Emerging tech to improve developer agility

No doubt the pandemic is a unique situation that taught the world to expect the unexpected, ushering in new challenges that forced organizations to accelerate digital transformation efforts at unprecedented speeds. While what’s to come in 2022 is still unknown, the momentum behind modernizing will continue to grow in an increasingly global and connected business landscape. It wouldn’t be surprising to see significant disruption and innovation across industries, even ones that address major global issues, including supply chain challenges, climate change, the proliferation of consumer privacy laws or even financial recession. 

Whether it's buying an item of clothing, exercising or organizing childcare, today’s consumers require some form of digital interaction. In fact, according to a report by IDC, people's daily digital interactions will increase from an average of 750 engagements this year to 5,000 by 2029. That’s why organizations will continue to explore investments in new and emerging technologies that will help IT and development teams power the digital world that businesses and consumers live in. This includes future-proofing architectures with the adoption of technologies that enable scalability, agility and adaptability to quickly changing environments.

Against this backdrop, Couchbase, Inc. (NASDAQ: BASE), provider of a leading modern database for enterprise applications, announced the following trends and predictions that will help shape the IT industry in 2022.

“Edge 2.0” will enable a more decentralized future 

By 2022, computing will be even more fragmented thanks to the next generation of edge computing. Whether it’s mobile apps or factory floor sensors, there’s an ongoing trend to inject as much computing power as possible into tiny devices, enabling them to collect data and make decisions all on their own. Already, we’re seeing this made possible within the field of IoT, but “Edge 2.0” will propel this evolution further forward.

Currently, the edge requires a device to connect with a central server. Although a remote monitoring system for instance might be able to collate information on its own, it’s the cloud or central service that’s doing all the work. With Edge 2.0, we expect it’ll become possible for devices to work without a central server, thanks to a dispersed network of devices and decentralized cloud infrastructure. The link will be severed entirely. This network will see devices communicating with each other to enable them to work fully offline. And when they inevitably need to reach the cloud, more dispersed cloud infrastructures will see less resources used, driving increased value.

Challenges of adopting microservices at scale will need to be addressed 

More enterprises will begin to understand how inherently complex microservices are when used at scale. To position themselves for success, organizations will start by leveraging language-agnostic, autonomous and independently deployable microservices at a smaller scale (starting with 2-3 components and not scaling out horizontally). Developers will pay attention to each module, make sure microservices are unit testable and loosely coupled - that way, if one microservices relies on other types of data and the model needs to be changed, other microservices won’t be impacted. Moving forward - testing, planning, attention to detail, ensuring each component is autonomous and educating all developers on proper microservices approaches will be key to successful adoption.

Blockchain and Web 3.0 will unlock new dynamic experiences

More organizations will incorporate blockchain technology, specifically Ethereum, when building applications. Developers will use programming languages like Solidity, in conjunction with technologies they’re already familiar with (e.g. JavaScript, TypeScript), in order to build dynamic and interactive applications. With the emergence of Web 3.0, working with blockchain is something that every developer will be using in a few years, similar to the adoption of machine learning.

Furthermore, developing progressive web applications will continue to be a priority. This means designing new applications with Web 3.0 capabilities in mind, including providing a native app-like experience when visiting websites on end-user devices (rather than a clunky interface that isn’t optimized for a pleasant user experience).

AI 2.0 will become more intelligent and streamline decision making

AI is often overhyped and doesn’t always match up to our expectations. Next year this will change, and we will see a shift away from AI 1.0, towards a more sophisticated version of AI that will do more of the heavy lifting. If AI 1.0 was about streamlining operations by automating repetitive tasks, AI 2.0 will take this to the next level. In 2022, we will see reduced human involvement in helping people to make better, more informed decisions. AI will be able to analyse vast datasets in seconds, identify potential courses of action and give end users a more streamlined decision-making process.

This shift will be powered by data. AI 2.0 will create vast sums of data (orders of magnitude more than humans can manage manually). As a result, organizations will continue to work towards an autonomous approach to data management. This means machines will handle machine-generated data to better help humans make informed decisions.

New opportunities will emerge for developer relations

Developer Relations is still a very young field, so who knows what the future might bring. However, there's a tremendous amount of value in leaning on DevRel to provide a developer's perspective to product and marketing decisions. Developers have a large amount of influence on decision making, because they are the ones who ultimately have to live with the decisions being made. Many people see DevRel as a type of developer marketing, and there's plenty of truth in that. But it’s an opportunity for communication to go both ways: to listen to developers and to use their feedback as a guide. Many DevRel teams are lacking in this area, and are often too focused on outbound communication, instead of inbound.

Modern enterprises will require composable IT 

Leveraging software defined components, composability removes the need to manage the underlying infrastructure and eliminates the need to reconfigure physical assets like servers, storage and connectivity based on changes in the workload. With composable IT, enterprises are able to manage their applications or services through a single unified control plane that can span multiple clouds, on-premises and all the way to the edge. That’s why today’s globally distributed enterprises will embrace the concept of composability – not just for their on-premises infrastructures but also for their multi-cloud and edge deployments.

Looking at architectures and how they’re evolving, enterprises will move away from monolithic architectures, toward building applications and infrastructures from component parts with well-defined interfaces. Businesses will continue to think about agility and simplicity when it comes to composing the infrastructure of technology stacks to achieve business goals - so the notion of composable businesses and applications will be a key trend.