Low Code Development Platforms Address Soaring Application Needs

For many years, we have seen the largest organisations running some core part of their business through spreadsheets, sometime very complex spreadsheets. Spreadsheets allow business people to carry out automating manual processes, without any knowledge of complex programming languages. Of course, there are many drawbacks to using spreadsheets, but it is not my intention to cover this today.

Instead, I would like to talk about the rise of so-called cloud-based low code development platforms and the rise of the concept of citizen developer. These platforms allow citizens to create their own applications as they used to do with spreadsheets. Low code development enables rapid application delivery with little coding and using drag and drop features and visual development tools. Businesses are quickly adopting these platforms as they enable rapid application delivery with minimal coding and quick setup in deployment.

In Sept 2016, Gartner published their first magic quadrant on low code development platforms, placing Salesforce and Outsystems as the leaders in this area:

At the same time, Forrester published an article in March this year, in which they predicted that low code development platforms will be a USD 15,4 billion market by 2020. The war began last year. SAP partnered with Mendix to rapidly approach this growing market. Microsoft is positioning their PowerApps platform while Google has available an early-access release of their Google AppMaker. Oracle are also positioning themselves with Oracle Application Express. ServiceNow has been working very hard to position itself also outside the ITSM world and as a powerful process automation platform.

Okay, but what’s the impact?

On the services side, IT services companies need to adapt to this new paradigm where rapid delivery with short engagements are the main characteristic. This is not an easy change for the SI world. Staff resourcing needs to be very agile and efficient. Just a few companies are ready to do so, but all of them will have to adapt if they want a piece of the rapid-delivery ecosystem and digital transformation cake.

On the end customer side, these platforms still need a learning curve to be used to their full potential. It is not a spreadsheet. It is also true that once you have a few experts, you can really digitise a lot of the manual processes organisations have with ease. I have been involved in a project building a full BRP (business recovery plan) for a large insurance company within weeks. I have also seen business people building a basic expenses application with their forms and approval workflow. This is the reason why platforms like these are becoming increasingly popular, and will do so even more in the coming years.

And on top of that, there are many platforms available and it is difficult to know who will be the winning horse.

One of the main drawbacks of these platforms, however, is that since new features and applications are really easy and fast to implement, and this needs to be done properly. Each of these platforms have their own best practices which need to be carefully followed to ensure quality, scalability, performance and security. Software architects, SMEs of these platforms, are the key to ensuring this. I have seen many companies having to relaunch/re-platform their implementations due to a lack of governance when gathering requirements and a lack of a proper architecture when building new applications.

These are exciting times for the low-code development world but, what is your experience with these platforms? Are they here to stay?

Albert Franquesa - Co-founder of Quality Clouds, governance and quality control for low-code development platforms