Application modernization has become the primary goal for chief information officers in many organizations, and that’s placing the spotlight squarely on developers.

With the increased pace of AppDev, organizations must confront complexity and skills gap issues to meet aggressive software delivery timetables. For developers, this has placed further emphasis on access to modern tools, and enterprises are continuing to invest in platform engineering to streamline the developer experience.

“Empowering developers is the hottest thing right now,” said John Furrier (pictured, left), founder and co-CEO of SiliconANGLE Media. “You’re seeing certainly the hype on the AI side driving tons of action. It’s rockstar status again … but it’s even more high velocity with the AI pressure and the data platforms being formed.”

Furrier spoke with theCUBE Research’s Paul Nashawaty (right) at the AppDev Done Right Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed key themes and takeaways highlighted during the event.

Platforms fuel innovation for developers

Platform engineering, focused on building and managing internal platforms that empower development teams to create applications more efficiently, has emerged as a key element in the AppDev world. Nashawaty cited findings from theCUBE Research that 92% of developers need modern tools and platforms to innovate, and teams with high developer satisfaction and autonomy can deploy 23% more frequently.

“When we talk about platform engineering, we talk about site reliability engineers and DevOps teams and how developer innovation is really coming together,” Nashawaty said. “When we look at it, we’re really trying to understand how organizations are fostering this culture of developing innovation to accelerate that software delivery, but also stay competitive in today’s fast-paced market.”

One factor that could soon have a major impact on the development lifecycle is the rise of “vibe coding.” This emerging area, where users give into the “vibes” of AI and express programming goals without needing to know how to write a single line of code, is paving new inroads into engineering and empowering the citizen developer, according to Furrier.

“One of the big themes that we are taking away from these events is that vibe coding is going to convert into engineering,” Furrier said. “If you remember back in the day, it was software engineering, then it became coding and developers. Vibe coding is shifting to the fact that it’s easy to program on the front end in the app layer where the business logic is. That means the citizen developer is now going to be enabled to fully innovate.”

Another factor influencing the AppDev environment is environmental sustainability. While developers are under pressure to modernize applications and deliver them in a timely manner, the amount of power driving AI and other tools is rising concurrently.

“The big focus was on sustainability,” Nashawaty noted. “We found that 81% of CIOs that responded to our research indicated that sustainability is now a critical factor in software and cloud infrastructure decisions. When we talk about things like modernization, containerization and right-sized infrastructure, it really can reduce the carbon footprint of over 30% in a cloud-native environment. There’s a lot here to think about when it comes to sustainable environment.”

Here’s the complete video discussion, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of theCUBE Research’s AppDev Done Right Summit:

Photo: SiliconANGLE