In the software development world, things constantly evolve and change. What’s trending today might go outdated tomorrow. We saw many positive advancements in the last year. But 2018 would be triggering another evolution, and keeping up with these trends is going to be challenging for enterprises. These trends would have a long-term influence on the software development Dubai industry.

Here are a few trends worth noting that will keep you ahead of the game this year. 

AI adoption will start to become a necessity

This year we saw many enterprises adopting AI either to leverage it for its benefits or to get a competitive edge. This growing demand for AI will indeed bring forth a new generation of AI-powered devices from smartphones to voice-driven virtual assistants. Demand for data scientists and Chief Data Officers (CDO) has risen. 

For businesses, AI can digitize and enhance customer experience, automate mission-critical processes, change value proposition with AI-powered services or products etc. 

The impact is expected to be significant in 2018, which means software developers will have to evolve accordingly too, enhancing their skillsets and getting a foothold on AI and Machine Learning technologies. This can be particularly challenging for most software companies in Dubai that have only recently adopted the Agile-DevOps culture. 

Edge computing

The fact that almost everything in the present age generates data, made businesses see data in a new light. There are toothbrushes now that analyze a user’s brushing behavior and share it with the dentist to ensure better dental practices. 

With IoT gaining momentum, there will be an overwhelming amount of data to mine. This is where edge computing comes in, providing a more efficient, much faster way to process all this data. With edge computing, IoT devices will be able to perform faster real-time analysis even in areas with poor connectivity.

Because edge computing processes data at the ‘edge’ of a network or near the device using a mesh of micro data centers, enterprises adopting it will save a lot of time and money required to transfer data to a centralized data center for analysis. The cloud would be playing a role as well in collecting all the data and performing the analyses to give organizations deeper insights.

Demand for better cybersecurity

2017 showed that cybersecurity still needs to go up a level. The WannaCry incident only emphasized this, subsequently increasing demand for more effective security solutions both internally and externally. Competitive software development companies in Dubai have already automated security testing in their software development lifecycle, thus eliminating vulnerabilities that may appear during development.

Cyber-security startups are funded more now. Statistics from cybersecurity market report state that global spending on cybersecurity products/services will exceed $1 trillion cumulatively over the next 5 years till 2021. The main challenge is the lack of cybersecurity talent, which can be seen as a window of opportunity for software developers looking to augment their skillsets this year. 

Conclusion

2018 is here, and it’s time for software developers to get more creative while focusing on new trends. These are but a few trends that will be turning heads this year. However, these 3 are here to stay, and leveraging them the right way can yield great results not just for enterprises but for developers as well.