Taking a look back in 2018, there have been significant technological advances in the IT industry. Software technologies such as Blockchain, IoT, AI etc. have remained a hot topic in the past couple of years. However, these technologies are still evolving with much better use cases in 2019. According to a report by Gartner, the software industry is forecasted to experience an 8.3 percent growth in 2019.
Thus to keep up with the pace of change, it is crucial to take advantage of the software innovations and create new business models accordingly. To save you time and efforts we executed this daunting task of researching the emerging opportunities for you. Here are the top 5 software development trends that will disrupt the software development industry in 2019.

1. Blockchain Gains Traction in different sectors

The distributed ledger technology- Blockchain, has gone beyond the mainstream finance sector to different industries such as healthcare, IT, insurance, retail and much more. Global companies such as JPMorgan and Apple are now exploring the multiple use cases that Blockchain can offer despite its mainstream monetary value transfers. Hence, this year will look forward to investments in blockchain for its evolving use cases such as the distribution of data, supply chain management, smart contracts, and identity management.

2. Low Code Development accelerating time-to-market

Coding new applications or changing custom-built apps has always been a time-consuming and labor-centric process. Low-code development simplifies the process of building software with its drag and drop pre-built features. According to Forrester who coined the term, ‘low-code’ states that “the low-code platform’s market will reach over $10 billion in revenue by 2019”. This rapid app development technology brings in advantages like low learning curve, lower time-to-market, no resource constraints etc. Additionally, non-programmers or citizen developers get an opportunity to get involved in building solutions. Hence, there’s an increasing potential for enterprise software development having well-defined objectives and clear structure.

3. Microservices going mainstream

2019 will witness the maturing of microservices from a trend to a best practice. The microservices adoption will continue to grow and will certainly become a must-have strategy for software developers. According to IDC, “by 2022, 90% of all apps will feature microservices architectures that improve the ability to design, debug, update, and leverage third-party code”. The increasing demand for highly scalable applications is effectively met by microservices architecture with separate data storage, minimize time-to-market, improve fault isolation and a centralised security module.

4. Artificial Intelligence spreading conversational UI

Artificial intelligence has driven the growth of virtual assistants like Alexa, Google, and Siri. With a lot of hype around VUI in 2019, AI is proliferating across different segments of business like healthcare, hospitality, e-commerce etc. “By 2022, 30% of enterprises will use conversational speech tech for customer engagement” AI based voice interfaces will also be used within enterprises for strategic work tasks. Undoubtedly, AI-powered interfaces will maximize employee productivity with its automation and conversational speech.

5. Cloud Computing expanding its models

Cloud computing is evolving year by year and is expected to expand in 2019. Enterprises embrace the hybrid and serverless cloud architectures to support different applications and to lower operational costs. Cloud service providers such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure are promoting serverless paradigm for computing, as developer concerns of even virtual infrastructure melt away with this model. Not only them but also several open source frameworks have geared up to revolutionize the way enterprise software applications are developed on the cloud.

Application containers will become even more popular across enterprise environments. The managed containers help developers to build and deploy applications independently and faster. Thus, cloud services are expected to increasingly use tools Docker enterprise, Kubernetes, Mesosphere etc. for managed containers.