Why enterprises need a low-code application development platform in their kit bag
The low-code application development platform revolution continues to grow. Forrester has estimated that the low-code development platform market will be worth $15 billion by 2020. Businesses are seeing increasing demand for next-generation business applications to help:
- Deliver new products/services to their customers
- Implement new business processes and integrate new and existing systems to employees and external partners
- Rejuvenate legacy applications (in particular the difficult to use user interfaces) to deliver better user experiences
- Transition apps from on-premise to the cloud
- The need to deliver mobile-ready apps
Low-code application development platforms help to enable the rapid delivery of the above.
One of the typical questions that gets asked is why invest in a low-code app development platform rather than just sticking to writing custom code to build and deliver such business applications? If you have a team of in-house coders or you use a Systems Integrator then why the need to invest in another technology solution? This question is often asked (or challenged) by developers themselves, which when you think of it is a fair question.
Below are some of the reasons why there’s a compelling need for organisations to add a low-code app development platform to their solution armoury:
Low-code platforms allow you to deliver more, more quickly
With demand for business apps growing at rapid pace, the backlog of new app developments continues to pile up. A low-code platform can help plough through the backlog and get applications delivered to users to start adding value as quickly as possible. As well as ensuring a quick payback period and rapid ROI, low-code platforms ensure users are not left frustrated by long delivery times (which more times than not, drives them to develop offline solutions in spreadsheet type solutions).
Organisations are focusing on delivering apps with amazing user experiences that constantly adapt as the needs of the business and users do. Low-code platforms allow you to execute this level of agility.
If you can deliver more, more quickly using a low-code platform versus writing timely custom code, why wouldn’t you?
Low-code platforms are for developers to use as much as they are for business analysts or citizen developers
Low-code platforms are primarily focused on allowing non-IT personnel to deliver applications (aka citizen developers, shadow IT). It makes perfect sense to have someone close to the business change developing the solution (such as a business analyst).
But low-code platforms can be used by developers too. They help ensure the backlog is worked through at pace as previously mentioned, making devs more productive than ever. It also allows developers to focus on other complex assignments and activities that require their focus and effort.
This is equally applicable to Systems Integrators, they can deliver more value to their clients.
Essentially, enterprises need both options of writing custom code and using low-code platforms. It's And not Or.
Like most technologies in a modern enterprise’s kit bag, there’s not a one size fits all technology that caters for all user groups and all business needs for all of the time. Organisations need a number of options to deliver what’s needed in the best way, appropriate to each scenario of the business application they are needing to deliver. In some cases that may be delivering it through a low-code solution, it some cases it may be through writing code. Organisations need to have the choice to ensure the best outcome is achieved.
Senior Software Engineer at UniversalPay
6 年This are my comments to each reason: 1- Yes id does, but with such a low quality and so many bugs that the product is (if we are talking about profesional products) almost useless. You can ask Avaya users about it (yes, I'm one of those users). 2-Yes, anyone will be able to program. Once a boss of mine told me he would like to have his secretary able to program just placing some silly boxes on the screen, well that would be great for him because programmers would be so cheap he won't need one. The thing is that having non technical people creating software without knowing the underlying system will surely bring low quality and insecure products. Why lower quality? Because a system of that kind is not optimized and have tons of redundant code down below. Why insecure? Same reasonmas before. 3- Actually they only need one. In a world were quality has become a disadventage and it is more important to bring a new product to the market even if doesn't work, no one will be creating quality anymore unless the creation is done by enthusiasts that doesn't really care about time or money because programming is fun for them (community developed or the like). I might surely be wrong, but at least that's my opinion.