The previous year marked by the Covid-19 pandemic was extremely challenging for the world population and businesses. Its impact
The pandemic made many businesses seek ways to survive. Though, while most spheres were struggling in their transformation, software development outsourcing after a brief decline experienced a strong positive dynamic. In this article, we’ll look into the software development outsourcing trends that will continue to influence its rapid growth and development in 2021.

Digital Transformation

The world started experiencing massive digital transformation in 2020 and the trend will achieve its full potential in the following year. Let’s have a look at some major changes.

Rapid digitization

During the extensive lockdowns, businesses had to search for ways to reach their customers. One of the most effective approaches was to go online. Therefore, a huge number of businesses referred to software development outsourcing companies to build their own digital solutions. They helped them to establish closer ties with their clients and keep the customer flow at a pre-pandemic level.

Moving to the cloud

Another tendency is moving businesses to the cloud. This allowed companies to automate many digital processes and receive access to top enterprise-class technologies. Businesses started implementing cloud solutions for faster application development and deployment, and their full maintenance. Statista predicts that the public cloud services market will reach $362.3 billion by 2022 in comparison to $257.5 billion in 2020.

Expanding IT outsourcing hub in Eastern and Central Europe (Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus )

The IT outsourcing destinations will continue to shift from China and India to Eastern and Central Europe such countries as Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus.

Before 2020 the demand for outsourcing services was mainly determined by low development costs. Though as the global pandemic hit the world, many businesses realized the necessity for a higher quality of the developed applications. Therefore, companies started to search for IT outsourcing companies with IT experts that could provide high-quality services at affordable prices.

Growing demand for unique expertise

In search of outstanding development services, more businesses realize the strong need for profile specialists. The reason for that is the rapidly emerging IT technologies and tech sphere in general.

It’s becoming extremely costly and hard for businesses to continuously train in-house teams and upgrade equipment. Therefore, many companies search for outsourcing vendors with a broad range of experts in various spheres. The trend is popular among large businesses and SMEs as outsourcing services are often more economical than starting their own IT department.

Long-term cooperation

With the growing complexity of digital projects and their critical importance for the success of any business, companies seek reliable and highly professional outsourcing partners for long-term cooperation. Therefore, software outsourcing companies have to be ready to develop high-quality applications, and more than that, provide strategic planning, risk prevention, post-deployment, and other additional services to their customers.

Key technologies driving innovation in outsourcing

Another major factor that significantly influences the software development outsourcing market is the emerging digital technologies. Those outsourcing companies that are ready to provide their clients with top-notch applications empowered by the latest technologies will sustain intense competition at the global level. This way, software development outsourcing companies should have strong expertise in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning (ML), Fintech technologies, Blockchain, eHealth, and others.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies represent a baseline for many digital solutions. In 2021, they will continue to be the leaders among the emerging technologies in the software development market.

AI&ML empower various applications with smart voice and chat assistants, process large amounts of data, and customize business applications to each client. All of these benefits help companies to enhance their customers’ experiences, making them spend more.
According to Statista, the global AI investments are expected to reach $126 billion by 2025, while Forbes claims that ML spendings will grow to $20.83 billion by 2024.

Internet of Things

2021 is expected to be a pivotal year for the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Fortune predicts that despite the Covid-19 difficulties the global IoT market size will reach 1.4 trillion by 2027 with a CAGR of 24.9% from 2019 to 2027.
There are 3 major factors that determine fast IoT development:

• growth and availability of cloud platforms and services;
• the rapid development of edge computing;
• 5G rolling out.

IoT is getting more widespread, reaching many industries and niches, including Smart Houses and Cities, eHealth trackers, logistics and transportation, predictive maintenance, and many more. Therefore, IT outsourcing companies should have profound knowledge of IoT to build the most complete and effective digital solutions for various businesses.

Blockchain

Although Blockchain is a young technology, it’s becoming mainstream. It’s expected that in 2021 there will be more companies that will refer to blockchain development services and incorporate blockchain in their digital solutions. The latest Research and Markets report states that the blockchain technology market will grow at $52.5 billion by 2026 with a CAGR of 62.73%.
Besides establishing cryptocurrency platforms, many businesses will use blockchain to enhance security. Decentralized applications, distributed authentication, smart contracts, and better-secured accounting technologies will be the leading innovations in global data protection in 2021.

Banking and Fintech

Software development for banking and financial services gained their popularity in 2020 during the lockdowns. PRNewswire predicts that the global Fintech market will reach $309.98 billion at a CAGR of 24.8% through 2022 in comparison to only $127.66 billion in 2018.

Many banks had to urgently move online to continue to provide their services to their clients. This strong demand for transformation in the banking and finance sphere has triggered the rapid development of Fintech technology in many ways.

With Fintech software development many businesses can empower their applications with the latest innovations in the sphere such as:

• mobile payments;
• digital currencies tracking and exchange;
• providing digital banking services;
• various types of lending like peer-to-peer or marketplace lending, and others;
• cryptocurrency platforms, and much more.

Summary

The previous 2020 was a determining year for many companies. They had to quickly transform their businesses and upgrade them with digital solutions to stay in touch with their customers. That’s why many of them referred to IT outsourcing companies to develop their business applications quickly and at affordable prices.
The tendency of rapid business digitization will continue in 2021. Now, to better reach their customers, businesses will have to incorporate the latest IT technologies in their apps. For this, they will need to search for IT outsourcing companies with the latest IT expertise and top-notch development services.