Adoption of low-code platforms will grow as organizations slash IT budgets while trying to keep up with the demands of digitization. Enterprise innovation and business agility will drive low-code development. It doesn’t mean that the development team can be abandoned, and it doesn’t mean that less code knowledge is required.
Today, there is probably no industry that loves to create new concepts more than IT. On the one hand, due to the rapid development of information technology, innovations are emerging in an endless stream; on the other hand, it may be due to the needs of sales, customers are always curious, regardless of whether the product fully meets the needs of customers, at least new concepts start with Psychologically touch the hearts of customers.
So, is low-code development a real technological innovation or fried rice?
1. What is low-code development?
In fact, low-code development is nothing new. VisualBasic more than 20 years ago was a low-code tool in the 1990s, and it can be traced back to code generation tools such as case tools.
Low-code development can help people quickly create and deploy applications with the least amount of code, reduce the overall cost of developing and deploying applications, and enable rapid development. Additionally, non-technical users can be provided with a more user-friendly interface, making it easier for them to create and modify applications. That is, it allows developers and business personnel to create business application software through a graphical user interface instead of traditional computer programming. Visually build applications by dragging and dropping UI components instead of coding. All components of the project, such as front-end and back-end code and configuration files, are automatically generated based on best practices.
Among these, low-code development platforms are key, often allowing business users without coding skills to solve their own problems and optimize day-to-day operations. These platforms provide an abstraction layer that allows users to click, drag and drop, configure, and ultimately create an application with no or little programming. Zero-code openness is essentially a subset of low-code development.
A typical low-code development platform includes the following components:
Visual IDE - this is a visual tool for defining the data model and workflow of the application
Connectors to backend components or services - used to manage the storage and retrieval of data
Application Lifecycle Manager - this includes tools for building, deploying and managing applications in staging and production environments
The graphical user interface of a low-code platform can automate elements of the development process, remove reliance on traditional programming methods, increase agility, flexibility, and cost efficiency, while delivering continuous business value. These platforms reduce the time it takes to develop software, so business applications can be delivered faster and a wider range of people across the organization can contribute to the development of applications. Even full-time professional developers can work alongside business people. Use these low-code tools.
2. Why do low-code platforms emerge?
“Increasing revenue and reducing expenditure” has always been the main theme of enterprises. Enterprises need agility, adaptability and competitiveness to maintain a leading position in this digital age. To deliver business value and maintain market leadership, simple, intuitive and better customer solutions need to be provided. This can be a challenge for organizations obsessed with traditional software development methodologies. Low-code platforms can address this need by streamlining workflows and accelerating automation initiatives in organizations.
The epidemic in recent years has prompted enterprises to automate processes, and low-code platforms have emphasized the necessity of this digital transformation:
Accelerated time to value assessment
Reduced design impact
embrace co-creation
Organize small agile teams
Adopt user-centered design
Low-code development platforms provide businesses with a way to develop and deploy applications. Businesses that don’t hire developers can still create applications using low-code platforms. The software industry, especially the Internet, has a high cost of development engineers, and low-code platforms allow technical and business professionals with no coding experience to develop applications and potentially fill talent gaps in organizations.
In addition, for SaaS service providers, low code may provide added value to the product.
Gartner has predicted that 65% of application development functions will be executed on low-code platforms by 2024, and it also predicts that 66% of large companies will use low-code software by then, but old coders disagree.
3. How do you benefit from using a low-code platform?
Low-code platforms can help businesses fill developer talent gaps, allow business and IT professionals to build applications without development experience, and also increase developer productivity by reducing development time.
Through the low-code platform, developers give up some control rights and solidify some instructions, thus achieving a higher level of productivity. It also makes development more accessible to more people who may not have programming skills but can use low-code tools to build applications.
In one survey, 68% said the main reason they created no-code apps was because low-code solutions were a better fit for their organization’s needs, and 61% said it was because they could adapt as workloads and needs change. Changes change applications faster. The survey found that security concerns and executive buy-in were the top concerns when it comes to using no-code platforms, with 74 percent of IT professionals saying they believe low-code solutions are key to rapidly developing applications.
