How low (code) can you go?

Since when ladies and gentlemen did visual drag and drop IDE's become low-code, or even no-code? They didn't. Yet I hear that's what a number of RPA vendors are starting to claim. Another hogwash moment. For sure, they have done a great job souping up their visual IDE's so business people can build the simple automations in RPA. In fact, in 2005, when we started OpenSpan RPA, we too, enabled business to build their own automations with little to no training by providing a visual drag and drop IDE. We even recognized back then, the need, in the same IDE, for code-warriors to be able fall back to more advanced visual coding, to deal with more complex processes, by using visual and programmatic elements combined (something recently being added by other RPA vendors).

That aside, visual IDE's for optimizing or automating existing processes is not what the low-code movement represents and certainly very far removed from RPA IDE's

I have always thought of the first phase automating manual work was really what we all knew and loved as, "computerization". I think of RPA as the automatization of this simpler "computerized" manual work. It's still the old process but manual rekeying is optimized where feasible through UI automation (RPA). This is very useful. However I think of true Intelligent Digital Automation as the hard-core next generation of applications that are being built, often from the ground-up with low-code, by citizen developers (business built) in collaboration with IT. The promise of true re-usability, flexibility, scale (cloud or on-premise), automated dev-ops and configurability (as opposed to expensive historic customization of legacy), with in-built responsible AI and Machine Learning. Most business "logic" (hard code) disappears now, into powerful governed and secure rules engines (managed by business). These new breed of enterprise applications are being built, digitally, from the ground up, often in weeks and more often now, even faster than wrapping existing processes and legacy applications with RPA. Low-code is being applied today to all aspects of this next generation digital automation and it's becoming a game changer for enterprises who end up leap-frogging their competitors in the transformational race.

So, interestingly, you don't see any RPA vendors in the low-code or Digital Process Automation quadrants and waves and yet these reports represent significant power being brought into play to business and IT, enabling the fast creation, adoption and flexibility of new applications built for the next decade and beyond. RPA can in itself be part of this movement, plugging gaps that typically have slowed down or stalled true digital transformation, until the older legacy applications and processes catch up and/or are replaced.

LOW-CODE is a massive movement of people, careers and technology, combining to represent the future of how most enterprise applications are built at the fastest pace we have ever known in the IT industry. Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out these links (or just search Google for unbiased research for yourself) to get jump started on the fastest growing, largest movement to hit the computerized world in decades. But do not be fooled, visual IDE's are just that, but not anywhere close to being, low-code! Let the debate begin;

Pega Low-code, 12x faster application development

Wiki - low-code platform

Democratizing software for the greater good (Forbes - Alan Trefler)

Build a low-code factory - (Pega Ebook)