Top 5 Software Development Trends in 2023 

The COVID-19 pandemic was an immense shock to the market. However, it triggered digital business changes in just a few months. According to McKinsey, firms sped up the digitalization of operations, CX, and supply chains by three to four years. Business leaders strive to stand out from the competition and impact profits in today’s volatile market. That’s why they are interested in emerging IT trends and technologies. For many organizations, implementing IT innovations means growth and development, so they are ready to adopt new strategies and methods. Leaders are interested in relevant software development trends in 2023. Let’s look at the most popular technologies for business development.

The Internet of Behaviour: an extra step towards personalization

The Internet of Behaviour (IoB) concept is based on the IoT technology connecting smart devices and sensors over the Internet. They form a global ecosystem of connected equipment that collects megabytes and zettabytes of data every second. However, businesses have superficial knowledge of how to process this information. They still don’t know how to make the most of it. The IoB promises to fill this gap.

The IoB is a sound approach to evaluating data. It is based on the IoT and behavioural psychology. In most cases, the IoT doesn’t imply detailed data collection. In turn, the IoB gathers information about human transactions, geolocation tags, browser history and cookies, and other online activities that show the behaviour of users.

Based on collected data, a system predicts human behaviour and helps an offshore software development company create algorithms that influence user actions. In fact, this is covert emotional manipulation based on personal recommendations, relevant content, and personalized advertising. For example, a person buys dishwashing detergent every month from an online store. The IoB tracks the shopper’s habit and offers the user discounts and promotions on household chemicals, in particular, on those from their favourite brand.

The IoB will open up new opportunities for businesses from such areas as:

— digital marketing (personalized advertising);

— healthcare (to understand how the human body reacts to various medications);

— political activities (to track the actions of a certain group of people);

— insurance (to evaluate an insured event or an insured person’s share of guilt) and other industries.

The IoB ushers in an era of person-centred data analysis that allows businesses to personalize all stages of interaction with their customers.

Cloud computing of the future

Cloud computing is a software development trend widely adopted by enterprises and SMEs. As Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner, said, “Cloud is the powerhouse that drives today’s digital organizations.”

By 2023, this powerhouse had got new capabilities:

— it is the base for edge computing, which speeds up client data processing;

— it supports the widespread adoption of virtual cloud desktops;

— drives the movement toward serverless computing, network virtualization and the use of containers;

— creates an agile IT environment with automated business processes;

— improves data security and IT infrastructure management through hybrid cloud computing, SASE, and cloud disaster recovery.

According to Forrester’s Infrastructure Cloud Survey, in 2023, 40% of companies will move to the cloud to increase flexibility and efficiency while reducing costs. Businesses understand the rationale for moving workloads to containers supported by AI, 5G and the IoT. Gartner estimates that global cloud spending will increase by 20.7% and reach $591.8 billion in 2023 ($10 billion more than in 2022).

Big Data to deal with vast amounts of information

Big Data is a valuable source of information for organizations of any size. Thanks to data analytics, companies automate business processes, make decisions that are more effective for their internal operations, and expand the selection of products relevant to their customers.

Companies need Big Data technology to collect unstructured raw information from multiple sources (documents, images, video, sensors), store it digitally, and arrange it into a database. It will help them handle these complex operations with ever-increasing volumes of data and varying degrees of reliability.

In 2023 and beyond, the following emerging IT trends and technologies will strengthen Big Data:

— artificial intelligence automating and speeding up information processing;

— agile data analytics, with platforms quickly adapting to changing Big Data requirements;

— hybrid cloud computing supporting secure and scalable data at a lower cost;

— DataOps iteratively handling the entire stream of data flowing through a company (from file creation to archiving);

— edge computing solving data problems in less than 3 minutes and surpassing the speed of classic computing.

Businesses should consider the latest trends to make smart and efficient use of their data and outpace the competition.

Blockchain for enhanced transaction security

Although representatives of the IT community have been discussing blockchain for years now, many organizations are still hesitant to experiment with blockchain solutions. Despite the heated debates around the technology and the complexities of its regulation, developers continue to improve blockchain and enhance its application capabilities.

In 2023 and beyond, we will see a variety of ways to implement this technology:

— Cryptocurrency. Financial institutions will continue to use the technology for cryptocurrency transactions to speed up processes, cut down service fees, and secure money transfers. Developers are looking for efficient ways to optimize blockchain. This will help reduce environmental impact and move closer to Web 3.0.

— Real estate tokenization. Owners are already experimenting with converting assets into digital tokens. Investors are discovering new markets and new opportunities to diversify their portfolios.

— dApp development. Such solutions operate on a decentralized network and have no single point of failure. They operate autonomously without a human controlling most of the tokens. People use the capabilities of dApps to manage cash, logistics, documents, game characters and other assets.

— DeFi – creating an alternative world of finance and investment without banks and intermediaries.

— Support of the metaverse, a three-dimensional virtual environment, where “residents” communicate with other users, create avatars, and buy and sell goods.

Thanks to the ability to use blockchain in almost any field, specialists will continue to develop this technology. When legal and high power consumption issues are resolved, businesses will be able to safely leverage the software development trend to optimize internal operations.

Hyperautomation of the software development process

Hyperautomation in software development helps speed up the adoption of new technologies. Gartner sees it as a combination of multiple machine learning techniques, batch software, and automation tools to get the job done. It’s the automation of everything possible in a software developers company through robotic process automation (RPA), low-code development, AI, and chatbots.

The most trending technology for software development manifests itself in using AI tools for automated code writing, no-code, and low-code platforms. In the future, the IT industry will reach the point where programmers will do up to 90% of their work with a single click. Hyperautomation will give them more time for complex tasks that require creativity and human ingenuity.

Gartner estimates that by 2024, companies will cut transaction costs by 30% through hyperautomation. This is an excellent incentive to invest in supporting key technology trends in the IT industry.

Conclusion

In 2023, we will see well-known software development trends – the IoB, cloud, Big Data, blockchain, and AI automation – improve with supporting technologies. Innovative features are spurring the emergence of new software solutions and software development outsourcing trends and expanding the areas of their application. This transformation is immense. That’s why McKinsey & Company considers the technological progress of 2020-2029 to be greater than all of humanity’s achievements in the previous 100 years.