Industries across the board are seeing workforce shortages in our post-pandemic economy. However, this skill gap is nothing new in the world of software development. The increasing scarcity of highly trained developers that has emerged in the past few years has become painfully more apparent as the workforce continues to contract in the wake of Covid-19.
According to the results of a study by analyst firm Forrester, the U.S. is heading for a sobering deficit of 500,000 software developers by 2024 (paywall). Yet, SaaS, or software as a service, continues to grow as a major paradigm for the consumption of technology, as enterprises and businesses of all scales continue to implement the digital transformation of their business processes.
There’s an even more significant shortage of skills regarding less common programming languages, such as advanced business application programming (ABAP), which, for example, is the basis for much of SAP’s code. Companies far and wide are being called upon to modernize their systems, converting legacy back-office and other related processes to modern, cloud-based, mobile-ready applications that take advantage of the efficiencies of hosted infrastructures.
Many enterprises that utilize business automation and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions such as SAP are facing pressure to “modernize” to more innovative and secure versions of their ERP platforms. Such sweeping transformations are traditionally labor- and integration-intensive, expensive and associated with risk and disruption as systems make the transition. Many companies are also struggling with financial restraints in the aftermath of the 2020 pandemic shutdowns. In that light, the cost, risk and downtime associated with innovation become daunting.