The findings of the 2010-11 World Quality Report, an in-depth study of enterprise application quality assurance and emerging trends in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), reveals that the majority of companies (60 percent) around the world are hosting up to 50 percent of their applications in a cloud environment. Along with an increase in applications deployed in the cloud, organisations are also deploying agile IT delivery in their applications and infrastructure as they look to streamline operations. Close to 60 percent of respondents expect to use agile development methods to deliver new applications over the coming year. As a result, organisations are starting to adopt agile delivery methods and cloud computing technology as a part of their application quality assurance.

The report also provides a detailed profile on IT development and quality assurance trends in six specific industries: Consumer products and retail, distribution and logistics, financial services, public sector, high tech and telecoms.

The study surveyed over 30,000 CXOs, IT directors, quality assurance managers and engineers across North America, Europe and Asia, building on the findings of the previous 2009 World Quality Report. Although last year’s report identified that in 2009 most companies had to reduce their IT spending, the latest findings show the vast majority of organisations (71 percent) are still investing in new application development projects. The 2010-11 report also reveals the effects of the economic downturn on enterprise software development and quality assurance. New projects are being initiated but IT investments are shifting from a daily operational focus towards building new applications that bring competitive advantage for business. As a result, both developers and testers are under increased pressure to provide greater efficiency, more consistent quality assurance methodology and better reuse of automated software.

As such, organisations are increasingly turning to agile and cloud based delivery methods to modernise their applications. Benefits cited include cost reduction (50 percent), increased agility (33 percent) and improved time to market (14 percent) for cloud computing. Time to market (37 percent), quality of application (26 percent), resource utilisation (23 percent) and cost savings (14 percent) were cited as the main benefits of agile IT delivery.

As requirements for IT delivery change, the report finds that the requirements for future quality assurance engineers are changing as well. Testers of tomorrow will work in smaller teams that are expected to deliver executable code within four to six weeks. Tight deadlines and smaller teams are likely to lead to a future where members of quality assurance teams will possess robust quality assurance (31 percent) and business domain (22 percent) skills, database knowledge (14 percent) and scripting skills (10 percent).

“Following a severe recession, we see a surprising number of companies continuing to invest in new application development projects,” said Raf Howery, vice president, Global Channels and Partners Executive, Capgemini. “However they are understandably selecting projects that deliver a quick and clear ROI.  Agile delivery coupled with cloud computing technologies should help provide organizations with quicker time to market and higher application quality at significantly reduced cost levels.”

“IT organizations are under intense pressure to deliver new applications that drive competitive advantage, create greater efficiencies and bring tangible results to their business,” said Jonathan Rende, vice president and general manager, Business Technology Optimization Applications, Software and Solutions, HP. “This new research highlights the critical role Agile and cloud computing initiatives serve in helping organizations transform their IT application portfolios while significantly lowering costs.”