For some, 2020 was the year for software development speed … but not for everyone. Startups and SMEs climbed on board the CI/CD, shift-left and agile development train en masse – and reaped the benefits of faster iterations and tighter release schedules.
But the “big kids” got left behind. Core enterprise applications – the legacy systems with 1+ million lines of code that do the heavy lifting in many corporations – have not yet made the switch to the world of rapid release cycles. And this is natural; enterprises are rightfully more cautious by nature, and because the technology driving this evolution was not mature by enterprise standards.
But in 2021, that’s going to change.
Here are four speedy predictions for pushing enterprises over the speed limit in 2021, and some of the companies making it happen.
Four Enterprise Software Development Speed Predictions
#1: AI-based test generation will make enterprise development faster and better
Testing automation is crucial for any software development organization trying to transition to CI/CD. But enterprise stakes are arguably high, and enterprise code is by nature inflated, often carrying significant technical debt. Preparing suitable test coverage manually is resource-heavy, to say the least. But a new generation of AI-powered testing automation tools solves this problem for you. Solutions from companies like Ponicode and Diffblue allow enterprises with large code base apps to embrace CI/CD by bridging the technical debt gap in testing while still meeting release cycles.
#2: Test avoidance tech will make a dent in unnecessary testing
Running tests on an entire build for one small code change is overkill – no one’s arguing that. But until recently, there wasn’t much of an alternative to ensure the ironclad quality that enterprises require. In 2021, solutions from companies like Sealights and Launchable (which counts among its investors Jenkins creator Kohsuke Kawaguchi) will help enterprise software development teams deliver quality at speed. The key is the effective use of machine learning to reduce test cycle times and run only relevant tests, not the entire test suite, to ensure faster iteration cycles.
#3: High Performance Computing will move toward distributed computing
Compute power will remain a bottleneck to development in 2021 – but the processing arms race will likely change. As enterprises get used to virtualizing their infrastructure, they will think twice about investing heavily in dedicated multicore build/render machines powered by next-gen processors. Instead, they will look to virtualized processing power like distributed computing, cloud bursting, and spot instances – which provide the massive scalability enterprises require at build time, while still maintaining a more reasonable price-performance ratio.
#4: Managed CI/CD in the cloud will automate enterprise release pipelines
Managed CI/CD, like Amazon’s CodePipeline and Azure Pipelines, help enterprises save time setting up and maintaining CI/CD infrastructure, scaling up during peak times and maintaining security. These services, while not for everyone, will continue to gain popularity in 2021. A key reason for increased adoption is that they allow companies to scale much faster: without hardware or software, development teams can push a button and suddenly gain 20 more build servers. Moreover, managed CI/CD enables faster onboarding of new teams, simpler creation of repositories and more streamlined work with multiple geolocations. Finally, pay-as-you-go models, no upfront fees and no commitments are increasingly attractive to enterprises in tough times.
Put the Pedal to the Metal
Newly released AI-powered products and mature hosted services from big-name cloud providers are changing the face of enterprise-level development. In 2021, we’re going to see teams supporting backbone enterprise applications increasingly moving to CI/CD, shift left and agile development methodologies. Because everyone – even enterprises – deserves to break the speed limit.
