At the beginning of each year, we plan, we set goals, talk to our customers about what they want, and try to come up with solutions that are in line with global trends. So we always look at the evolution of the global market to know where we are.

With that being said, the IT outsourcing market continues to grow and is expected to reach around US$512.5bn globally this year (most revenue will be in the US US$185.50bn), and could see an annual growth of 11% reaching around US$777bn by 2028.

The Romanian IT market was estimated last year at US$9bn and could grow to US$12.05bn by 2025, according to the Employers’ Association of the Software and Services Industry (ANIS). The most important market segment is IT outsourcing, with a projected US$344m in 2023.

I believe that in 2024, in the software outsourcing industry, ahead of technologies, the focus will be significantly more on quality of service and value added. Mainly from a demand perspective for such services, so gradually, the supply side of the market will adjust, and we will see more and more companies being forced to differentiate themselves through quality of service, expertise, the seniority of developers as well as customer satisfaction.

In terms of technologies, it is clear that AI will continue to be the star of the year, that many things will revolve around it, and that it will change the way existing technologies and solutions work, becoming an integral part of them.

As industries that will be taking up a lot of AI this year too, I would look with interest at the medical area, the software development industry (!) but, in general, at any industry that has human interaction components – marketing, commerce, tourism, media, event organization, etc.”

But let’s take a more in-depth view of what trends will impact the software outsourcing market this year.

1. Focus on Cybersecurity

Data security has always been crucial, and companies are and will continue to look for solutions to protect themselves, especially as cyber-attacks become more sophisticated and the deep-fake phenomenon has grown enormously.

2. Increased Adoption of Cloud Services

Organizations are increasingly migrating their software operations to cloud-based solutions, taking advantage of scalable infrastructure, cost-effectiveness, and enhanced flexibility. This trend allows very good collaboration among distributed teams and facilitates remote development, testing, and deployment.

3. Rise of Intelligent Automation

FThe integration of AI and machine learning into software development processes is transforming routine tasks into automated workflows which include automating testing procedures, code generation, and decision-making processes.

4. Focus on User Experience (UX)

Outsourcing partners are prioritizing user-friendly software interfaces and this involves an in-depth understanding of end-users, incorporating user feedback, and applying UX design principles to enhance customer satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

5. Agile and DevOps Practice

Agile methodologies and DevOps practices have become essential for modern software development. Agile emphasizes iterative development, continuous feedback, and adaptability to changing requirements and DevOps focuses on collaboration between development and operations teams, ensuring continuous integration, delivery, and deployment.

6. Distributed Development Team

This trend capitalizes on the benefits of diverse skill sets and cultural perspectives as organizations are forming distributed development teams across the world.

7. Increased Adoption of Low-Code/No-Code Platforms

Businesses are exploring low-code and no-code development platforms as these enable users with varying levels of technical expertise to contribute to the development process, reducing the dependence on traditional coding. This trend aims to accelerate the development life cycle, enhance collaboration between business and IT teams, and address the growing demand for rapid application delivery.

These are some of the most important trends we are looking at this year – some are highly visible in Romania like cybersecurity, cloud services and automation and others less evident like low-code / no-code platforms.

But one thing is clear and will always be in trend: customers want good service and want to work with specialists with high technical skills, but who also have understanding and empathy when problems arise.

Ștefan is the founder and CEO of Control F5.