The future of Low-Code
Low-Code-Application-Development is a big trend since Forrester named it in 2014. During this time customers and developers learned how fast new transactions can be developed and how pleasant software development can be in a collaborative working model.
The aim of this article is to give some insights in the Low-Code evolution since then an outlook about what could happen in the future.
Business value dilemma
Before the concept was perceived, application development had reached to a point of stagnation for different reasons:
To mitigate some of the negative effects, Gartner introduced Bimodal IT and Pace-Layered-Architectures.
Did not work because the application development process was outdated and needed a complete refresh to be able to treat the Business Value Dilemma.
The rising of Low-Code
The Business Value Dilemma inspired the Low-Code inventors. Even devoted Software Developers were amazed about the new concept and how the underlying dilemma was approached.
The principal difference was the clear commitment to the customer to deliver usable solutions in a reasonable time at a reasonable cost with few quality issues. The benefits compared with former strategies were palpable:
Today there is no company without doing Low-Code and the term converted into mainstream.
The Low-Code marketplace
At the beginning the market was composed by a mix of newcomers (startups) and allstars (basically from 4GL and RAD). All those companies intented to benefit from the inherent advantages of the new technology. The common commercial pattern was:
During this process the market place consolidated with the current snapshot of different players:
The Low-code market is still efervescent, a lot of players with different origins and business models.
But what is doing SAP?
SAP is a big number in the Enterprise Software context, but does not appear In the Gartner LCAP Quadrant, meanwhile its competitors SalesForce and Microsoft do so.
SAP was entering the Low-Code market at the same time at the others, but SAP did not commercialize dedicated Low-Code Products. For this reason SAP does not appear in Gartner's Magic Quadrants about LCAP.
Meanwhile, SAP partnered, and still does, with companies like Neptune, Mendix or Movilizer (acquired by Honeywell). And, they did what they always do: developing their own technology:
Even SAP is not a player in the Low-Code market, the company is deeply involved in this market with explicit or not so explicit relationships with more or less all other players.
Low-Code and Generative AI
Generative AI seems to be a new variable in the Low-code equation. McKinsey already identified Next Generation Software Development as a trending topic in its Outlook Technology Trend 2023.
They might not have predicted the speed of Generative AI adoption. In any case, Generative AI in Code Generation is reality.
What's next?
Low-Code will get bigger chunks of the Software Develoment Market. Generative AI will transform the Low-Code and the Software Development Market. This will have impact on different angles:
Data and AI SAP Solution Architect - Views are my own
11 个月Just had a conversation the other day with a friend of mine who is a corporate finance Guy and not a developer and he created his own app for releasing invoices with one of the tools mentioned above. He was very delighted as he could do this by himself without having to wait for anyone. If joule is really already GenAi in full, is not yet really clear to me, I think GenAi within SAP will become much stronger soon than having a helper for "static knowledge" around SAP like help and other things which are more generic for sap products but once Sap is able to provide a personalizable foundation model based on SAPs domain outputs will become much more specific and insightful. Today I saw a first demo of Just ask and it promises a lot. Interesting times ahead.