Similar to the evolution of any concept, ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) is also evolving either to include larger definitions or to address several different problems and include specializations. As the concept gains acceptance with the developers there will be obvious ‘requirements’ demand that will gain importance. Iterative and incremental development will be the new rule especially with the hosted application tools. ALM SaaS players who can bundle these demands faster for added functionalities based on the needs felt by the developer community will have the competitive edge.
In case of ALM, the functional capability of bundling Dev Ops with the tools is highly debatable as of now and in future may be made as a part and parcel of any ALM tool. ALM has now evolved into ALM 2.0 standards to make entire software development lifecycle more as a managed business process. New disciplines are being added in order to bring software development closer to the business. The hosted application service of SaaS being the most widely accepted cloud computing category will enforce the iterative development of ALM as SaaS and will see the following trends:
- Convergence of Open Source, PaaS and ALM SaaS
With more and more use of open source technologies, there will be a demand on integration of ALM capabilities and hosting applications on PaaS. There will be a demand on new set of requirements on ALM tools and connection between deployment and developers workstation. Developers will demand integration of running the application and the lifecycle management tools to manage it. Convergence with application hosting and ALM tools will drive the ALM market. Any ALM tool which will be available as SaaS model will have to ensure agility and seamless integration with hosted platform services as well. The lean organizations who would want to utilise the cloud benefits might very well structure their entire IT in the cloud which can include all three – IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. So, the SME market (which is by far the largest market segment in any economy per se) will drive the demand for SaaS ALMs which are agile, support ALM 2.0 standards so that software development is more like a managed business process, provide integration with other PaaS and IaaS tools and provide specific problem solutions to specific segment and discipline.
- ALM SaaS as de facto Model for Developers
Cloud computing not just offers convenience but it is more like lifestyle change for the developer community. ALM as SaaS will be the de facto life style for managing software development in the future. This would primarily be for two reasons:
- There is a constant need to provide software with more efficient functionality which needs better understanding of the business requirements. Since ALM SaaS will manage the software development lifecycle in the cloud with continuous integration and traceability in the real time, the developers will be able to focus more on business requirement gathering.
- As explained above the convergence of many other technologies will drive the demand for efficient integration requirements for the ALM SaaS tools. And this coupled with the cost advantage that the SaaS offers, ALM as SaaS may well turn into the de facto lifecycle management with the developers cutting across the verticals.
- ALM SaaS as a Lever for Faster Delivery and Continuous Integration
In today’s fast paced changing market scape, the fast delivery of services give an edge to the businesses. Similarly for software application development, faster turnout is a necessity. Efficient ALM tools can provide easy management of the development lifecycle facilitating traceability for coding, testing, requirement gathering and release management etc., minimizing the follow-up bug fixing efforts. Imagine an enterprise with about more than a thousand developers. There will be foreseeable issues regarding the time and cost involved in tracing back the issues and fixing them. ALMs which address specific problems will be needed in such cases. And if these ALM tools are provided as SaaS which have cost advantages, faster delivery and almost instant scalability feature too, the larger enterprises will find ALM SaaS as helpful lever just as the smaller startups or the SMEs do.