Application Development refers to products and services that support the design, creation, deployment, and maintenance of software applications across web, mobile, desktop, and cloud environments. This category includes markets that support organizations to build scalable, secure, and user-centric applications while evolving through agile methodologies, automation, modern development practices, and continuous integration and delivery.
Gartner defines custom software development (CSD) services as those that develop software in rapid increments and iterate custom applications and software products to meet an organization’s unique business needs. CSD services entail gathering business requirements and coding applications from inception, building applications on a platform as a service (PaaS), or assembling applications from existing web services or other reusable pieces of code. Services marketed as “software product engineering” or “digital product development” are likely to be examples of the category Gartner defines as CSD services.