Application development is the development or progress of a software product in a planned way and prearranged process. It is also referred to as software process, software outsourcing, and software lifecycle and Software Development Company.
Application development involves producing a computer program, or set of programs to execute responsibilities, from keeping track of inventory and billing customers to maintaining accounts, speeding up business process and, in fact, even improving application efficiency.
Unlike vanilla programming, application development involves higher levels of responsibility (particularly for requirement capturing and testing). The Software Application Development industry has seen a lot of revolutionize in a relative short period of time. From both sides–customers looking for software solutions and the resource pool of application development talent – there has been considerable upheaval over the last few years.
Software preservation is a very extensive activity often defined as including all work made on a software system after it becomes operational. It covers the correction of errors, the enhancement, deletion and addition of capabilities, the alteration to changes in data requirements and operation environments, the improvement of performance, usability, or any other quality attribute.
The IEEE defines Software preservation as the process of modifying a software system or component after delivery to correct faults, to get better performances or other attributes, or get used to to a changed environment.
Previous Years Market Overview and Performance
According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending exceeded $3.4 trillion in 2008, an 8% increase compared with 2007 expenditure. In a separate report Gartner (IT Key Metrics November 2008) estimates that 20% of global IT is spent on Software application development, which represents $625 billion in 2007 and $680 billion in 2008. Gartner Dataquest (March 2009) estimated 2009 Global IT spending at $3.235 trillion, which is a decline of 4.8% compared to 2008. The corresponding size of the application development market for 2009 would be US$ 647 Billion.
Current Market
According to Gartner, the growth in worldwide IT spending in 2010 is expected to reach $3.4 trillion by the end of 2010, a 4.6% increase from 2009. The projected growth reveals the significant improvement from the previous year (4.8% decline in 2009) and is expected across all major segments – computer hardware, IT services, Software Outsourcing, telecom, and telecom services.
Based on this, the application development and preservation market is projected using a growth rate of 4.6% from 2010 to 2012. It is assumed that 20% of global IT expenditure is exhausted on Software Development.
Competition in the Market
The Leading Competitors of the application development and maintenance industry are shown below. Further, in the US alone, there are 117,000+ firms dealing with Computer systems design and related services. IBM leads the list with a market share of 11.6% followed by HP and Microsoft at 9.3% and 8.6% respectively. IBM is also the leading employer followed by HP and Accenture.In the case of growth rate, Cognizant, Infosys and Wipro lead the list with growth rates of 16.4%, 12% and 8.1% respectively. Accenture recorded the least growth rate of 8%.