Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Praveen Seshadri, founder and CEO of AppSheet
AI/ML Will Drive New Innovations and Everyone Will Be a Software Developer
With more and more companies looking to digitally transform their business, 2020 will lead to the rise of citizen data scientists, citizen developers and more. For example, democratizing software would enable developers to generate data models without having the skills of a data scientist. They would instead rely on AI and ML-driven development and predictive models to generate code and automate testing. Here are some related trends to watch for 2020:
Traditional Software Development is Democratized, Leveling the Playing Field
Recent advancements in low-code and no-code software design have given rise to the concept of the “citizen developer.” Today, an increasing number of developers are using low-code platforms to build custom software on top of pre-built app templates. Some platforms go a step beyond and enable true no-code development. In an ideal world, anyone (with any level of technical skills) can build an app without ever having to write a single line of code. When this happens, low-code becomes no-code-and the results can be game-changing. In the coming year, no-code will help break the app development paradigm, by giving power to any businessperson to build apps and share them with their teams.
AI/ML Jumpstarts Digital Transformation Efforts, Eliminating Paper in the Enterprise
Many industries today outside of tech are grappling with archaic paper systems, which can make for a lot of errors, offers no intelligence/analytics, and is very costly in terms of manpower. One example of this is a paper form that is traditionally filled out. With a technology like optical character recognition (OCR) that is built into an app, the text or writing that appears in an image is digitally recorded (in this case, the form fields). This can reduce data entry errors, speed up data entry and eliminate those parts of any process that are paper-driven. We predict that those vertical markets lagging in digital transformation initiatives, like utilities and construction, will implement OCR to jumpstart their digital transformation efforts.
Bespoke, or Custom, Business Apps Go Mainstream
IDC predicts that by 2023, more than 500 million digital apps and services will be developed and deployed using cloud-native approaches – the same number of apps developed over the last 40 years. Most will be targeted at industry-specific digital transformation use cases in the form of custom apps that address problems specific to each unique business. For example, for companies in the construction sector, moving to a digital environment that includes real-time (and offline, due to site logistics) sharing of information for transparency and collaboration. Likewise, workers in manufacturing facilities need apps (to replace old paper systems) to manage their inventory, shipping and other processes.
AI/ML Will Drive Next Cycle of Innovation in the Enterprise
Machine learning doesn’t just streamline existing problems. It also allows people to solve different kinds of challenges, unlocking unique and valuable opportunities. With ML, software can understand and process the kind of data that previously required human intervention. Machine learning is all around us, running behind the scenes in places like Google Maps, Search and Translate, Uber’s route optimization mechanism, and Amazon’s recommendation engine, to name a few instances. And yet, AI/ML capabilities are lagging in enterprise business apps due to limited developer resources and coding skills. Low-code and no-code development platforms are uniquely suited to solve the AI/ML logjam, as they offer fast and easy on-ramps for apps that embed these capabilities.
The Talent Shortage of Software Developers Propels Citizen Development
Currently, the US software job market faces a 472,000 tech talent shortage with 9 in 10 business owners struggling to find and hire IT professionals, according to research done by Indeed. Hiring software engineers is the second most common issue employers are facing – 23.84% of respondents in the State of Software Development 2018 research admit that they face considerable difficulties while searching for candidates. This shortage especially impacts business organizations, since there is simply no time or resources for IT or development to take on their digitization projects. Line of business employees must be empowered to solve their own problems by building their own apps. In 2020, citizen development becomes the norm rather than the exception.
Software Development is a Means to an End – It’s the Business that Matters
The concept of coding has been around since the beginning of the software revolution. While software development has grown increasingly complicated, demand for software solutions has permeated both the consumer and business worlds. Yet the current software dev model is not sustainable and needs an overhaul. For companies to compete in today’s economy, they need to focus on their core business challenges and find solutions, such as low- and no-code software development tools, to help solve their toughest challenges. This will not only help transform their business units into software companies but will also help manage cost and resources.
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About the Author
Praveen Seshadri is the founder and CEO of AppSheet and full-time coder. Throughout his career, he has pursued the dream of declarative end-user programming in various incarnations. In a “previous life,” he was a computer science professor at Cornell University, and was also a partner engineering manager at Microsoft in the SQLServer and Bing teams. He has written 30 research papers and has 12 issued patents, and is currently very passionate about offering businesses and professionals the ability to create mobile apps automatically from spreadsheets using the power of machine learning and NLP.
