From Application Design To Application Composition

There is a quiet revolution underway in software development: The nature of the work is shifting from developing and deploying large complex applications to connecting new and existing services in unique and value-added ways. Combining openly available services fronted by application programming interfaces (APIs), service-rich platforms, and new deployment technologies can now create high-quality solutions. Open source software combined with commercial service offerings have made assembling new applications faster than ever before. This report summarizes the result: The very essence of application development has changed; the era of intricate design is over, and the era of flexible assembly has arrived. Leading application development and delivery (AD&D) organizations rapidly develop new applications by composing minimum viable products from available services, writing new code only when absolutely necessary. The application evolves piece by piece, as the team rewrites the services that don't work and refines the ones that do. Deployment technologies like micro-services and containers accelerate this trend, making it easier than ever to deploy and interlink small, independent services.