Next-mover technologies and skills eyed in Technology Radar for March 2012

(20 March, 2012) - ThoughtWorks, Inc., a global leader in custom software development, today announced availability of its Technology Radar for March 2012. Created out of the lively debates held among ThoughtWorks’ Technology Advisory Board, comprised of senior technology leaders from across the globe, the Technology Radar provides the latest perspective on emerging trends. The report is aimed at providing CIOs, decision makers at all levels and enterprise developers with insight into the techniques, tools, languages and platforms that are driving next-generation software development from ThoughtWorks’ perspective.

For each item on the radar, ThoughtWorks’ provides a recommendation about the use of that item by placing it into one of four classes: Adopt, Trial, Assess, and Hold. The report is divided into four quadrants that cover Techniques, Platforms, Tools and Languages. According to the report some of the strategic trends the study identifies are:

- Continued development of alternatives to SQL datastores

- Treating all code from UI to tests with respect

- Increasing diversification and rigor in browser based languages and technologies

- Smaller, simpler and faster applications and services

Techniques - Emergent design, evolutionary architecture, and Experience Design (XD) work together to rapidly deliver compelling, next-generation experiences for users. Agile Analytics is a new field that seeks to apply agile techniques to deliver faster insights into Big Data as well as more relevant experiences for software end-users.

Tools - With the continued rise and acceptance of alternative data stores, commonly known as “NoSQL” databases, the notion of Polyglot Persistence has emerged. In many applications it makes sense to store data using more than one data store, based on the use cases and efficiency required. With much more emphasis on engineering practices around client side code, JavaScript tooling and Micro-frameworks are highlighted in this edition of the radar.

Platforms - While “cloud” is something of an overused buzzword, ThoughtWorks calls out specific technologies for private- and hybrid-clouds. We also identify and give advice on platform-as-a-service offerings such as AppHarbor.

Languages - The industry is experiencing something of a renaissance in programming languages, and ThoughtWorks’ radar specifically calls out the need to care about languages. Functional programming languages such as Scala, Clojure and F# are on the rise, along with related technologies such as ClojureScript and Google’s Dart.

“The radar represents a way to publish our technology personality, and people who read it glean insight into how we consume and digest technology. It is our take on all the techniques, tools, languages and platforms that we have experience with,” said Neal Ford, director and software architect at ThoughtWorks.

“It represents discussions between globally diverse technologists. These debates are invariably impassioned and provocative, and the radar provides an external outlet to their outcome. While we try to stay on the cutting edge of technology, we also approach technology pragmatically, always trying to tie it back to real business value. Many companies appreciate our candid opinions and have come to rely on our consistent vision as embodied in the Radar.”