Low-code platforms also help bridge the gap between business and IT, as they enable the business to create applications the way they want, while the technical team is able to make any necessary coding fixes behind the scenes without the business noticing the application Changes in the way the program operates. Low-code platforms can also provide enterprises with faster application delivery, helping to achieve the continuous delivery goals of DevOps.
The demands of digitization are so high these days that, in some ways, low-code may be the only way some businesses can keep up.
4. What are the limitations of low-code platforms?
While many everyday applications used by companies can be built using low-code platforms, these tools have limitations. It’s also not always possible for businesses to fully build and manage applications without the need for development and operations staff. At the proof-of-concept stage, a low-code platform can be a powerful tool and simplify some UI/UX issues to make the application run faster, but still requires developers to customize the project, create the backend API, and manage the infrastructure Facility deployment.
The limitations of low-code platforms mean that skilled software developers are still required, and as low-code development platforms proliferate across the enterprise, the result of this shift is a new environment in which developers deal with The technical side of software development while the department using the software is designing the UI according to their desires.
5. What are low-code microservices?
If the early low-code focused on the visual programming of a certain software application, the difference between the current low-code platform and the past is the form of application software, that is, it is more oriented to distributed systems, especially microservice systems.
Microservices free developers from constraints such as technology stacks and monolithic structures. Low-code microservices take this further by adding intelligence. Low-code platforms can save a lot of development time for microservices-based applications, as long as the application is simple, clean, and has few integration points. It’s even simpler if the microservices-based application doesn’t need to integrate with other databases.
However, a low-code approach to microservices is not ideal when developing large microservice-based applications. The reason is that applications may require data and information exchange in real-time, database integration, messaging, and other features that require customization. Therefore, testing low-code based microservices applications is another challenge.
Low-code platforms provide several benefits for the deployment of microservices, such as:
Multi-level reusability: Low-code microservices provide more layers on top of the code reusability provided by microservices architecture. Developers can search and use the smart library and choose from a list of application features that can be added with a simple drag and drop.
Fast time to market: Low-code can provide the lowest time to market for your application thanks to multiple levels of reusability. The automation capabilities of the platform enable applications to be built quickly, and a system of microservices that may have taken a lot of time to build can now be created on the fly.
Improved Customer Experience - Low-code development facilitates better customer experience.
Ordinary microservices are relatively limited in the data they can process and the results they can provide. On the other hand, low-code platforms provide more specialized microservices that can be tailored according to needs.
6. What are the pros and cons of using a low-code platform for enterprise applications?
As powerful as low-code platforms are, they are not yet well-suited for building complex enterprise applications, which means developers face a choice. For enterprise-level applications, the benefits of using low-code platforms for software development include:
Faster time to market: The most obvious benefit of implementing low-code development is time savings. Low-code development platforms can get started quickly and generate functional prototypes without writing code from scratch. New applications can be quickly created using pre-created templates.
Reduce technical debt: Low-code development enables businesses to avoid technical debt by reducing waste, simplifying and shortening development, and accelerating deployment.
Ease of Updates - Low-code development makes it simple to change applications and adapt them to new needs. Low-code development avoids complex coding requirements, allowing for quick updates when needed.
Greater Productivity: Since low-code development can generate more applications in less time, it facilitates rapid development and release cycles.
Reduced costs: Low-code software development offers organizations a less expensive and straightforward way to design business processes and workflows that fit their specific needs. It lowers expenses by reducing the need for additional developers.
Increased agility: Low-code development means quick and easy updates. Most applications have pre-built user interfaces that allow you to create workflows and business models based on existing logic.
Likewise, the disadvantages of using low-code platforms for software development are obvious:
Lack of customization - While the pre-built modules of low-code platforms are very convenient to use, there is no way to use them to customize the application. Even though low-code platforms can be customized, they can only be customized to a limited extent.
Limited integration - Due to the inherent limitations of low-code platforms, sometimes it is not feasible to integrate them with a particular system.
Vendor lock-in - There are some vendors that produce clean, standardized code that makes it simple to use applications in the platform. However, many proprietary systems either prevent code migration or create unreadable, unreusable code. This makes it difficult to port applications to another platform, resulting in vendor lock-in.
Security and Reliability - Using a low-code platform means having to rely heavily on third-party apps and services. It can pose a security risk as the developer does not have full control. The built-in security of low-code platforms may not be enough.
