What's Driving Change

Software Magazine, Oct, 1998

Almanac

These are vexing times for developers. On one front, growing application complexity and tougher demands from more technology-savvy business users make things more uncomfortable by the day. On another plane, the Internet and all that it has wrought is pushing the pace of change faster than most programmers five years ago would have thought possible. Add the urgency of the Year 2000 challenge and you soon get some sense of the immensity of the task facing any development manager today.

To try to make sense of the situation, Software Magazine commissioned a survey of IS professionals' development practices and plans. The wide-ranging poll, carded out by the Intermedia Group, turned up these findings:

Unstoppable NT

No prizes for guessing who rules the development-platform roost. While in the next two years DOS/Windows 3.x and Windows 95/98 will lose ground, Microsoft will more than make up for it with the continuing penetration of Windows NT. No Unix platform will win a more special place in developers' hearts; the OS is essentially in a holding pattern.

                     % Using Server OS
Development Platform      Current      In two years
Windows NT                  55%            60%
Windows 95/98               43%            40%
DOS/Windows 3.X             12%             4%
MVS                         10%            10%
Solaris                      8%             8%
OS/400                       6%             5%
AIX                          6%             5%
Sun OS                       6%             4%
VMS/Open VMS                 5%             4%
OS/2                         5%             4%
VM                           4%             3%
HP-UX                        4%             4%
Macintosh                    4%             4%
DOS                          4%             1%
Digital Unix                 2%             2%
What operating systems are employed on development platforms
by your organization? (Select all that apply.) What operating
systems do you plan to use on development platforms within
the next 2 years? (Select all that apply.)

A Matter of Trust?

It seems counterintuitive: IS pros say they'll be taking on more development work in-house, not less -- this in an era of soaring complexity, skills shortages, and with an abundance of very capable packaged apps on the marker. It's not a major trend, but concomitantly, there's evidently no clear push to boost proportionately the purchases of packages. Put it down to the fact that since packaged apps are available to all comers, they don't give much competitive differentiation. Plus, their markets are pretty much saturated.

                                                         % of Respondents
How Applications Are Delivered                               Current
Developed and tested in-house with company personnel            30
Packaged applications (purchased and customized)                68
Packaged apps (purchased and used as is)                        94
Developed and tested by in-house contract programmers
(temporary employees)                                           78
Developed and tested by third-party groups (consultants,
systems integrators, VARs)                                      72
How Applications Are Delivered                           In two years
Developed and tested in-house with company personnel          34
Packaged applications (purchased and customized)              63
Packaged apps (purchased and used as is)                      86
Developed and tested by in-house contract programmers
(temporary employees)                                         78
Developed and tested by third-party groups (consultants,
systems integrators, VARs)                                    69
In what ways does your organization deliver applications? In what ways do
you expect your organization to deliver applications in 2 years?
(Selected all that apply.)

What Makes A Workday?

Over the next two years, there'll be little change in how developers divide up their time. Yes, there will be a few more hours a month devoted to testing and some fewer on development/coding, but nor so much that the whole complexion of the job changes.

                       Target Execution Environments
                    % of Respondents
                        Current      In two years
Requirements
analysis/capature         21.8           22.9
Analysis and design       24.1           24.5
Development/coding        32.5           30.1
Testing                   21.6           22.1
What percentage of time does your development group spend on
the following four stages of the development lifecycle? What do
you except those percentages to be in 2 years?

Three Languages You'll Need to Know

Predictably, HTML will give way to Dynamic HTML, whose rise to a starring role will be eclipsed only by XML. The Java juggernaut rolls on, crushing client/server 4GLs, and leaving Smalltalk and Fortran for the history books. One surprise: the apparent durability of C, C , SQL, and Basic/VB.

             % of Respondents
Language         Current      In two years
HTML                80             76
C                   78             79
SQL                 74             72
C                   66             61
Basic/VB            62             59
Java                53             80
4GLs                52             42
Cobol               39             26
Dynamic HTML        32             76
Fortran             18              8
Smalltalk           10              9
XML                  7             46
What application development languages do you currently use?
What languages do you plan to use within the next 2 years?