There are about 300 companies today that provide platforms for application development with very little code to write. These are called the 'low-code application development platforms'. A subset of these are 'no-code application development platforms' where application development is achieved through visual modeling using 'drag and drop' functionality, without having to write a single line of code.
Why a sudden rise of such platforms?
We explore the key reasons below:
1. The Rise of Connectivity and Computing Power
Cloud technology has revolutionized access to compute power, storage, scale, on-demand & containerized databases and application components. With cloud, access to storage and compute power is available anytime anywhere and at a reasonable cost.
This allows product solution companies to provide a standardized super solution, like low-code platforms, that will cater to most. Cloud native solutions, therefore, are being adopted increasingly.
2. Plug and Play, APIs are The Way To Go
Older application designs ended up creating monolithic implementations. Over the years such application systems have become very difficult to change and their sheer size does not allow for easy upgrades.
Architecture with APIs and 'Plug & Play' allows decomposition of such monolithic applications into componentized micro services giving granular control of separation of concern.
The newer designs tend towards orchestration of services that consume components and data sources, as required in a highly scalable setup.
3. Integrated DevOps
CI/CD is an integral part of software development irrespective of the methodology of application development (hand coding or low-code platform).
The modern day platforms allow for continuous testing and static analysis of components upon change. These platforms also allow the creation of pipelines to automatically deploy to various environments like testing, staging and production.
4. Cost of Skilled Coders
IT departments have always struggled to keep up with the growing demands of business. The backlog of requests keeps on growing for IT. Traditional SDLC is resource intensive and adds up to the cost.
Building applications or implementing changes in legacy systems that have older technology and outdated architecture is a losing game that organizations are forced to play. This requires a large team of coders and architects.
With low-code platforms the dependency on expensive developers is reduced. Even for developing an enterprise grade application, there is no need for an army of coders. More importantly, with low-code platforms the 'citizen developers' can contribute.
Organizations should utilize such platforms to meet aggressive delivery schedules and quicker updates for applications.
Do you think there are other reasons for the rise of low-code platforms?
Write to us at : info@feldspartech.com