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But as large language models (LLMs) like Copilot can accelerate those working in specific lower-level coding languages, artificial intelligence (AI) can act as a massive multiplier in low-code environments, increasing developer productivity, shortening time-to-production, allowing faster iteration on code, increasing inherent security and sanity-checking architecture and coding for scalability and interoperability.

At present, IT departments suffer from backlogs due to current investments in transformation for innovation and productivity. Resource scarcity, urgent business needs, and essential ongoing operations leave little capacity for tasks considered lower-priority. But that situation leads to a neglect of digital initiatives in process optimization and collaboration, hampering financial performance and stifling the spirit of innovation.

Every organisation’s IT lead is still under pressure to get new features and apps out to end-users where they can generate value for the business. But the OutSystems no-code Morpheus environment helps create departmental applications quickly through a unique AI-powered visual approach. Morpheus provides live suggestions and visualizations, reducing guesswork and keeping projects on track to faster completion.

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Working from a corpus of information comprising the full context of the existing IT stack and enhanced with anonymised metadata of many third-party business types and applications, sustainable development productivity will increase exponentially. In every aspect of software development, the AI will provide suggestions and solutions based on sound business logic for features and UI elements via pop-up options or natural language input.

With wizard-driven, step-by-step prompts, connections between data sources are established and maintained by the OutSystems platform. However, adding user-facing AI will facilitate simpler manipulation of the app’s logic and presentation aspects. Common connections between business applications in daily use become a usable resource in a development environment that’s already a huge aid for developers and citizen developers, combining a GUI-driven interface with editable, detailed logic just a click away. It’s simple in that context to add new views on available data drawn from across the entirety of the information resources the business already owns.

Project Morpheus is a new no-code development experience powered by generative AI that enables citizen developers to create departmental applications inside IT departments’ rules and guidelines. Combining end-user business knowledge and a platform that quickly realises data-driven concepts, the business benefits from powerful, directed applications that directly optimise processes and drive down resource bleed.

The promise of low code has always been of the empowerment of so-called citizen developers. The next chapter in OutSystems brings that a step closer as natural language interactions will likely mean that any business stakeholder can create applications. “Traditional” developers and citizen developers can use the same environment, narrowing the gap between the time from emerging business needs and solutions that address them.

If we take a massive jump in productivity by developers as a given, there are two further high-level benefits to usingOutSystems. The first is the ability to engage business functions early in any development. As discussed, this can be a relatively simple yet eminently usable MVP for development teams. Secondly, the next phase in the OutSystems platform, Project Morpheus, will engender an innovation mindset in all parts of the business. Previously de-prioritised apps that have the potential to revolutionise every corner of the business can now become finished projects quickly and simply.

Enthusiasm for software and technology is infectious, even among technophobic employees of an organisation. Saving time, energy and labour generates massive momentum for creativity in all parts of the business. Harnessing the creativity of line-of-business experts has always been challenging if software development is done with traditional tools in traditional environments. But with OutSystems and its new iteration in Project Morpheus, a creating and problem-solving company will easily outperform its competition.

Learn more about how AI will change practical, enterprise-grade application development here and the OutSystems low-code platform here.

The post How Project Morpheus will change business application production appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Low-code development platforms have often been portrayed as a bridge strung between the ships. Citizen developers and IT’s DevOps specialists can, via a low or no-code platform, work together, exchanging intelligence, informing each other’s activities, and ensuring that any software is on course to achieve the business’s overall objective. But, while basic low-code tooling in the hands of citizen developers can create smaller applications, they lack the scope to harness the full IT stack in the way that expert developers can when they use the more powerful, yet slower, “traditional” coding methods.

In many ways, low-code tools – in their latest incarnations, at least – are a good fit for professional developers as part of the toolbox at their disposal. Developers are, at their core, creative builders; bringing life to a concept or business need and equipping users with the tools they need is an act of creation. With a proven reduction in concept to production timings, high-performance low-code is a key asset for any development team, letting them build quickly, safely, and at scale. Built for pro developers, new-generation low-code provides a collaborative space where business function experts can co-exist with their dev colleagues.

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Increased productivity is, however, not the only requirement in today’s enterprise. Application scalability and agility are more than nice-to-haves, and security must be baked into any low-code methodology. Data governance in many industries is already mandated by governments, and the number of sectors where these types of laws apply is growing.

It’s these additional aspects of scalability, agility, and security where high-performance low-code ticks the boxes. Lessons have been learned from the older low-code platforms that emphasized the citizen developer’s capabilities. With the necessity of integration with the rest of the IT stack, platforms like those of OutSystems have been constructed with over 30 cloud-native layers, meaning that technologies like microservices and Kubernetes’s scalability work natively.

