In the next three years, programming in cloud and SaaS environments would become inevitable. Developers need to start preparing for that. Experienced developers need to master distributed computing, SOA like concepts, web services design patterns, and related technologies to develop applications on the cloud and start learning to design the applications as well. Mature application development platforms have alleviated the burden, of manual coding, through visual models and application design suites. Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2008 is a good example of providing development teams with such modeling tools which auto-code complex code-parts for these large applications.
For freshers, there is a need to go beyond traditional basics which is focused on desktop or web applications and start learning to develop SaaS compatible applications.
For designers, SAS70 kind of certifications may help in coping with SaaS compliance requirements. Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), which is a group of large product companies, has been working on the standards to manage various apprehensions related to the SaaS space. Designers would surely benefit from the understanding of these problems and the emerging standards.
Software market is changing at faster pace then ever. Focus should shift from learning just programming languages, which may get out-dated anytime, to the understanding of concepts and technologies at large.
