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The developer landscape is shifting faster than ever. AI agents are moving from buzzword to reality. Cloud deployment has become universal. Security threats are multiplying alongside AI's expanding attack surface. At SlashData, we don't just track these changes; we decode what they actually mean for the companies building developer tools and platforms. For our 30th wave of Developer Nation, we're expanding our focus areas, refining our intelligence gathering, and improving our methodology to ensure our research remains the most relevant and actionable in the industry. Professionals across the full breadth of the development sector — CTOs, product and program managers, engineers and DevOps teams, and more — rely on that intelligence.  Moschoula Kramvousanou, CEO talks about our research focus for 2025 Why now? Because as the technology landscape evolves, vendors are finding it increasingly challenging to understand what their developers truly need and how they truly work. We're introducing new research areas and enhanced methodologies based on direct feedback from leading technology companies who depend on our insights to make critical product and strategy decisions. The result is our most comprehensive survey yet, designed to give you the intelligence that actually drives business outcomes. Why This Intelligence Matters Now The technology sector is experiencing its most significant shift since the mobile revolution. AI capabilities are reshaping every development workflow. Cloud infrastructure has become invisible but critical. Security requirements are evolving faster than security practices. Companies making decisions based on outdated intelligence – or worse: vendor marketing – are missing the real opportunities and risks. Our H2 2025 research cuts through the noise to deliver the insights that actually drive successful developer products and strategies. Whether you're deciding where to invest AI development resources, how to position cloud tools, or which developer segments to prioritise, this intelligence gives you the foundation for decisions that matter. Core Intelligence: AI Agents and Security Reality Check AI Agents: Cutting Through the Hype Everyone's talking about AI agents, but who's using them? We're asking over 10,000 developers worldwide about their real experience with agentic architectures. Not the marketing promises, but the ground truth. Which platforms are gaining genuine traction? What specific tasks are developers successfully automating? How well do developers understand core concepts like Model Context Protocol compared to how well vendors think they do? We're asking over 10,000 developers worldwide about their real experience with agentic architectures. Not the marketing promises, but the ground truth. This intelligence emerged from conversations with major AI platform providers who need to understand whether their educational and marketing efforts are translating into adoption and where the genuine market opportunities lie. We're also investigating developer familiarity across the full spectrum of agentic AI platforms and frameworks, providing comprehensive competitive intelligence for this rapidly evolving space. DevSecOps: The Security Gap Analysis With AI agents expanding attack surfaces and security breaches dominating headlines, we're conducting a renewed investigation into DevSecOps. We're mapping the critical gap between developers' expressed security concerns and their actual implementation practices: examining the frequency of security checks, CI/CD pipeline ownership, and the implementation of security guardrails. Previous SlashData research revealed security as a top developer concern, but practice consistently lagged behind stated urgency. Now we'll provide definitive insight on whether the industry is finally catching up, and what real-world implementations actually look like. Cloud Intelligence Trends: Beyond Backend Specialisation Universal Cloud Reality Starting H2 2025, we're surveying all cloud users: not just backend specialists. We're breaking down the artificial barriers in cloud research that have limited the breadth of understanding we can provide. For years, we limited detailed cloud questions to backend developers, but with over 90% of developers now using cloud services, that approach missed the full picture and critical insights. Starting H2 2025, we're surveying all cloud users: not just backend specialists. This expansion gives you comprehensive insight from both the developers configuring cloud tools and infrastructure and those using cloud services in their daily development work. The difference in perspectives between these groups often reveals critical gaps in product positioning, user experience design, and feature prioritisation that can make or break adoption strategies. Cloud-Native Deep Dive We've significantly expanded our cloud-native development tracking to capture the real adoption patterns and preferences across emerging technologies and methodologies. With our survey scale spanning thousands of backend developers, you'll get unprecedented visibility into which cloud-native approaches are actually driving adoption versus which ones are generating buzz without substance.  