Developers can leverage existing skills with new-generation low-code and still have low-level access to code where they can extend functionality and fine-tune in familiar languages like C# via the SDK and API endpoints. OutSystems as a platform is itself extensible, with Apache Cordova used as a wrapper for modules referenced by mobile apps.

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Several case studies show OutSystems-produced applications have been localized in different languages and are easily ported to kiosk, mobile, web apps, and multiple desktop operating systems. This means developers can create new applications and extend the capabilities of legacy code with full lifecycle management, QA, and testing, in ways that bring domain experts and developers together to ensure development is on target.

Business process modeling assists end-users and developers in plotting and quantifying internal processes. It also helps them understand how these steps and decision points are affected and influenced by application logic. For the end-user, the library of extensible UX templates means every application can conform to a style guide to ensure a consistent user experience across different platforms and applications.

As the enterprise’s IT stack and requirements change over time, high-performance, low-code makes connecting new platforms and existing ERP systems simple. a modular build methodology ensures that there’s no need to duplicate functions like exposing or consuming APIs. Applications are built fast, safely, and – thanks to the cloud-native underpinnings – can scale quickly according to demand once in full production.

While many developers will be able to pick up and run with OutSystems almost immediately, a range of training courses (and a vibrant community) are available too. Courses range from ‘build an app in a day’ to more detailed specialist functions, such as data analysis methods using AI on extant data. The latter significantly reduces the time-to-value of heavyweight data analysis projects, as many of the required processes (data connectors, sanitization, de-duping, etc.) can be instantiated in the OutSystems build.

To return to the earlier analogy, the bridge between business process expertise and software development was a rough rope bridge between our two ocean-faring ships in the early days of low-code. The OutSystems high-performance low-code platform represents a solid steel, seam-welded connection between DevOps and domain expertise.

To learn more about OutSystems’ capabilities and how they can transform your software development function into a business-focused powerhouse, speak to a representative from the company.

The post Steering the fleet: DevOps and domain experts on the high seas appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

As businesses rapidly digitize, their aim is to deliver enhanced, faster customer experiences to boost growth. Such experiences could involve dynamic personalization along purchasing channels, enabling customers to visualize bespoke product configurations before buying, or compare features side-by-side. In a cloud-native architecture, IT and business can efficiently convert customer suggestions or business owner ideas into application software.

The term “cloud native” has evolved since big tech transformed itself using cloud technologies, redefining software development. However, the complexities and risks have limited cloud-native adoption to a few industry leaders.

Challenges and costs of cloud-native development

Although cloud-native development has numerous benefits, it is not always a straightforward process. The core of this approach involves containerization and Kubernetes, which is the container orchestration platform of choice for most companies. However, Kubernetes can become incredibly complex, and experienced practitioners are scarce.

Companies that deploy it often have to dedicate significant resources to configure and run their development operations properly. Additionally, there are other challenges that IT leaders need to consider when building cloud-native apps, including retraining teams on microservices architecture, learning and assembling individual cloud-native services for security, networking, data, and retooling DevOps processes.

These challenges can increase complexity, resulting in higher costs, including recruiting a team of cloud-native dev experts, building the environment, and scaling it. This cost depends on several variables, such as company size, in-house skills, the country where the team is hired, the current operating model, and the modernized app portfolio.

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For instance, let’s consider ‘Atom’, a hypothetical US-based composite insurance company with a wide range of apps that need modernization. Atom has a sizable team of developers based in the US, but lacks in-house expertise in cloud-native technology. Its development teams predominantly employ a traditional linear waterfall model, contrasting with the rapid, iterative style common among cloud-native developers.

Atom hires an external consultant to support the IT manager during its planning phase. The consultant helps Atom identify four main initiatives spanning two phases: infrastructure environment and application development.

According to OutSystems’s Cloud-Native Development Report: The High Cost of Ownership, to launch the infrastructure for its new web portal, mobile companion, and back-office app, Atom needs to hire and onboard 12 new team members in the US with specific expertise in cloud-native technologies. This will cost the company US$663,000. Building and configuring the infrastructure environment will cost US$1.2 million, while maintaining and scaling the infrastructure environment will cost US$870,000.

The next phase involves training and reskilling in-house developers, as well as app development with traditional coding, costing a total of US$2.9 million. Training and reskilling existing developers will cost US$340,000, while traditional application development will cost US$2.6 million. During the 12-month development period, 17 traditional coders will work in three teams, and the application development team will collaborate closely with the cloud-native infrastructure team.

Factors affecting costs in transitioning to cloud-native infrastructure

The costs associated with transitioning to a cloud-native infrastructure depend on several factors. One of the most significant factors is the complexity of the app portfolio, which impacts the architecture and infrastructure requirements, necessary tools and skills, and team size.

