While the last few decades were dominated by client server technologies, this one will be the decade of connected systems and devices operating on cloud platforms. Service orientation has paved the way for hosted APIs and Software as a Service (SaaS). Communications between publishers and subscribers of such services are getting orchestrated through the cloud — with a hosted and managed foundation, giving rise to a new world of software defined infrastructure with programmable compute, networking, security and storage. What this means is that development teams can worry less about the hosting of the infrastructure and instead focus on optimizing the core, non-functional aspects of the system under development. The following figure illustrates the reorganized technology stack that you can expect to shape up in the near future:

At the infrastructure tier, virtual machines are now a thing of the past. The majority of the application stack will be managed by container technologies such as Docker. They are lightweight and can be built and deployed using scripts, making the GUI redundant. Microsoft Windows is already hitching a ride on container tech and making forays therein with the announcement of Nano?server. Container technologies will make it very easy for DevOps teams to automate the release processes. Platforms, such as Chef, will be leveraged to turn your infrastructure into code and automate deployments and testing. Microsoft is also working very closely with Chef to extend its capabilities in Nano server.

Sitting a layer above will be APIs delivering Software as a Service. Platforms like Azure App Service and APIARY are already making it easier for developers to host their API and make it accessible via a marketplace. In addition, a variety of UI technologies are also evolving, targeting multiple form factor devices and allowing for consumption of the data from the APIs.