If you want to understand how IT managers see their application development processes, ask them how it works. The usual answer will be that the process of application development itself is still too difficult, and integration in an increasingly complex environment is more severe than ever before.

Almost all IT managers, 93 percent, admit that their application development process "could be more efficient". These are some of the results of a recent survey of 650 IT executives conducted by MuleSoft, which find that development processes are not always problematic. For example, 83 percent of IT managers say that their organization does not always use software resources when it comes to developing new products and services. In addition, only one-third of internal IT software and components are available for reuse in software development.

However, almost all surveyed IT managers say that there is a growing number of projects that are requested from them in their organization; on average, reported 27% of project increases since last year. Twelve percent say that their workloads even increase by more than 50 percent. At the same time, two-thirds of IT managers acknowledge that they could not deliver all the projects they were looking for last year. On average, IT managers monitor at least 1,020 applications.

Despite a large number of applications, a relatively small number (29%) is integrated or interconnected. A significant number (81%) of IT managers admit that "point-to-point integration has created some of the biggest headaches that their organizations have ever seen," the research report said. The same percentage also agrees that point-to-point integration should be released as soon as possible. Too much time is spent on one-time connectivity projects that consume energy needed for more productive jobs.

IT managers say they still spend most (63%) of their time on maintaining the existing one, compared to innovation and development projects.

There are ways to improve things, and IT managers generally agree with some ways to do it. To begin with, 93 percent believe that self-service IT will be key to their success in digital transformation.

APIs are also considered a way to quickly fold applications and functions. Among API-owned organizations, more than half of them (58%) manage to use them to increase productivity; while almost half (48%) say they have helped boost innovation. Additional benefits include increased employee engagement and co-operation (43 percent), and faster business satisfaction (35 percent). Significantly, 35 percent also say that APIs have provided the opportunity to increase IT self-service.

Fundamental work on improving the provision of IT services to organizations is underway. The biggest initiative at this time, according to MuleSoft's research, lies in the modernization of outdated systems, which accounted for 36 percent.

Since modernization is an outdated broad topic, it can be assumed that it includes a range of activities, from raising background applications to cloud and websites to migrating COBOL code to new platforms. Oh, and open source implementations. Additional initiatives listed in the survey include the integration of SaaS applications (32%), investment in mobile applications (30%), and migration of applications into the cloud (31%).