For instance, if a company only needs a simple internal app, such as a vacation planning app, there is no need to shift to a cloud-native infrastructure or hire a new team of skilled developers. Only one or two developers with the necessary skills can handle the requirement.

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The second variable affecting costs is the type of business and its apps. The number of users accessing the apps, geographical distribution of the business, and areas of operations determine the need for geographical redundancy, number of billing regions for the CDN, number of firewalls, and compute resources.

The third variable is the IT department’s operations, which may impact costs based on the location of the IT department, hiring strategy (in-house development, outsourcing, or hybrid model), and existing development culture (waterfall, agile, DevOps).

Low-code meets cloud-native: the future of rapid application development

Building a cloud-native development infrastructure from scratch can be costly, complex, and variable, making it difficult for many IT departments to adopt Kubernetes, cloud-native technologies, and microservices. The process can take several months to years and require millions of dollars before developers can begin building their first application. So, how can organizations leverage the benefits of cloud-native development without adding additional effort and resources to configure and manage it?

One possible approach is to use a platform like OutSystems, which integrates a state-of-the-art cloud-native infrastructure into its low-code offering. This allows organizations to enjoy the agility, scalability, security, and availability benefits of cloud-native development without needing specialized expertise or significant financial outlay.

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The OutSystems high-performance, low-code platform uses visual development tools and automation to accelerate the application development lifecycle. This means organizations can utilize a ready-made cloud-native infrastructure, enabling existing teams to deliver applications more quickly. They can do this without the complexity of traditional coding or the need for specialized cloud-native expertise.

Combining low-code and cloud-native development methodologies can help organizations rapidly develop applications that drive revenue, reduce costs, and manage risk at an internet scale.

OutSystems offers a practical solution to the challenges of a cloud-native world. Its high-performance low-code platform aims to enhance developer productivity, enabling organizations to start creating mission-critical cloud-native applications from day one, without the complexities and costs of building their own platforms. To learn more about OutSystems, click here.

The post Building a cloud-native infrastructure from scratch: is it worth the cost? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

This led to the idea that low-code suits tactical, departmental applications. Simple stuff that is typically solved with equally simple workflows. But that is not (entirely) true.

In this article, we’ll discuss when to use low-code and a few low-code application examples to show you what you can build with this technology and make the most of it.

When Should You Use Low-Code?

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The short answer is whenever you need a custom application.

It’s important to note, however, that the process of deciding whether you should build or buy an application has changed in the post-pandemic world, as organizations were forced to move their entire business online — and by entire, we mean not only their interaction with customers but also their whole internal operations.

Today, it should be obvious to IT leaders that even the most mundane internal system has to change eventually to cope with unforeseen circumstances.

And when you’re dealing with standard SaaS or COTS systems, even if they’re the best in class, they don’t change easily because they weren’t made with the peculiarities of your business in mind.

The uncontrollable SaaS sprawls most organizations face have led to a complex IT ecosystem of disconnected applications that tremendously impacts employee and customer experiences.

This forces companies to embrace in-house development that allows them to ‘keep their house clean’ while reducing costs in the long run in licensing fees.

That calls for custom software. The good news is that low-code platforms are becoming increasingly powerful and versatile and can be used to build a wide range of custom applications.

What Can You Build with Low-Code?

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Pretty much any low-code platform will provide you with the capabilities to build:

• Business process automation solutions
• Web applications
• Workflow management
• Data visualization and reporting

The challenge, however, is when you’re looking to build enterprise core platforms, external, B2C applications, and cross-departmental internal business applications that require high-level security and extreme scalability.

These are what we call ‘strategic applications’, i.e., applications that deliver your unique business value and therefore have a disproportionate impact on your top line (revenue) and bottom line (saving and profit) and help you manage risk.

That’s when you need to be more selective when choosing the right low-code platform.

A high-performance low-code platform like OutSystems can address a robust set of needs and requirements, allowing you to create and rapidly evolve the key applications for pretty much everything your organization needs, spanning both immediate tactical as well as including strategic business-critical needs and customer-facing applications.

These include customer applications and portals, internal business applications, and core systems.

High-Performance Low-Code Application Examples

Let’s look at a few real-life low-code application examples built with a high-performance low-code platform.

Customer mobile applications and web portals: Western Union’s mobile digital banking application

With the new fintech players joining the market, Western Union wanted to boost its agility and accelerate innovation to remain competitive. In just 11 months, the company launched its new digital banking application in Germany and Romania, and it’s already rolling out to other countries. You can read the full story here.

