2018 was expected to bring great opportunities for software developers, and the year began with a fascinating start potentially leading to a bright future. The developer community in the software development Dubai industry would have to step into the world of major technologies like blockchain, machine learning, serverless functions etc. to remain competitive from here on out. 

At the same time, there will also be more opportunities for them to effectively deliver code and functionality faster. That said, here are 3 software development predictions that could bring about major changes in the year ahead. 

B2B transactions will start to leverage blockchain

Blockchain gained popularity because of its prospects, particularly when it comes to transactions. Blockchain-enabled transactions would be more secure and reliable compared to every other modern day secure transaction methods. Developers would be implementing blockchain use cases across various industries including financial services and manufacturing, enabling immutable, secure transactions among organizations without intermediaries. 

Combined with the cloud, blockchain’s capabilities are further augmented bringing scalability and resiliency into the mix making it easier for developers to focus more on their client’s business use case than on the underlying formalities and procedures. 

Open source as a service

The open source model still remains one of the best innovation engines, though it’s challenging to implement and maintain such innovations. Most popular open source technologies like Kubernetes, Apache Cassandra etc. require you to put a lot of effort into managing them while they do what they do. Easier said than done. 

This demand led developers to look up to cloud services. Cloud services can deliver accelerated innovation from open source while effectively handling operational and management procedures associated with the open source technology. Many software development companies in Dubai rely on open source technologies to deliver high quality software. Thanks to the cloud, this has become less challenging for them. This is why ‘open source as a service’ could become a thing this year. 

Machine learning finding more practical uses

Machine learning made its way into mainstream software development owing to the availability of pre-built modules across popular platforms. It has proven its worth in the analysis of large, historical datasets before. However, it needs to be trained in a domain-specific environment that will introduce it to the datasets it needs to work with and the questions it needs to answer. 

This means ML solutions for optimizing robot operations in a factory would be different from solutions that identify strange behavior for a security professional. Such domain-specific use cases for machine learning are being constantly explored which means developers will have to be more knowledgable about them and determine whether they fit in with their projects as a large amount of data would be needed obviously. With ML, developers would be able to build intelligent applications with more practical uses. We can see the trend blooming this year. 

Conclusion

Essentially, many modern-day technologies make it easier for developers to seize opportunities that transform how they do their work without compromising quality and security. Companies providing Agile software development services would see a cultural shift in their ecosystems once technologies like blockchain, AI, and ML becomes commonplace. Conclusively, 2018 doesn’t have a long way to go redefine software development.