Data Residency and CSP Intelligence We're also introducing comprehensive tracking of data residency compliance requirements and how they influence cloud deployment decisions. Combined with our enhanced cloud service provider preference analysis and expanded cloud-native research, these three focus areas reflect the growing complexity of cloud decision-making. Our CSP clients have shown particular interest in understanding how developers navigate these interconnected challenges, as regulatory requirements increasingly shape technical architecture choices. Developer Program Benchmarking: AI Integration and Sample Code SlashData's developer programme benchmarking has become a cornerstone for leading technology companies understanding where they excel and where they need to improve. For years, our benchmarking has enabled clients to directly compare their developer programmes against competitors, providing critical insights into how they fit within developers' core workflows and decision-making processes. This established expertise allows us to speak with authority about industry-wide trends and pain points. AI Assistant Integration Building on our benchmarking foundation, we're now tracking the integration of AI assistants and tools as a core programme feature. The largest companies in our network are aggressively pursuing these capabilities, but questions remain: How important is this to developers? Which developer segments care most? Our expanded benchmarking will give you clarity on where to invest your AI support efforts and how to position these against competitor offerings. Sample Code: The Industry's Biggest Failure Point Our extensive benchmarking work has consistently revealed that vendor-supplied sample code is where the entire industry falls short of developer expectations. This wave, we're conducting our most comprehensive sample code analysis yet. We’re examining what features developers actually value, their biggest frustrations, and the specific scenarios where they turn to sample code versus other resources. We're also having developers rate familiar vendors across multiple sample code dimensions: relevance, discoverability, production applicability, and currency. Combined with our curated understanding of developer preferences and pain points, this will provide a complete picture of how sample code impacts developer adoption and satisfaction. If you're not measuring up, you won’t know exactly where to focus your improvements. Specialised Sector Intelligence Gaming Industry Transformation The gaming sector is navigating unprecedented change, but one thing remains constant: the quality of games continues to reach new heights. While the creative output has never been stronger, the developers and studios behind these exceptional experiences are facing significant challenges. Our upcoming State of Game Development report (coming November 2025) will provide comprehensive profiling of game developers to understand their current landscape, technology choices, and perspectives, with an additional focus on how AI tools are helping or hindering their work, adding crucial 2025 context to this analysis. We've enhanced our profiling capabilities to distinguish between technical roles, creative roles, and non-technical support staff. These are critical segmentations for companies targeting different aspects of the gaming development pipeline. This granular approach allows engine providers, tool creators, and platform companies to understand exactly which roles are most receptive to their solutions and what specific challenges each segment faces in their daily work. XR Reality Check Despite major moves like the Apple Vision Pro, XR hasn't achieved mainstream presence. Our XR Landscape report will provide updated intelligence on who's actually working in this space, plus 10-year predictions from developers across all sectors. Are XR developers more optimistic than the broader market? Do younger developers see more potential? The answers will likely shape XR investment strategies. AI at the Edge Edge computing and AI/ML are converging rapidly, creating new opportunities and challenges for developers and the companies serving them. This has become a growing topic of interest that's increasingly important to many vendors with the proliferation of small advanced models that can run effectively at the edge. We're conducting comprehensive research into which edge AI/ML projects are gaining real traction beyond proof-of-concept stages, what specific frameworks and development approaches developers prefer, and where the current pain points create the biggest opportunities for better tooling and platforms. This research covers the technical requirements and the developer experience challenges that determine success in this emerging market. IIoT Developer Journey We're also investigating how Industrial IoT developers first entered the field, focusing on their initial development board experiences and early learning journey. This research helps companies in the IIoT space understand how they stack up against competitors in terms of developer onboarding and initial experience; critical factors for long-term ecosystem adoption. That’s not all In addition to these comprehensive research areas, we offer client-exclusive questions designed around your specific intelligence requirements. This bespoke research capability ensures you're not just getting industry-wide insights, but the targeted data that directly informs your unique strategic challenges and opportunities. The 30th wave of Developer Nation is currently collecting responses from around the world. If you want to help shape these insights, have your say .  You can be the first to know when these insights become available by subscribing to our newsletter . Or you can get in touch  and we will make sure to get you all the intelligence you need.  About the author Liam Bollman-Dodd, Senior Market Reseach Analyst Liam is a former experimental antimatter physicist, and he obtained a PhD in Physics while working at CERN. He is interested in the changing landscape of cloud development, cybersecurity, and the relationship between technological developments and their impact on society.