Internal business applications: Medtronic Click portal that supports 80,000 employees

Realizing that great user experiences underpin efficiency and CX improvement, Medtronic focused on improving the employee experience. Using OutSystems, Medtronic delivered “Click”—a personalized portal serving over 80,000 employees—making it easier for staff and managers to find, fix, learn, and request what they need to do. You can read the full story here.

Core systems: Vopak needed to replace its JD Edwards ERP system. However, all alternatives they looked for presented a continuing problem: lack of fit and slow speed to market for innovations and enhancements. So the company decided to use OutSystems high-performance low-code to build a complete terminal management system at its operation’s core. With this new custom-made core system, the company was able to increase its agility and innovate faster than ever. You can read the full story here.

Unify Your Business with High-Performance Low-Code

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With high-performance low-code you can build whatever your business needs, from the most simple internal business application to the most complex and strategic application.

The OutSystems high-performance low-code platform is the most powerful on the planet, built from the ground up to execute big, impactful ideas at scale in high-stakes environments. It is also the only platform that lets you choose how you use low-code–with options for adding custom code, custom integrations, and preferred DevOps and project management tools when needed.

To learn more about what OutSystems can do for you, get the eBook The Whats, Whys, and Hows of Solving Any Business Challenge with Low-Code.

A version of this article was originally published in the OutSystems Blog.

The post What Can You Build with Low-Code? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Why spend time having your best people architect a solution that already exists – and has been proven in the market – when a vendor has solved the same problem hundreds of times? Or so went the prevailing view.

But the growing pressure for differentiated customer experiences and highly efficient business operations has led many companies to prefer custom solutions that can fully adapt to their modern organization and help them stand out from the competition.

Thankfully, the notion that developing your own software to support specialized businesses is costly and inefficient is based on old development models. Modern app development technologies like high-performance low-code have changed that.

Why is custom development gaining momentum over COTS?

There are two trends to consider when examining why custom solutions have gained momentum and why, more often than before, cookie-cutter applications are no longer enough.

Firstly, the post-pandemic push to digitize customer-facing operations and experiences has resulted in companies fighting to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Your applications and software are critical to achieving this. But can you really leapfrog your competition if you’re tethered to pre-packaged solutions that look like everyone else?

Secondly, the philosophy of tweaking only the front-end because it is what impacts customers directly, while keeping the back-end systems slow and disconnected, simply doesn’t work anymore. Everything is integrated, so if something in the back office doesn’t work well, the app experience breaks down fast, and adoption fails.

In today’s fast-changing world, even the most internal system must be adaptable and flexible enough to keep up with whatever disruption or opportunity comes next. Standard SaaS or COTS systems don’t change easily – even if they’re the best in class – because they weren’t made with the peculiarities and pace of your business in mind.

The benefits of low-code for custom development

Organizations are replacing or extending their COTS solutions with alternative development approaches like low-code because it gives them the freedom to create applications that directly align with their business objectives from the beginning – and do it faster. However, not all low-code platforms deliver the same performance capabilities.

A high-performance low-code platform – unlike no-code or ‘regular’ low-code – combines the agility and speed of low-code with the robustness of traditional full-stack development to build core and mission-critical systems. This gives teams the flexibility to build exactly what they want for internal users and external customers.

Let’s look at three key functional areas to examine why custom development with high-performance low-code is better for business growth:

1. Customer apps and portals
   These digital gateways strengthen customer relationships and help you stand out in a crowded marketplace, acquire new customers, and even streamline your customer service operations. Success requires the ability to design a stand-out customer experience and to respond to customer needs and market changes faster than ever before.

High-performance low-code allows businesses to keep up with changing customer preferences and customize and differentiate their customer-facing products at every touchpoint.

2. Internal business apps

Employees have high expectations for the digital tools they need to do their day-to-day work. Additionally, organizations should look for opportunities to help their employees be more productive and efficient. Dated tools and legacy applications that are difficult to maintain and unable to update no longer have a place in an employee-focused digital reality that is transforming rapidly. The advent of SaaS and software purchases decentralized from IT contributed to the proliferation of apps inside organizations. Multiple apps can create friction and app fatigue, which negatively impacts employee engagement and productivity.

With high-performance low-code, you can build new or integrate and extend an existing portfolio of internal business apps – tailored to your business processes – alleviating redundant, manual tasks and consolidating the employee experience.

3. Core systems

Your business is different from your competitors, so it makes sense that your core systems should be tailored precisely to your business, instead of making your business fit someone else’s software. You can avoid vendor lock-in and outdated, legacy software solutions by building your own systems tailored exactly to your business needs.

From customized ERPs that deliver complex data and back-end integrations to unique CRM or supply chain systems, you can build powerful systems faster and at less expense with high-performance low-code.

