Software Development Trends 2012 by Embarcadero

This year is an exciting time for software developers. There are new challenges and even more new opportunities with shifts in devices toward mobile and tablets and shifts in operating systems with the growth of Mac OS and 64-bit. This article is based on a discussion between Embarcadero's David Intersimone, Michael Swindell and John Thomas where they discussed the trends important to software developers this year. In 2012 there are really two key things at the top of the list. Developers should be thinking about how to enable their solutions and to address both the Windows and Mac markets. The second is to begin to mobilize their solution, whether that means taking their solution to mobile devices or building mobile companions to their solutions. One of the things that you should think about, especially as you start looking at mobilizing applications, is about user interface design in particular and new ways of interacting with applications and presenting your enterprise data or application data to users in a more intuitive and interactive way, like people are used to using on these devices in the consumer market. Increasing Mac Adoption and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) It's been a largely Windows market up until the last few years with Windows everywhere on the desktop. Macs have been used in certain places. But now we're seeing in many research reports, whether it's IDC, Gartner, or Forrester Research that the Mac rapidly gaining in popularity. We've always talked about Windows and Mac and kind of the 90/10 kind of split. And even though the Mac has been growing rapidly the last few years it's not going to displace the Windows desktop anytime soon. That's not the real reason why developers should be looking to develop on Mac. What we're starting to see is that organizations now have to support both. When you have to support both you start to choose software solutions and software products that offer both. There are several trends that are happening in business and in enterprise today that are driving that but one of the key drivers behind that is the Bring Your Own Device or BYOD, we think, in Europe, BYOT is the often-used term. Here we say BYOD but basically the same idea is that workers are bringing their own devices in. This isn't a flash in the pan. This is a really serious initiative; a lot of organizations are putting a lot of budget around this area. And as a consequence software choices are affected. So if you're an ISV and you're offering a Windows solution, adding Mac to your solution, to your offering, give you a competitive edge against other vendors who don't. It's pretty plain and simple. Now as Mac grows in its footprint that also provides a wider audience, of course, to sell your solution as well. So it’s kind of double win for developers, we think. Leveraging the Shift From 32-Bit to 64-Bit There was also a Gartner report recently about 64-bit Windows and we think that their statement was in 2014, 75% of corporate PCs will be running Windows 64. 64-bit is really becoming important and we think part of the reason we see the corporate PCs getting Win 64 is the same reason why most people upgrade Windows over the years as well because they buy new machines. The 64-bit CPUs have been around for many years in these devices even though they may have been running 32-bit versions of Windows. With Windows 7 and future Windows 8, you'll find more and more PCs just by default being 64-bit Windows. One of the things to remember is that most of the upgrades that happen, the Windows upgrades that happen, happen by an IT organization, not by individuals. And when—and IT organizations don't tend to — they typically only upgrade in certain cycles. They don't upgrade — they try to put it off as long as possible and do everything at once. But when they do they tend to want to upgrade everyone to as high as possible. They want to move up to the highest hardware standard and the highest software standard, in this case 64-bit. 64-bit Windows is the trend. As organizations are shifting into full gear on Windows 7 upgrades, the trend is towards the 64-bit flavor. And that really introduces some complexities with Windows because unlike the past where it was really easy to build 16-, 32-bit compatible applications, it's much harder today and there are more compatibility issues. Rather than building one application that can support both, front, back and forth, the trend now is more to build off of 32-bit versions and 64-bit versions. A really important thing for developers to be thinking about this year is offering that 64-bit option so that you can get in on all those IT upgrades. Get those, and thus get your software upgraded in those cycles as well. There's a lot of budget out there when it comes times for Windows upgrades. So it's a great time for ISP and developers to be thinking about upgrading their software. Next Generation User Interfaces Developers really do need to start thinking about next generation user interfaces because the UI is ultimately how your end user gets the most out of their application that you provide to them. The form over function argument is really starting to lean more towards form these days. Not to say you can’t deliver something without function obviously but form is carrying much more weight. That’s due in large part to the experiences that users are having with new devices, getting on your iPad and being able to use gestures and a different user experience that’s more intuitive and then having to go to a typical Windows desktop application is a stark difference. Executives in particular and consumers are looking for an experience like they get on these mobile devices with these new gestures and interfaces on the desktop. A really good example of what happens if you don't think about form is what's going on at Research in Motion (RIM) and Blackberry right now. We think most of us have heard that the two CEOs have been replaced recently. RIM have really been suffering to keep up in the market today. And it wasn't because they didn't have function. It had plenty of good function in those devices, especially with regard to enterprise users. But what people were asking for and what RIM wasn't delivering on was more form, these better experiences that they were seeing elsewhere. Maybe their wife at home was having an iPhone experience and they're sitting on a Blackberry and it was just such a stark difference that they weren't really satisfied with that device anymore. Even if you don't make a wholesale transition into a next generation user experience, it's really important to get started now so that you can start getting yourself, laying the groundwork for what's coming up next. Over the next five to ten years what we see as a computer is   going to change dramatically. The types of displays, the types of devices that we interact with and that we run software on are going to be the things of science fiction. It won't be that long, meaning the next year or two years, before we start seeing practical uses of transparent displays in retail, in airports and in our desktops. HUD displays are another thing to start experimenting with because being able to move parts of your user interface into convenient areas of vision is very important. It will become very important in helmet displays, military applications, automobiles, in a wide variety of settings we'll need to start putting user interface elements kind of in the periphery of our vision and heads-up displays will be the key to that and we can start getting widgets and things like that today are a great start in that direction. It's important to start thinking about that new application and how you can start to leverage these concepts. Web Technologies Certainly HTML5 and CSS3 are good things to get familiar with. These are technologies that are really becoming the sort of the common UI. The capabilities are becoming very mature and very capable. You should be thinking about the requirement of your applications and what is the skill set of the developers. A lot of organizations right now are looking at these technologies for their applications and desktop applications because they have a lot of investment in web skills internally. So if you can reuse those web skills, the HTML and JavaScript skills, in more than just web development, that makes good sense. A lot of organizations see that as a good use of their teams and resources. Also, these types of HTML 5 dynamic and RIA front-ends work really well when you're talking about web back ended applications. An example is the Embarcadero AppWave browser. This is a native application; it happens to be written Delphi but the content is very dynamic. It's driven by a web backend. The application also has a completely web-based browser front end as well.In an application like this where you've got a desktop version that has its specific capabilities and purposes but it needs to share a common back end with a web app end, it makes a lot of sense. You can reuse a lot of the same UI designs and UI elements in that regard. See More on Mobile Trends for 2012 In addition to the trends we've covered here, mobile development is a key item for you to consider this year. See the companion articlefor tips on selecting the right approach for building your mobile applications and how to choose the right business model so your mobile solutions have the maximum impact. And remember, whether you're developing for Windows (32-bit and 64-bit), Mac, Web, or mobile, Embarcadero RAD Studio, Delphi, C++Builder, Prism and RadPHP give you proven technology for building software applications today and into the future.