Modern Application Development Services

The evaluation this category was waiting for has been out since early 2025: The Forrester Wave: Modern Application Development Services, Q1 2025. It scores thirteen firms, chosen from more than fifty providers, and its inclusion bar tells you the market's economics before any scorecard does: at least four hundred fifty million dollars in global modern application development services revenue.

The report that is already out: The Forrester Wave: Modern Application Development Services, Q1 2025

Forrester announced the evaluation in Q1 2025, and the Wave itself evaluates thirteen providers on twenty five criteria: Accenture, Capgemini, CI&T, Cognizant, EPAM, Globant, HCLTech, Infosys, LTIMindtree, NTT DATA, Softtek, Tata Consultancy Services, and Thoughtworks.

The category is a convergence, and the report says so. Modern application development services emerged from the merger of earlier service categories: application development management, digital transformation, digital product engineering, and application modernization. The new category's dual job is the definition: build modern applications for clients, and rebuild the clients' own development capability while doing it.

The dual job is what separates this market from its ancestors. The old categories sold one thing each, staff augmentation, project delivery, transformation consulting. The new one is scored on both halves, and the report's evaluation explicitly covers the project-to-product transformation, changing how a client's teams organize around products instead of projects, alongside the code itself. A vendor that ships great software but leaves the client's organization untouched scores lower than one that does both, and the criteria say so.

The evaluation focuses on agile practices, DevOps, microservices, cloud services, and the new frontier: site reliability engineering, project-to-product transformation, generative AI architecture services, and the testing and development of AI-infused applications.

Three Leaders, three theses about the modern build

Thoughtworks took a Leader placement plus the Customer Favorite designation, with the highest possible scores in fourteen of twenty five criteria, including AI-infused application development, AI and data governance and engineering, DevSecOps practices, cloud-native and hybrid development, and platform engineering.

Thoughtworks is the craft thesis: specialized agile, DevSecOps, and cloud-native teams mobilized globally and fast, the consultancy whose entire brand is how software should be built rather than how many people can be staffed.

CI&T took a Leader placement with the highest scores in nine criteria, including vision, agile custom development, project-to-product operating model services, architecture, and backend re-engineering and integration. Forrester's phrase: a "clear and punchy vision statement" and a strong focus on speed.

CI&T is the operating-model thesis: the project-to-product transformation, changing how the client's teams work, not just what they ship.

Infosys took a Leader placement with the top Current Offering score and the highest possible scores in fourteen of twenty five criteria, including partner ecosystem, AI and data governance and engineering, and cloud-native and hybrid development. Its citation runs on TuringBots accelerators, generative AI architecture, and ethical AI.

Infosys is the scale thesis: the global staffing model, the partner ecosystem, and the accelerator catalog that turns delivery into a productized factory.

The nearshore strong performer and the field's shape

Softtek announced a Strong Performer placement with maximum scores in agile custom development, DevSecOps practices and technologies, architecture capabilities and services, vision, and talent strategy, and a fit verdict for clients seeking nearshore agile and DevOps delivery in the United States and Europe.

The field's shape is the market's shape: six of the world's biggest systems integrators, the global staffing giants, and a thin band of specialists, CI&T, Globant, EPAM, Thoughtworks, Softtek, that win on thesis rather than tonnage. The inclusion bar, four hundred fifty million in revenue, means the smallest firms in the field are still substantial, and the genuinely small specialists the market also contains are not scored at all.

That exclusion is the scorecard's honest boundary. The market holds more than fifty providers, and the thirteen scored are the ones with the scale to be selected in enterprise bids. A buyer whose problem is small, fast, and specialized is shopping in the unscored majority, and no Wave will help them. The scorecard describes the enterprise half of the market, and it should be read with that half in mind.

The honest limits of the modern label

The category name deserves a buyer's skepticism. Modern application development services is a convergence label, and the vendors it merges came from four different markets with four different pricing models, bodies on seats from the management services era, outcome-based from the product engineering era. The scorecard ranks them on one sheet, but the contracts they sell still differ more than the tiers do.

There is also the AI caveat the report itself carries. AI-infused application development is a scored criterion, and the market's evidence base for it is young. The maximum scores in those criteria describe capability claims against a practice that is still being invented, and the next edition will test them against production outcomes rather than demonstrated capability.

Three questions for the modern build

Which transformation is yours: the application or the organization? Thoughtworks sells the craft, CI&T the operating model, Infosys the scale. If your real problem is how your teams work, the craft Leader may be the wrong purchase no matter how high it scores.

What does AI-infused delivery mean in your contract, with numbers? The criterion is new and the practice is young. Ask for shipped AI-assisted projects in your sector, with measured outcomes, and treat demos as demos.

Who rebuilds your capability when the engagement ends? The category's definition includes transforming the client's own development function. Ask for the capability-transfer plan with names, because the vendors that skip it are selling the old category under the new label.

Forrester does not endorse any vendor named here, and tier placement should not be read as a recommendation to buy.

The natural next comparison is Public Cloud Platforms: for the first time, a fourth vendor broke into the Leader tier of Forrester's global public cloud evaluation, the strongest evidence in the report that the AI era is redistributing the cloud market rather than just growing it.