But if you’re not ready to go all in, you don’t have to. Companies unable to replace their legacy systems completely can still modernize by extending their apps with high-performance low-code to deliver the desired outcome.

High-performance low-code: Build for business growth

Organizations no longer need to choose between the convenience and speed of pre-packaged solutions with the flexibility of traditional coding. You can have the best of both worlds with a modern high-performance low-code platform like OutSystems. High-performance low-code gives businesses the capabilities required to rapidly develop and continuously evolve strategic applications across all areas of the enterprise – from customer portals and apps to automating and connecting processes via internal business apps to building highly resilient and tailored core systems.

Learn how your existing team can deliver unique, high-value, complex apps faster than traditional development without compromising on quality, security, or scalability with high-performance low-code.

This article was originally published in the OutSystems Blog.

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This year, the entirely virtual NextStep was merged with the OutSystems Developer Conference (OSDC) for the first time. The aim was to deliver the most exhaustive, 360-degree overview and in-depth participation, with keynote addresses, three main session tracks, and a host of community participation activities spanning the breadth of platforming technologies that low-code is helping to innovate.

Organizations are facing an unprecedented challenge in 2022, being pushed to deliver groundbreaking and exciting tech-driven solutions. These transform business performance and experience to meet customers’ needs, or what employees and vendor partners require from a modern, productive workspace.

Customers increasingly demand personalized experiences online, and markets are moving so fast these days, there is a significant need for accelerated in-house development schedules.

There has been a noticeable uptick in cloud migrations for many organizations undergoing rapid digital transformations. The demand is there for applications purpose-built with the cloud in mind, and to that end, several of the sessions (from more than 80) at NextStep 2022 on-demand covers cloud-native development.

These are aimed at building, adapting, and integrating cloud-native applications with Project Neo, OutSystems’ tailored platform. It empowers developers to build massive, scalable cloud apps, and is there to be leveraged by the 14 million-plus users of OutSystems. But, while developing natively for cloud is going to be a significant area of developer interest, this NextStep, the primary focus is high-performance low-code.

High-performance low-code is the direct iteration of the challenges discussed earlier: finding quick, cost-effective, and innovative solutions that can scale quickly and meet changing business needs and customer behaviors. The hallmark of high-performing low-code is the ability to perform under pressure, with the fluidity to keep pace with business plans and operational strategies.

High-performance low-code is featured on the NextStep 2022 virtual mainstage. The inaugural session features OutSystems CEO, Paulo Rosado, Western Union Chief Data and Innovation Officer, Tom Mazzaferro, and Vice President of Engineering at OutSystems, Sílvia Rocha.

OutSystems started as a performance pioneer in the enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAP) space, and has established a permanent position as a robust performance application development platform in the past few years. In 2021, OutSystems was named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for LCAPs, obtaining the highest score in the ‘Ability to Execute’ quotient among all platforms. In 2022, OutSystems was also recognized by its end users as a 2022 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Vendor for enterprise LCAPs, the third time it has been lauded.

Of the 1,300 reviews submitted to compile that report, 92% said they would recommend OutSystems, as a “must-have as part of your technology toolkit.” This demonstrates high efficiency and reliability, along with the ability to quickly innovate low-code solutions inexpensively and speedily.

A lot of this successful dependability under pressure is down to OutSystems flexible modularity to integrate and work with an assortment of cutting-edge productivity innovations, including advanced data architectures, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation.

There are various drilled-down topics, such as “Accelerating Digital Transformation with Intelligent Automation.” This focuses on how KeyBank sped up its digital transformation by embracing AI-driven automation and low-code implementation to automate its core business operations. It resulted in a faster time-to-market for introducing new and improved digital customer and employee experience.

Increasingly, driving customer engagement is becoming a part of the low-code ecosystem offering. Eduardo Romano, Entel’s Head of Digital Channels, IT, and Bárbara Blanco, the IT Solutions and Services Director for Public Sector, Health & Insurance at NTT DATA, demonstrates how low-code is helping power partner solutions to help materialize the companies’ channel strategy and mission.

There has been a noticeable focus on the public sector, with spotlight sessions like “How to Make a Public Agency Digital and Cloud-Supported” featuring Capgemini’s Business Developer, Manager Félix Lopes, and “Governance in OutSystems 11”, with OutSystems Principal Product Manager, Fernando Moitinho. He will discuss how platforms can harness the flexibility of low-code to finetune governance models in simple and complex IT, security, and authentication use cases.

