Low-code can bridge the demand/supply gap
Software development can help organisations respond to new business requirements, increase flexibility and stay in control. However, according to Gartner, the business demand for software development grows five times faster than the IT supply can deliver. As a result, many organisations struggle with:
- Shortage of skilled developers
- High costs of development
- Time constraints
- Technical challenges
What organisations need is a fast and effective way to build software that does not require much time, money or programming skills; in other words, what they need is low-code!
Low-code development is an approach to exploring digital ideas and prototypes and developing innovative mobile and web apps without programming. It is ideally suited to realise future-proof IT solutions in an iterative and incremental way with immediately testable results. Low-code allows you to:
- Take new ideas and products to market quickly
- Streamline and automate operations
- Digitalise the customer experience
But what exactly is low-code, and what are the advantages of low-code versus no-code or traditional (high-code) software development?
Low-code, no-code or high-code?
Low-code is the happy medium between two extremes: no-code and high-code. To fully understand the potential of low-code, it is therefore essential to understand the differences between no-code and high-code development.
No-code covers platforms and software as a service (SaaS). With no-code development, you can deliver solutions without programming any functionality, but simply configure the system for your organisation. No-code comes in handy when the business needs are straightforward and there is an existing off-the-shelf solution. All you have to do is to select the platform and simply set up or configure the platform to your needs.
High-code covers complex code-driven applications. With high-code development, everything is developed from scratch in whatever framework you like. High-code development is suitable for organisations that want to have all code in-house and/or have very specific and complex demands for the application. Of course, it requires that organisations have the resources, time and skills to build the platform themselves.
If you have parts of your IT space that are neither of these two extremes (which you very likely have), and you require speed, agility and flexibility, you could likely benefit from low-code development. Low-code development involves platforms where you have a huge library of pre-made components that you can quickly and easily drag and drop to create new solutions. You can combine this with add-ons and APIs and enhance with customer developments when needed.
What’s so special about low-code?
Low-code automation platforms play a huge role in democratising digital transformation. The democratisation of digital delivery means putting the responsibility, tools and accountability for building digital capabilities in the hands of business units and not just IT. The rapid evolvement and huge capabilities in low-code platforms like Mendix and Microsoft PowerApps enable external IT suppliers to build solutions that are fast to learn, test and refine. This can be both towards customers, internal or suppliers.
What is cool is that IT work, which was once the sole responsibility of dedicated IT teams, is now being “democratised”, and many companies are now revisiting the boundaries between their IT and non-IT departments and reassessing the way they delegate technology responsibilities.
Let us help you build your low-code application
At Valcon, we deliver low-code solutions from architecture vision and platform selection to UX Design and development, and DevOps and support. We also support our customers in building their own in-house low-code capability. We use the Mendix and MS Power App development platforms to create a scalable and flexible microservices IT landscape for our clients. If necessary, we supplement the platform with our own customised extensions in Java, Javascript or React Native, realise JSON/REST/SOAP integrations with other systems, and help clients design a modern and user-friendly user interface.
The benefits of our low-code solutions include:
- Business and citizen developers are actively involved in the development and validation of the solutions
- Cloud-native architecture and integrated software lifecycle management
- The (technical and UX) out-of-the-box functionality of a standard platform combined with the flexibility of custom development
- 2 to 5 times higher speed compared to traditional (high-code) software development
- Scoped agile approach (iterative and incremental)
Want to learn more? Read more about low-code and our other technology services on our website. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you and your organisation with low-code development, please email [email protected] and we’ll be in touch right away.
