Predictions for 2016

It's the beginning of a new year, which means... predictions! Whee!

Let's start with some obvious predictions:

Mobile will be big in 2016.

Cloud will be big on 2016.

NoSQL and distributed databases will be big in 2016.

Predictions like these are easy.

Now for something a little less obvious: legacy applications.

With the continued interest in mobile, cloud, NoSQL, and distributed databases, these areas will see strong demand for architects, developers, designers, and testers. That demand will pull people away from legacy applications -- those applications built for classic, non-cloud web architectures as well as the remaining desktop applications and mainframe batch systems.

Which is unfortunate for the managers of those legacy applications, because I believe that 2016 is going to be the year that companies decide that they want to migrate those legacy applications to the cloud/mobile platform.

When the web appeared, lots of managers held back, waiting to see if the platform would prove itself. It did, and companies migrated most of their applications from desktop to web (either external or internal). Even Microsoft, stalwart of desktop applications, created a web-based version of Outlook.

Likewise, when mobile and cloud appeared, many managers held back and waited for the new technologies to prove themselves. With almost ten years of mobile and cloud, and many companies already using those technologies, its time for the holdouts to take action.

Look for renewed interest in converting existing desktop and classic web applications. The conversions have challenges. In one sense, the job is easier than the early conversions, because we now have experience with mobile/cloud systems and we understand the architecture. In other ways, this may be harder, as the easy conversions (the "low-hanging fruit") have already been done, which means that the remaining conversions are harder.

The architecture of mobile/cloud systems (with or without distributed databases) is different from classic web applications. (And very different from desktop applications.)

I think that 2016 will be the year of rude awakening, as companies look at the effort to convert their legacy systems to newer technologies.

But the rude awakening is delivered in two phases. The first is the cost and time to convert legacy applications. The second is the cost of maintaining legacy applications in their current form.

Why the cost of maintaining legacy applications, without changing them to newer technologies? Because of the demand for mobile/cloud is high. New entrants to the field will know the new technologies, and select jobs that let them use that knowledge. That means that the folks with knowledge of the older technologies will be, um, older.

The folks with knowledge about older languages (C++, Visual Basic) and older APIs (Flash) will be the senior developers. And senior developers are more expensive than junior developers.

So the owners of legacy applications have a rather unpleasant choice: migrate to mobile/cloud, which is expensive, or stay on the legacy platform, with will also be expensive.