For businesses and enterprise professionals, NextStep 2022 is the must-attend low-code event of the year. Hear from industry leaders, guest experts in application development and database management, hands-on sessions with low-code and cloud-native development pros, and a trove of successful, practical use cases. Learn from real-life examples from Sony Pictures Networks India, Amazon Web Services, Gen Re-Insurance, and robotic process automation (RPA) innovator UIPath.

NextStep 2022 brings together developer expertise and proven success stories to pave the way for organizations to accelerate their businesses with the out-of-the-box efficiency of low-code development. See what’s happening over the expansive three-day agenda now offered on-demand. Join in-depth technical sessions and dedicated Business, Product, and Technology tracks to get a deep dive into this transformative market.

The post Be inspired at the first three-day NextStep 2022 appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

In much the same vein, companies are continuously iterating new software to get a handle on emerging issues and might be cost prohibitive (read: expensive) to purchase outright as a third-party application. Even if it fits in the IT budget, the cost in man hours and effort to integrate smoothly with existing systems might take too long to be worthwhile.

The problems are exacerbated by companies facing unique scenarios, necessitating in-house development to deal with their bespoke use cases. Often today, apps and software need to be brought to market as quickly as possible to accelerate development tasks, maximize their impact, and eliminate wasteful practices. 

To effectively deal with these pain points, low-code platforms have become vital to organizational development strategies as they deal with shifts in their business model, granting them access to integrate data from various sources, while slashing development times from months or weeks to days. Forrester research indicates that even pre-pandemic, organizations that embraced low-code development were able to pivot faster, and half of the developers surveyed said they had already adopted, or planned to adopt, a low-code platform as part of their existing workflow.

For the uninitiated, low-code platforms enable developers with little experience or are specialized in a particular branch of programming, to rapidly build software applications at scale and at speed, lowering the specialization barrier and speeding up the process of getting an application to production. 

The adoption of a low-code platform as an integral tool in the rapid application development toolbox has been so pervasive that Gartner reports that low-code will be responsible for over 65% of application development activity by 2024. A low-code platform supplies a family of tools to build visual applications, with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface usually rounding out the offering.

Rather than encoding thousands of lines of complex syntax, low-code platforms empower complete software builds with minimal hand-coding in line with the company’s requirements, allowing for delivery “as much as 10 times faster than traditional methods,” according to Forrester analyst John Rymer.

Low-code is gaining ground as the preferred enterprise app development method. In fact, Gartner forecasts that 70% of new enterprise applications will be developed using low-code or no-code technologies by 2025.Public and private sectors are putting in place data governance that will see low-code solutions positioned as key to the sustainability and security of application ecosystems.

To build fully functioning apps with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) at scale using low-code platforms is so easy that there are in excess of 300 vendors and platforms offering low-code variations. But for organizations prioritizing speed and agility, no single service is ahead of OutSystems, recognized as the Customers’ Choice in the latest Gartner Peer Insights 2022 for the third time.

Surveyed IT decision makers are even hailing OutSystems as “a must have technology in your toolkit”, thanks to the high-performance low-code platform used to develop custom, large-scale apps that utilize powerful cloud-based technology. 

OutSystems was founded in 2001, marking it not only as the pioneer in the low-code space that will dominate enterprise app development with more than two-thirds of the market over the next decade, but is recognized as the #1 Low-Code Platform® – backed by ten years of peer-reviewed performance tests and vendor success journeys.

With decades of experience, the modern OutSystems low-code platform is geared for continuous innovation, ensuring apps integrate with core systems while retaining the ability to evolve as new technological breakthroughs become available – regardless if the organization is a large enterprise or a small-to-medium sized business, OutSystems powers graphical app builds, packing robust user interface (UI) features so developers can create any application they visualize.

OutSystems is the low-code platform of choice for productivity-focused leaders looking to address unique business needs beyond what pre-packaged off-the-shelf software can provide. Developers looking to deliver purpose-built apps with efficient accelerated deployment, should sign up with OutSystems today. 

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But the demand for new business services is increasing, not decreasing. Pressures from the labor market, including fewer quality technical staff available and high wage demands, mean that many requests for new features of applications go wanting. These are usually placed at the bottom of a list of existing requests and priorities. By the time teams have the resources to begin work, the business will, in all likelihood, have moved on.

Even if developers can be retasked to address business imperatives faster by being removed from their existing projects, the infrastructure available on which to develop, test, QA, and host new business solutions may not be available or suitable for purpose.

The winning combination to solve both developmental and infrastructure issues is, increasingly, high-performance, low-code development models designed specifically for cloud use. As well as leveraging the cloud’s elasticity and ability to scale, the low-code environment also helps companies bring their creative and strategic ideas to production much more quickly than with traditional development methodologies.

