As cloud solutions continue to gain traction, the nature and focus of the software development outsourcing market is experiencing some noticeable shifts. In How Cloud, APIs Are Transforming Outsourcing, InformationWeek.com looks at how both cloud development and application program interfaces ( APIs) are affecting software development outsourcing solutions.

The article surveyed a variety of companies about the changing ways that service providers are managing software development outsourcing. Views ranged from advocating for decentralized development teams that focus on discrete tasks, to building strong developer teams that are centrally focused as colocated.

InformationWeek.com notes that APIs have contributed to the declining dependence on outsourced software development: “One of the developments transforming outsourcing is the growing ease with which applications and services can be connected through composable APIs.” The article highlights a company called Bubble, which provides an API environment that “offers a way to create applications without coding, freeing software engineers to focus on infrastructure.” As Bubble Cofounder Emmanuel Straschnov explained, “the problem with software outsourcing is that the people who build the software are not the people who end up using it—so the users don’t get what they expect.”

The article points out that, for the time being, mostly smaller companies have spurred outsourced software development, and larger companies still rely on third-party developers to meet high customer demands. But as services like Bubble become more common, larger companies may join their smaller counterparts in the shift away from software outsourcing.