Developers are Poised to Pilot Business Through the New Normal

By Apurva Joshi, Vice President of Products, DigitalOcean

2020 was a turning point for software developers. They are the ones tasked to build solutions to the never-before-seen challenges of this year, and they are the ones with the power to determine what the post-pandemic world looks like. When planning for 2021, organizations must adapt their strategies to focus on the developers' role. In the new completely digital world, developers will be responsible for building sustainable and adaptable businesses. Businesses and enterprises accelerated their technology roadmaps to operate in a primarily digital world, and software development trends reflect the critical role developers will play in how their clients can achieve sustainable and adaptable businesses. Any organization that wants to continue growing their business in the "new normal" will adjust to best provide for the developers leading the way. To remain competitive, organizations will begin building applications using Platform as a Service or (PaaS), serverless, and Software as a Service (SaaS). Startups and SMBs will continue moving to the cloud, and more organizations will adopt containers and microservices.

• Digital transformation during the pandemic has accelerated exponentially, and we can expect the increase to continue as the pandemic evolves, and eventually passes. In response to the pandemic-induced work from home, companies rushed to adopt policies and tooling to support their employees as well as a digital presence to maintain business success. In this new world, cloud services and tools, which enhance developer productivity and agility, will be essential to business growth. In 2021, we'll see a shift toward building applications using cloud service offerings thereby encouraging innovation that reduces complexity in the developer role. 

• Despite the typical focus on developers at large enterprises, developers at SMBs and startups will become a point of attention in 2021. These companies and developers are the often-ignored backbone of our economy, and despite being hard-hit by the pandemic, they will regain steam and demonstrate their significance in the new year. To combat the challenges of 2020, SMBs turned to the cloud and expanded usage around 60%. This cloud usage will remain steady in 2021 - driven by developer need. Vendors will recognize the atypical need of developers at small companies and adjust their products and business strategies accordingly. This will lead to a new source of creativity and a surge in innovation.

• In addition to the uptick of cloud, containers and microservices wil gain traction in 2021. Open source creates flexibility and visibility into platform infrastructure, and it encourages collaboration between developers. We can expect 2021 to be as unpredictable as 2020, and as such, developers will need to collaborate more than ever to innovate and maintain growth. Containers come into play as they offer developers a method for swift innovation through abstraction. The process of abstraction will address scale, security and performance challenges to create a fast-growth environment. Organizations will focus  As more companies began to focus on supporting their developers to drive business growth, more companies will invest in whichever tools best empower developers to code and deliver new products or updates on the cloud.
  

Going forward, software developers will impact more and more of the enterprise business decisions, especially at SMBs and startups. Strong developer teams can positively impact revenue, growth, product quality, and address customer feedback near real time. However, underserved developer teams with limited resources will more likely struggle to ensure their enterprises successfully navigate the new normal.  In the coming months, organizations of all sizes will make strides to adapt to an increasingly digital business landscape. Companies hoping to continue growth through tumultuous times need to set their developer teams up for success by investing in the tools developers need to optimize output, efficiency, and scaling while reducing time spent managing infrastructure and security.

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About the Author

Apurva Joshi (AJ) is Vice President of Products at DigitalOcean, where he drives the overall product strategy and roadmap for the company. He leads the Product Management, Marketplace and Documentation teams with a focus on delivering scalable cloud solutions that empower every developer in the world to build great software.

He has more than 17 years of experience in business and technology with a focus on incubating new products, improving existing offerings and leading high-performing product development teams. Prior to his time at DigitalOcean, AJ spent 17 years at Microsoft, including his last role as Head of Product Experience for Microsoft Azure. During his tenure, he successfully led transformative products, culture and technical innovation, helping build Microsoft's Azure Application platform and expand multi-billion dollar cloud portfolios with developers and enterprise customers.