The emergence of low-code software capable of helping speed up development also comes with an added benefit: it removes the time lag between subject matter experts’ input and their being able to see, test, and feed back on applications. Development and iterations are fast, can be undertaken with line of business input, and therefore, the end-products are impactful and on-point for end-users.

There is less time waiting between the initial concept, usually inspired by seeking a new niche or market opportunity, and the creation of a product, quickly, that can address the strategic need. Creating agility and fast time-to-production is the ethos of low-code development techniques and platforms. The story doesn’t end there.

Assigning the necessary infrastructure and facilities is traditionally a slow process. In the past, hardware, storage capacity, and network bandwidth had to be carefully allocated with an eye on the overall needs of the business. The potential for bottlenecks is simply removed by the cloud’s easy availability, predictability, and power.

Line-of-business experts’ ease of involvement with faster development processes means the modern business can respond lightning-fast to market opportunities without being hamstrung by legacy procedures, coding practices, and limited hardware capabilities. This, in combination with cloud’s inherent advantages make for an impressive capability that helps companies create what they need, when they need it, at the scale that’s right for the use-case.

Lengthy time-to-market, sometimes over a year, for projects becomes a thing of the past, and organizations leverage low-code to alleviate the pressure on over-tasked development and engineering teams, too. Line-of-business experts and C-suite personnel are assured of fast time-to-production timescales and a focus on strategic imperatives that come from local expertise in instigating and guiding application and service development.

Some products find their niche quickly, and some come into their own naturally, too. OutSystems’s platform is being used right now to create mobile apps that connect remote teams and employees on the go. Mobile-native apps that work with an advanced cloud stack, with full development cycles measured in weeks, not years: it’s an attractive proposition for any organization looking to get business back up to speed in 2022.

You can learn more about how this new development paradigm is shaping the new world of business by joining OutSystems at the Cloud Innovation Summit on 7-8 June, held virtually.

You can read more about today’s leading low-code platform from OutSystems right here, learn from an existing catalog of case studies starting on this page, and do register right here for the Cloud Innovation Summit. The face of digital transformation is changing, and your organization can join the leading wave of change-makers.

The post The Cloud as Secret Element in Low-Code Development Success appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

For many, digital transformation means looking to the cloud to answer questions around extensibility and security, but in many instances, it’s not just a case of picking up older technologies and dropping them onto a cloud host. With legacy technology (legacy can mean just two or three years old – such is the speed of technological change), it’s not just a matter of hosting in a cloud rather than on-premise. In very short timescales, operational changes and new strategies will be required and will continue to affect the applications that organizations rely on. That leads to the need to re-evaluate core applications that may no longer be fit-for-purpose.

Companies should look at their ongoing digital transformation strategies and ensure they can efficiently execute on cloud migrations. As applications transition, they are also either extended or replaced altogether. However, a big problem with this remains: a lack of skilled developers and “traditional” development timescales.

According to IDC, in 2021 the world was 1.4 million developers short – a 10% shortage. That figure is expected to double in the next few years. In a suppliers’ market, that means costs (in the form of wages and ancillary benefits) are set to rise. And with fewer developer skills available in-house, production times are likely to increase, not decrease.

The answer for organizations that need to modernize and yet address development issues is low-code. Powerful, cloud-native low-code frameworks mean that line-of-business experts (in tandem with IT professionals) become creators of technology, not mere consumers. By bringing highly specialized knowledge to the development process, the business gets highly applicable software written by the people who will use it.

The IDC paper quoted above talks about “model-driven, visual solutions” for businesses being the answer to aligning strategic priorities with the software needed to support and further those strategies. Until now, low-code applications could be ported to the cloud but were not cloud-native and were not optimized to their cloud environment.

However, the OutSystems Cloud on AWS is the solution businesses have been waiting for. It gives organizations the ability to massively accelerate times-to-production for apps and services that are 100% in line with business needs. But being cloud-native, the applications hit even the most stringent targets for reliability, scalability, and resilience.

Available right from the AWS Marketplace, OutSystems empowers today’s organizations to move from a reactive, legacy-rich environment to a proactive, future-focused, digital-native approach. It hits the three overbearing issues facing IT today: enterprise-grade applications and services, freedom from technical debt, and a fully cloud-native development and hosting framework.

Low-code brings different stakeholders to the development environment, providing the tools and methods needed to easily and quickly build enterprise-grade applications that satisfy broad business demand. The environment also helps existing development teams move past mundane, repetitive coding challenges, refocusing goals on business outcomes.

With OutSystems on AWS, companies can update their legacy IT, modernize their development processes, and refocus their digital transformation activities on what matters to them:

• Meeting new disruptive challengers,
• Providing next-generation CX and employer experiences,
• Creating a fast time-to-market for innovative new products and services.

