Worldwide Automated Software Quality Forecast, 2024-2028: GenAI and Dynamic Testing Demand Drive Ongoing Forecast Growth

This IDC study provides an analysis of the 2024-2028 automated software quality (ASQ) market forecast. It discusses IDC's ASQ assessment for a market that showed double-digit growth of 11.7% to $5.15 billion in 2023, as compared with growth of 10.8% in 2022 (on updated, higher ASQ baseline numbers) to $4.61 billion. This continued double-digit growth for ASQ for the third year sets the basis for higher ASQ growth rate estimates moving into the forecast time frame. We see ASQ adoption driven by the imperative to ship quality software across more complex, distributed, and digitized environments more rapidly than ever, leveraging AI, machine learning (ML), and generative AI (GenAI) increasingly. As organizations continued to reinvest more deeply in ASQ solutions to address increased challenges with digitization in the face of challenges across a variety of vectors (including business, technology, software sourcing, and diverse platform deployment with mobile, flexible work collaboration, and cloud), major share ASQ solution providers are mostly experiencing some revenue increases, and a number are experiencing high double-digit growth. Leverage of AI, ML, and GenAI code assistants for developers leads also to the need for remediation of at least 40% of generated code for a majority of developers, according to IDC's DevView Survey results (see Developer View 2023: Executive Survey, IDC #US51062923, September 2023). ASQ and test automation are vital to help address needed software remediation for developer use of GenAI code assistants as a factor driving ASQ growth in the forecast. Midsize innovative vendors in emerging technology areas such as mobile, software quality analysis and measurement, application security testing and vulnerability management partnerships and integration, and cloud testing contribute to expected improving ASQ growth moving into the forecast time frame."High investment in and demand for ASQ solutions and significant growth provide a foundation for adoption during ongoing technology, geopolitical, environmental, and financial volatility as organizations rely more than ever on quality software for digital execution. IDC research moving into 2H24 also shows software quality and testing as a primary area benefitting from generative AI, for which we saw increasing solutions in 2H23/1H24 and expansion forthcoming. These factors underlie our ASQ forecast moving into 2028. Our current ASQ CAGR of 12.7% for the 2024-2028 time frame (up from 12.4% for the prior forecast) expands the CAGR that we set initially in June 2023 for the 2023-2027 time period. There was an increased adoption for ASQ as software velocity increased, seen in adoption trends and survey data that underscored the impact of rapid digitization that continued in 2023, along with increased complexity for remote multimodal application development and deployment and highly constrained, distributed staffing resources. These combined factors result in ongoing demand and growth for software quality automation," said Melinda Ballou, program director, IDC's Agile Application Life-Cycle Management, Quality, and Portfolio Strategies. "Responsiveness on the part of ASQ providers to customer needs for quality software will help sustain and drive growth overall, as vendors deliver more complete agile DevOps and quality and life-cycle management solutions via acquisitions and partnerships and as consolidation continues. Smaller and larger vendors continue to play a crucial role for market innovation, as we see from agile and cloud testing, quality measurement with static and dynamic analyses and security leverage, and agile and mobile ERP testing for business applications, as well as AI, machine learning, and emerging robotic process automation (RPA) solutions for testing, as software development democratizes with no-code/low-code options and citizen developers. We expect additional acquisitions and ASQ growth in this space in the 2024-2028 time frame."