Industrial Automation Magazine India

German companies seek next-gen development services for faster, more effective digital transformation

Published on : Tuesday 19-01-2021

ISG Provider Lens report shows German enterprises are frustrated with the speed and cost of digitisation and looking for stronger results, amid new demands from Covid-19.

Frankfurt, Germany, January 2021 – German enterprises, frustrated with the costs and delays of digital transformation, are turning to next-generation application development and maintenance services providers for rapid, ongoing modernisation, according to a new report published today by Information Services Group (ISG), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.

The 2020 ISG Provider Lens™ Next-gen Application Development & Maintenance (ADM) Services report for Germany finds companies concerned their digitisation efforts are too slow and expensive, and deliver moderate results while adding complexity that hampers daily business. These worries come as IT departments react to ever-changing pandemic effects and the need for fast, secure home workplaces with higher software quality.

“Digital transformation is a massive undertaking in terms of both technology and culture,” said Andrea Spiegelhoff, ISG EMEA partner based in Germany. “Many German companies are looking to share the burden of this effort with service providers, who themselves are in transition to new capabilities and ways of working.”

German companies are turning to next-generation ADM providers in their pursuit of optimized technology portfolios, employee efficiency and continuously improving customer experiences, the report says. They also seek lower development and maintenance costs and higher system stability, creating demand for application maintenance services.

Service providers are investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for their own offerings while also managing integration into client technology environments that are adding AI, ML, IoT, blockchain and other new features, the report says. This introduces greater complexity and poses new challenges for providers.

As companies in Germany implement Agile development methodologies, service providers are assisting with the difficult cultural aspects of the transition through exercises such as hackathons and gamification, according to the report. Enterprises still face a shortage of skilled employees, though this has eased slightly.

Continuous application testing methods also advanced in 2020 with increasing use of analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, the report notes. The large and growing volume of available test data makes visibility and insights more important, a trend that is also increasing demand for better visualisation tools. Testing is shifting left into earlier stages of development, checking small parts of the software as early as possible.

(https://ir.isg-one.com/news-market-information/press-releases/news-details/2021/German-Companies-Seek-Next-Gen-Development-Services-for-Faster-More-Effective-Digital-Transformation/default.aspx)