Or what skills are you focusing on improving? This is a post from DevRelX. DevRelX was a community-driven platform by SlashData dedicated to advancing Developer Relations (DevRel), Developer Marketing, and Developer Experience professionals. It provided research, insights, and resources through initiatives like the Future Developer Summit & the DevRelX Summit, the DevRelX Podcast, and a book. DevRelX created a vibrant space for learning, connection, and discussion within the global DevRel community, until the community was sunset in 2023 as SlashData shifted its focs to wide Technology Research. The DevRelX Community Voice column is one of a few ways we invite our community members to share ideas and solve challenges around various topics like DevRel strategy, metrics, career growth, and just DevRel’s day-to-day. Want to add your voice to this and more key DevRel topics? Join our community and participate in the next Community Voice prompts where you can ask your questions! Opemipo Disu, Developer Advocate at Fermyon I think communication is a skill an aspiring DevRel should have DevRel acts as a 'middle-man' between the company and the users. In a DevRel role, it's essential you get across to users' feedback and in this case, I think communication is pretty much important in this case. Pj Metz, Developer Community Manager #OpenToWork Empathy and authenticity. Developers don’t like to be marketed to, so making sure that you’re being yourself and understanding what it is that they need from a DevRel is very important. Developers have problems to solve, and DevRel has a possible solution. That’s the goal is to show them the problem being solved, not making promises about speed, agility, etc. Show the problem getting solved. Tabatha DiDomenico, OSS Developer Relations & Security Advocate Listening is a skill that deserves attention or, really, listening with intention —engaging with a goal in mind more often yields actionable, helpful ideas. Of course, the casual conversation has its place, but it may take a while to discover valuable insight for both parties. Even taking a few seconds at the start of a conversation to anchor to a context can help make the most of each connection. Sean Falconer, Head of Marketing & Developer Relations at Skyflow I think it's a bit context-dependent. You need to do a bit of self-analysis and figure out where your weak points are and proactively try to work on those things. If someone is highly technical but has less experience presenting and/or writing, then you should try to build up those skills. If presenting and engaging with people comes naturally but you have the less technical skill, then focusing on deepening your technical skills makes sense. Working in developer relations, especially advocacy, requires a wide breadth of skills. To be really good at it, you need to constantly be working on skill stacking: listening, writing, speaking, programming, and explaining technical concepts to different types of audiences are all skills that you need to be building. So my long-winded advice is to try to shore up your weaknesses. This is also great for storytelling in an interview, it shows you care about self-improvement, you have passion for what you do, and even if you don't perfectly line up with the job requirements, you're someone who's going to walk through walls to level up so you can do the job. Michael Arguin, Senior Manager, Marketplace & Developer Experience Curiosity and a passion for learning . You won't know everything so you will often have to find answers. Jason St-Cyr, Developer Relations leader at Sitecore A key piece for me is the ability to learn and then teach . In many situations, you need to be encountering something new before others, learn that to keep ahead of the need, and then be able to create something that helps others learn what you just had to. Katie Miller, Director, Developer Marketing Slack Cross-functional relationship building , which encompasses flexibility, curiosity, empathy, and how to reframe communication style and methods to meet folks where they're at!

This is a post from DevRelX. DevRelX was a community-driven platform by SlashData dedicated to advancing Developer Relations (DevRel), Developer Marketing, and Developer Experience professionals. It provided research, insights, and resources through initiatives like the Future Developer Summit & the DevRelX Summit, the DevRelX Podcast, and a book. DevRelX created a vibrant space for learning, connection, and discussion within the global DevRel community, until the community was sunset in 2023 as SlashData shifted its focs to wide Technology Research. The start of 2023 marked a 3-year anniversary of DevRelX.com - thank you for being with us! Another Q1 highlight in our community is the 10th Developer Program Leaders survey , a bi-annual effort to understand your and your peers' challenges, and how DevRel professionals prioritise resources and justify the value of their developer program. We invite you to participate and gain access to insights into how you compare against peer practices and contribute to the industry’s knowledge share. Interested? You’ll need ±8 minutes. Take the survey For every complete response, we will donate $3 (and up to $500) on behalf of the DevRelX Community to support the people who have suffered from the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria . Now, let’s take a look at some of the key findings from our past surveys, complemented by expert insights from our members! Building a Developer Program Strategy Sean Falconer shared personal thoughts on Q4, 2021 survey insights. Below are some of the highlights and you can read more in this blog post . How do program leaders spend their time, budget and effort? Below are the results from the survey breaking down how developer program leaders spend the majority of their time. It’s encouraging to see that program leaders are spending the majority of their time on strategy. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “ Failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. “ When I joined Skyflow , I spent a lot of time immersing myself in the product, the problem space, meeting people and customers, and thinking deeply about strategy. I wanted to be able to put together a long-term vision. What does developer relations look like for Skyflow in 5 years? And, a short-term vision. Where will it be in 6 months? Starting with a strategy and creating a plan helped me focus on where I should put my attention and how to think about hiring. There are always a million things to do at a startup, but if you try to do everything at once, you’ll do nothing well. A strategy with clear objectives helps you tune out the distractions and focus on moving your key metrics in the right direction. Thinking about and creating a strategy should be the foundation of any developer program. You should outline your goals, and the things you’re going to measure, define a North Star metric, and plan the tactics that will get you there. However, just because you have a plan doesn’t mean it’s going to work. As Mike Tyson said, “ Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. “ You need to be able to adapt. Failure is to be expected. It’s a learning opportunity. Just don’t make the same mistake over and over