To learn more about OutSystems platform’s capabilities in low-code and in a cloud-native environment, reach out to a representative from the company today. Or, you can get started right away by clicking through here.

The post The Cloud and Low-Code Solution: Modernizing Legacy Investments with OutSystems appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

That was the vision Paolo Rosado, the founder and CEO of OutSystems, outlined when he announced Project Neo, its most ambitious technology launch to date, at the Next Step 2021 recently. The next-generation platform from the pioneer in low-code application development will be released early next year. Anyone is welcome to sign up for the Project Neo public preview to test it out today.

“Customers have always been our ultimate motivation. Empowering them to build incredible things with our platform is our passion,” Rosado said during the event’s keynote address. “I am a developer at heart, and I want to build something that really works for developers.”

He wasn’t just referring to the elites. The aim is to enable any developer to build faster and more resilient software while keeping pace and anticipating change. Add in being cost-effective on top of that as well. Rosado condensed the three fundamental goals in the design of Project Neo as follow:

1. To be as quick as the elites, “delivering significant changes in hours, and doing it multiple times per day.”
2. To remove expected cost and risk to build high-quality internet-scale cloud infrastructure
3. To make it evergreen, “where changes and updates are deployed continuously with minimal impact”.

“On average, teams today have to deal with 10 times more code and complexity than just 10 years ago,” said Gonçalo Gaiolas, VP of Product Management at OutSystems, in his part of the keynote address, detailing new features introduced to the platform. The latest updates include Mac compatibility, cleaner visual revamp and dark mode, the most requested feature from its developer community.

“We like to keep our platform evergreen, and we keep on releasing useful capabilities like new mobile plugins, improved data editing and manipulation, and a set of very powerful, fully supported widgets,” he said before showing an illustration of the unique monograph approach and AI-powered developer assistance on the OutSystems platform at work.

The brand-new Project Neo is set to achieve a 100x increase in developer productivity.

That seems like a huge ask, but that is precisely what OutSystems is going for. In his keynote address, Patrick Jean, CTO at OutSystems, noted that more than half of cloud development projects fail due to the challenges posed by the non-deterministic nature of the cloud and the technology going outdated at a rapid speed.

“We built OutSystems Project Neo on a modern cloud foundation of Linux containers and Kubernetes to solve this exact problem. We’ve done all the work to wire the services together using state-of-the-art cloud architecture. We’ve implemented security best practices and best-of-breed CI/CD for continuous delivery,” Jean said.

“We did all this hard work so that you can build applications running on Kubernetes that operate as if you are a tech elite, but without the risk, the cost and the time commitment. We didn’t sacrifice power for complexity.”

That was just the start of Jean’s introduction to what goes under the hood of Project Neo.

There is automated business continuity and disaster recovery configured into the new platform, which can co-exist with OutSystems 11, the company’s market-leading platform for enterprise-grade low-code development. The evergreen philosophy extends to its current platform, so users can rest assured knowing the company will continue to invest in its usability and upgrades.

“We maintain all of the underlying technologies. We do all the heavy lifting to make sure that as the technology landscape changes and shifts, we keep the platform up to date. Just as we’ve been doing for the past 20 years,” Jean said, adding, “OutSystems makes sure your apps are always state-of-the-art, cloud native, and enterprise grade. This is the true concept of evergreen.”

OutSystems was founded in 2001 and has grown to have more than 525,000 community members, around 1,700 employees, over 400 partners with active customers in 87 countries and across 22 industries. More than 14 million people are currently using apps created on its platform, ranging from mobile apps and consumer websites to workgroup apps and extensions of other core systems like Microsoft, SAP, and Salesforce. Its product strategy is simple: “Serious productivity for serious apps”.

Prosegur Seguridad, which Rosado mentioned in his address, adopted OutSystems to digitally enhance its security services and keep them up to date as it sought to provide more customer-centric security. The international security firm developed the first release of its POPS operations platform and POPS Mobile app in just three months.

“The development of release one was done in just ten weeks. We’ve cut time to market by 50%, and seen a 20% reduction in development costs,” said Andrew Buch Sampaio, Director of Systems Engineering at Prosegur, adding it took a mere 18 months for the company to see a return on investment.

“We needed a platform that could scale to meet the needs of our vast user base. We also needed technology that was cloud-friendly and could integrate with lots of other systems. And, lastly, we needed to develop native mobile, web, and backend systems. OutSystems ticked all these boxes for us.”

More companies shared their experiences and results of developing their applications with OutSystems at the Next Step 2021, available on-demand here.

Jean also went into details of Project Neo at the OSDC 2021, the OutSystems developer conference, which is also available to watch on-demand.

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