7. What is the market for low-code platforms?
According to Garnter’s forecast, the low-code market will reach $45.5 billion by 2025, and the compound annual growth rate may reach 22.7%. According to Forrester, in 2018, there were about 67 different vendors in the low-code space, and dozens more small-scale or regional vendors. Among the large vendors, only Salesforce used Force.com’s low-code platform before 2017, the report noted. Since then, however, Dell, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and SAP have joined the market, and leading low-code development platforms include AppSheet, Oracle, Nintex, OutSystems, Appian, Quick Base, and more.
For example, Appian is one of the most popular low-code solutions on the market. It is easy to learn, provides excellent documentation, and includes a large number of existing smart services that are frequently updated. Mendix has been used by more than 4,000 companies since 2005. Using Mendix, development teams can rapidly build and deploy online portals, automated workflows, digitized processes, mobile applications for customer engagement, and even update existing systems.
Microsoft Power Apps is taking a fundamentally different approach to low-code than other companies. One reason for this is that Power Apps is already baked into the Microsoft products people use every day. Therefore, any solution built using Power Platform can be easily distributed into the workflow of everyone in the company. In other words, if your business relies on a range of Microsoft tools, using Power Apps means that those tools can be tailored to perfectly fit each team’s workflow. Power Apps is not only focused on MS software but can also connect to SAP, Oracle and Azure Cloud. Power Apps isn’t just about business intelligence and mobile apps, but about apps, public-facing websites, robotic process automation, process analytics, chatbots, BI dashboards, backend data systems, and business logic.
In China, due to different perceptions of low-code platforms, veteran code farmers themselves do not pay enough attention, and have not yet found a detailed analysis report.
8. What is needed for low-code development?
If one is interested in low-code development, there is still some preparation one needs to do. First, you need to choose a low-code development platform. There are many low-code platforms to choose from, and before choosing one, you should analyze your needs and explore all of these potential options to find the one that meets your needs.
Once you choose a platform, you need to learn how to use it, which may require some training materials or reading documentation. Finally, you need some ideas about what you want to build so you can start “low-code development”.
9. How to start choosing a low-code platform?
With so many suppliers, it can be difficult for businesses to determine where to begin the selection process. Forrester offers the following three recommendations:
Decide who will do the work. Low-code platforms tend to be divided into two market segments: one for developers and one for the business sector. Businesses must decide which aspect of a platform is required and which is best suited for this purpose.
Figure out the use cases the business wants to deliver. Each tool provides functions in different fields, including the application of workflow and business processes. You should choose a low-code platform that suits your project needs.
Create a policy that includes governance. Building and maintaining software is hard, with or without coding. The businesses that benefit the most from low-code platforms are those with a strategy in place, such as a portfolio management system that helps employees keep track of the applications that have been built on the platform.
Most vendors in this space have “starter stage” platforms and freemium services, and it is very easy to try these tools, develop an application and solve a problem, and adopt these tools project by project.
10. What are the typical development use cases for low-code platforms?
Some typical development use cases for low-code platforms are as follows:
Proof of Concept (POC) - Since low-code platforms allow for more rapid application development, they are ideal for prototyping. For example, low-code can be leveraged to create an application that solves a business problem, and then the final version of the application can be developed using traditional development methods.
Rapid Application Development - If the project is not that complex or extensive, low-code platforms can be leveraged to deliver applications quickly. Applications built using this approach may have constraints, risks, and limitations, but these can be addressed later.
Modular web applications - You can use low-code microservices to build modular web applications, or you can use low-code microservices to create a suite of microservice applications.
API Generation - You can leverage a low-code API generator to automatically build APIs from existing code.
Containerization - Low-code microservices can also run inside containers. If the low-code platform is integrated with K8S, it can take advantage of K8S’s container orchestration function.
one sentence summary
Adoption of low-code platforms will grow as organizations slash IT budgets while trying to keep up with the demands of digitization. Enterprise innovation and business agility will drive low-code development. It doesn’t mean that the development team can be abandoned, and it doesn’t mean that less code knowledge is required. Getting the most out of a low-code platform does require a solid understanding of software engineering, and while developers may write less code, they can’t afford to lack an understanding of it.