again. Internal buy-in and funding The survey reports that 22% of a leader’s time is spent creating internal buy-in or securing funding. In a prior survey , this was 15%. I think part of the responsibility of any program lead, regardless of function, is to spend some time justifying their function’s existence and securing funding. It’s our responsibility to convey our program and team’s value. That being said, I think it’s unfortunately too common that developer program leaders spend A LOT of time on this and it’s a topic that continually comes up. At Google, I felt that several times a year, I had to give presentations explaining what my team did, the value we brought to the program, and the impact we’d had, but even then, I really had to fight for resourcing. Continually fighting this battle is counterproductive and exhausting. So although it’s part of a program lead’s responsibility, I believe there should be a limit. Ultimately, it’s critical that developer programs have executive buy-in and are seen as a strategically important investment. Without that, you’ll burn yourself out trying to make people understand something they are simply not ready or interested in accepting. Understanding where you are and where you need to go Ayan Pahwa has also highlighted the importance of internal buy-in when looking at the Q2, 2022 results in this blog post . Here's what he shared: Internal buy-ins and getting funding: Steadily bridging the gap Now, this is an interesting one. Seeing a drop in creating internal buy-ins and securing funding from 22% in the Q4-2021 survey to 15% this year, really proves that DevRel practitioners are now spending relatively less time in convincing and justifying the cost of their DevRel programs. This could be the result of developer advocacy programs becoming more mature and clearly linked to strategic goals. The impact of developer advocacy programs and their integration into company-wide strategy seems to be making it clearer for stakeholders to consciously invest both budget and resources in DevRel efforts. I’ve been on the spot, spending hours to justify the cost of attending a conference or organising an event or just buying a new service or platform subscription to support our Developer community, so it’s really good to see that time is being claimed back and spent doing other rather more impactful tasks such as : Direct developer engagement (rising from 11% to 18% ). This is one of my favourite activities as a developer advocate. The feedback you get during 1:1 or 1:many interactions is extremely useful and specific. This also gives you an opportunity to create relationships on a much more personal level with members of your developer community, which can later become the foundation of your ambassador program . Understanding of the product: Although not showing up in the results but of great importance based on personal experience, is time spent in understanding your own product better. This is especially true for developer-first organisations where the products are ever-evolving and getting complex.s a DevRel practitioner it’s important to stay up-to-date with your own product growth and for someone who just joined a new organisation as DevRel, quite a significant amount of time can go into learning about the product itself. Challenges calculating on-boarded developer value: The survey also asked how a Developer program budget is justified and the estimated lifetime value of an on-boarded developer. It’s clear that the majority of people (~45%) participating in the survey don’t have a solid methodology for calculating the value of an on-boarded developer and hence only a small portion (8%) has backed the budget allocated to the developer program by an exact FIAT value. Given the complex developer lifecycle and pricing plans of developer-facing - products, platforms and solutions, it’s fairly complicated to create a solid framework that can help calculate the exact dollar value associated with an on-boarded developer. Most products often have a free tier associated up to a certain usage and some also have free tiers for certain segments of developers such as student groups or non-profits. A developer can also evolve from being a part of a free tier to onto a paying payment plan over time and hence adding more complexity to put a dollar value on developer acquisition. It’s also difficult to know which acquisition strategy exactly works in onboarding a new developer, whether it’s that Youtube video you recently published or a past conference talk or demo during a local meet-up, It could very well be your SDK written in Go with good documentation. How companies and DevRel serve the communities developers join As we continue following Developer Relations and Marketing field, we notice how the community is becoming a more and more integral part of all strategic activities. Developer Relations is becoming (if not already) a community-led effort. There is a huge benefit to any vendor to maintain a community for all the reasons that data shows us. If we can enable developers get more out of a product, if we can enable them to be excited about the product, share their experience with their peers and also progress through the community member’s lifescycle from new joiner to expert, we are helping them progress in their career and we’re also getting them more invested in our product and ecosystem. If you keep those core needs in mind, that’s when vendor communities start to add value. - Jamie Langskov , Community and change management strategist. With that in mind, our most recent survey (Q4, 2022) , zoomed into the following: Where do communities fit in the perception of developers? Why are developers joining communities? How are developer-facing professionals address developers’ community needs? Where do communities fit in the perception of developers? Developers join communities to learn. According to the Q3 2022 Developer Nation study , which surveyed 23,790+ developers, 19% of developers rank community in the top 5 resources that companies should offer to support developers. This makes the community 7th most important resource overall, just ahead of answers in public forums and only slightly behind professional certifications. Are organisations paying attention to developers’ community needs? Yes, they are. And we will data-back this affirmation by looking at the data from the latest Developer Program Leaders survey, where we surveyed ~130 industry professionals in developer-facing roles. The data speaks for itself. Communities are now sharing the spotlight with other traditional popular methods of developer education. And developer-facing organisations are aware. According to their responses, when the professionals are setting their strategy on how to talk to developers and address their technical audience needs, 73% consider community as (at least) a key part of their strategy. More specifically 34% consider community as the most important part of their strategy 39% consider community as a key part of their strategy Only 6% do not include the community in their strategy. You can see all responses in this graph: Have you enjoyed these insights? Respond to the survey before March 31 to gain access to more insights like these and a chance to win exclusive DevRelX swag - Have your say !

