SÃO PAULO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As the COVID-19 pandemic gripped Brazil last year, application development and maintenance (ADM) service providers defied fears that a rapid, forced move to working from home would disrupt their capacity to support clients’ applications, according to a new report published today by Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.
The 2020 ISG Provider Lens™ Next-gen Application Development & Maintenance (ADM) Services report for Brazil finds providers were able to weather the crisis by adopting videoconferencing and other remote-work technologies. They also proved able to sell new engagements and scale up quickly to carry them out. While some providers posted quarterly losses, many reported growth.
This promising performance came as next-generation ADM services – especially continuous testing – proved to be even more important amid the pandemic and associated lockdowns. The crisis exposed software quality issues as social distancing forced more people to depend on the internet for virtually everything. It became even more imperative for enterprises to offer their customers applications and services that consistently met their needs.
“Application development and maintenance is increasingly critical as companies undergo digital transformations and more activities move online,” said Pedro Luís Bicudo Maschio, an ISG distinguished analyst and author of the report. “Fortunes rise and fall on the effectiveness of software, and a software bug can mean going out of business.”
In Brazil, ADM service providers also continued to embrace Agile methodologies that merge development and maintenance, ISG says. When it launched ISG Provider Lens™ research in Brazil three years ago, ISG found providers maintained separate backlogs for change requirements and new ideas. By 2020, a consensus had formed that clients should merge these into a unified backlog.
Service providers have also been merging automation, continuous testing and security into DevOps methods as they advise clients, the report finds. The growing number of simultaneous projects sharing the same infrastructure makes automation necessary for execution speed and resource optimization, and providers unanimously are integrating security testing between development and operations tasks. The latter trend has turned DevOps into DevSecOps.
Another emerging trend is the shift-right approach to Agile development, which involves capturing application performance data in production environments. This feeds artificial intelligence tools for analytics to streamline the Agile development flow. It complements the continuing shift-left trend toward finding and preventing defects early in the development process.
The 2020 report includes a new a quadrant on application management services (AMS). These services focus on improvements to code that can reduce user demands for support. The AMS market is slowly moving from effort-based to outcome-based contracts, the report finds.
The 2020 ISG Provider Lens™ Next-gen Application Development & Maintenance (ADM) Services report for Brazil evaluates the capabilities of 47 providers across six quadrants: Next-gen ADM, Application Management Services – Midmarket/Niche, Agile Development, DevSecOps Consulting Continuous Testing – Large Accounts and Continuous Testing – Midmarket and Expert Consulting.
The report names Capgemini, Stefanini and Wipro as leaders in four quadrants. Accenture and everis (an NTT DATA company) are named leaders in three quadrants, while BRQ, Indra, Inmetrics, Softtek and Tech Mahindra are named leaders in two quadrants. CI&T, DXC Technology, e-Core, IBM, Prime Control, Sofist, Sonda, TCS and Yaman are named leaders in one quadrant each.
In addition, Deloitte, FH Consultoria (an NTT DATA company), Infosys, Prime Control and Reply are named as Rising Stars – companies with a “promising portfolio” and “high future potential” by ISG’s definition.
Customized versions of the report are available from Capgemini, Prime Control and Sofist.
The 2020 ISG Provider Lens™ Next-gen Application Development & Maintenance (ADM) Services report for Brazil is available to subscribers or for one-time purchase on this webpage.
About ISG Provider Lens™ Research
The ISG Provider Lens™ Quadrant research series is the only service provider evaluation of its kind to combine empirical, data-driven research and market analysis with the real-world experience and observations of ISG's global advisory team. Enterprises will find a wealth of detailed data and market analysis to help guide their selection of appropriate sourcing partners, while ISG advisors use the reports to validate their own market knowledge and make recommendations to ISG's enterprise clients. The research currently covers providers offering their services globally, across Europe and Latin America, as well as in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland, the U.K., France, the Nordics, Brazil and Australia/New Zealand, with additional markets to be added in the future. For more information about ISG Provider Lens research, please visit this webpage.
A companion research series, the ISG Provider Lens Archetype reports, offer a first-of-its-kind evaluation of providers from the perspective of specific buyer types.
About ISG
ISG (Information Services Group) (Nasdaq: III) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 700 clients, including more than 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; strategy and operations design; change management; market intelligence and technology research and analysis. Founded in 2006, and based in Stamford, Conn., ISG employs more than 1,300 digital-ready professionals operating in more than 20 countries—a global team known for its innovative thinking, market influence, deep industry and technology expertise, and world-class research and analytical capabilities based on the industry’s most comprehensive marketplace data. For more information, visit www.isg-one.com.
