Evans’ 2011 Survey Finds NoSQL, Mobile Gain Traction; Cloud Security Sought 
The 2011 edition of the Evans Data Corp. North American Developer Survey finds that cloud is still hot, but it now vies for attention with other emerging technologies. Enterprise mobile, NoSQL and Big Data are all rapidly capturing mindshare – and budgets. IDN speaks with Evans Data CEO Janel Garvin about the results.
The 2011 edition of the Evans Data Corp. North American Developer Survey finds that cloud is still hot, but it now vies for attention with other emerging technologies. Enterprise mobile, NoSQL and Big Data are all rapidly capturing mindshare – and budgets. The survey is comprised of extensive responses from more than 400 developers conducted in May, 2011 is
IDN speaks with Evans Data CEO Janel Garvin about the results.
NoSQL, Big Data – NoSQL is being rapidly accepted by corporate enterprise developers in North America with 56% reporting at least some use of the schemaless database and 63% citing plans to use it in the next two years, according to Evans Data’s recently released survey. NoSQL is “considerably stronger” in the enterprise segment than within the general developer population where 43% expect to use NoSQL, Garvin said.
Learn more about Evans Data 2011 North American Developer Survey
“The advent of Big Data is driving adoption of NoSQL, and this is especially true in the corporate enterprise,” Garvin said. “While it may have got its start on the web with innovations like Big Table and MapReduce, it’s the enterprise that can most benefit from NoSQL and developers realize this across all geographical regions.”
NoSQL devs are much more likely to work internally on corporate enterprise-wide applications, Garvin told IDN. “In short they’re a brave new generation of developers who are now coming onto the scene bringing a keen interest in all things innovative, and they defy the image of the heads down coder interested only in his small slice of the work.”
In fact, the Evans Data survey paints quite a detailed picture of today’s NoSQL developers. They are younger than average, are about twice as likely to be managers, focus more on B2B and B2C apps and work at considerably larger companies than the general developer population, Garvin told IDN. One other important trait of NoSQL devs is “they seem to have a greater tendency to embrace many new technology paradigms” including cloud, mobile and data management, she added.
"The advent of Big Data is driving adoption of NoSQL, and this is especially true in the corporate enterprise."
Janel Garvin
CEO
Evans Data Corp
Enterprise Mobile – Incredibly 40% of all North American developers are now working on apps for wireless devices, according to the Evans Data survey. The trend to mobile is even more pronounced in the enterprise, where Evans Data’s Mobile Development Survey (coming later in July), found 73% of mobile devs said they expect to be extending enterprise apps to mobile devices within the next 12 months.
“Extending the enterprise to mobile clients is one of the hottest areas of development in the mobile space today,” Garvin told IDN. “Enterprises have to accommodate a large variety of clients today – and most of them are mobile. Enterprise messaging and collaboration tools are considered the most important enterprise apps for mobile devices currently,” she added.
Next Steps for Business-Critical Cloud – As for cloud, the Evans Data survey revealed that while dev/test is still popular, providers of cloud services and infrastructure still have some work to do to earn dev trust when it comes to deploying mission-critical applications into the cloud.
“We’re still seeing reluctance to move mission critical apps and highly-sensitive data off premises,” Garvin said. “And, security is more of a concern shaping that reluctance, than reliability.” One other note, developers are defining hybrid cloud a bit differently than how vendors describe it. “Developers like the concept of a hybrid approach to cloud, though this is usually conceived of [by developers] as keeping storage of sensitive data on-premise, while conducting transactions in the cloud – not true hybrid apps,” Garvin added.
The Evans Data Global Development Survey explores many key topics in application development and architecture, including platform use and migrations, language use, internal and external cloud computing, SaaS, SOA, security, Linux and open source software, Java development, web development, architecture and technology adoption, software development requirements, development tools, development issues and application management.
