to address this new wave of modern apps and evolve with the rest of the industry.
• Containers Pave the Way to New Application Trends -- Now that containers are typically considered a common deployment mechanism, the conversation will evolve from the packaging of individual containers to the packaging of the entire application (which are becoming increasingly diverse and distributed). Organizations will increasingly look for guidance and solutions that help them unify how they build and manage their entire application portfolio no matter the environment (on premise, hybrid/multi-cloud, edge, etc.)
• A Container-First Strategy Proves Itself -- Developers have long been proponents of containers, but there's been a huge shift toward establishing container-first strategies that are foundational to business transformation. 2020 will mark the year that these container-centric initiatives become the go-to-approach and play out on a larger scale. This will happen across enterprises and industries as it proves immediate impact by providing a clear path to the cloud for all applications, regardless of programming language or whether they're three-tier brownfield apps or cloud-native greenfield microservices, while reducing cost and risk.
• Digital Transformation Transforms Itself -- Digital transformation was the buzzword of 2019, but we'll see the term become less ambiguous in 2020. It'll evolve to have a more specific meaning: a process for creating business impact through modernizing  modernizing existing technology investments and delivering new applications/services.

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About the Author

Scott Johnston is the Chief Executive Officer at Docker. Prior to this, he served as Docker's Chief Product Officer where he was responsible for the strategy of Docker's products and technologies. With 25 years of industry experience in software development, product marketing, IT operations and venture capital, Scott has served in leadership and operational roles for some of the most disruptive companies in the industry including Puppet, Netscape, Cisco, Loudcloud (parent of Opsware), and Sun Microsystems.