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SlashData can offer their services for market research on audience insights, product improcement, brand research, segmentation, competitive market analysis and more. How can our market research help you? Discover our services FREE INSIGHTS DOWNLOAD REPORT Explore our industry insights How can we help? BOOK A CALL CONTACT US Audience insights Understand the behaviours, preferences, and motivations of your current and potential customers. Tailor your product features and marketing strategies to their needs. MORE DETAILS Brand research How are you performing in terms of brand awareness, perception, loyalty, and positioning? Adjust your brand strategy in response to your audience’s feelings and perceptions towards your company or your offerings. MORE DETAILS Product configuration & optimisation Conjoint Analysis: Optimise the feature and price mix for new products. Discover the combination of product features that appeal the most to your customers. MORE DETAILS Product development & improvement Discover who uses your products/services. What do they like or dislike? What’s driving their choices? Identify areas of improvement, missing features that would make your offerings more appealing, and justify feature investments to the rest of your business. MORE DETAILS Customer segmentation & profiling Identify distinct groups of customers in your target addressable market based on demographics, firmographics, motivations, or needs. Understand significant behavioural differences between these groups, and target them with tailored messaging and products/services. MORE DETAILS Competitive market analysis Start here to become a market leader. Benchmark competing companies or products/services (including yours), understand industry best practices and discover where you need to focus your efforts. MORE DETAILS I’m interested in…. Audience Insights Product Development & Improvement Brand Research Customer Segmentation & Profiling Product Configuration & Optimisation Competitive Market Analysis How can we help? BOOK A CALL CONTACT US

How we helped Akamai uncover developer insights on distributed cloud computing and identify key improvements for industry adoption. All Case Studies How Akamai identified key opportunities to shape distributed cloud computing strategies The challenge In the constantly changing landscape of cloud computing, Akamai wanted to better understand developers' thoughts around distributed cloud computing. Their goal was to have a better grasp of developers’ level of awareness, current intentions towards it, and where they imagine the greatest utility lies with this technology. The approach SlashData designed a developer-focused survey to capture insights into distributed cloud computing. By identifying the right developer audience and asking targeted questions about technology usage, challenges, motivations, and thoughts about the future of cloud computing, the survey revealed insights into what developers think about the future of distributed cloud computing. The data was thoroughly cleaned and analysed to build a strong understanding of the current perceptions. The result SlashData delivered a report based on a comprehensive analysis of survey results, uncovering developers’ growing interest in distributed cloud computing and highlighting areas where they feel the industry falls short. The report provided actionable insights into the key improvements developers seek before adopting distributed cloud services. These include clear cost savings, improved security, and better tools for managing distributed environments. Developers also emphasised the need for stronger data security standards and interoperable open cloud solutions. The report is available to everyone , through a single sign-in at the SlashData Research Space. Following the report’s release, SlashData was invited to TFiR to discuss the findings in detail and expand deeper on the content of the report. Why SlashData SlashData’s expertise in questionnaire design, ensuring legitimate responses, and analytical capabilities allowed us to address Akamai’s questions in a timely manner. SlashData was able to convert the analysis into a strong narrative and actionable insights that allowed Akamai and the wider cloud service provider community to understand how developers were preparing for a distributed cloud computing future. If you’re looking to uncover developer insights and transform data into actionable strategies for your business, contact us today! You can find all our data & free reports in our Research Space . Related services Quantitative research Developer research Previous Case Next Case Get all the new insights in your inbox JOIN NEWSLETTER Access more insights tailored to your needs TALK TO US