High-performance low-code gives professional developers and IT organizations the critical capabilities to build mission-critical, and consumer apps fast and iterate them even quicker. This blog will explain high-performance low-code and why it goes beyond regular low-code.
You Built Version 1 of Your App with Low-Code. Congrats?
You have one month to deliver a financial planning application that enables users to budget, access transactions, view investment status, plan expenses, and make appointments with financial advisors and personal bankers. Building it from scratch is out of the question; there’s no time for hand-coding, testing, fixing, scaling, and changing features. So, what are you going to do? The most obvious solution to your problem is to use low code, and it’s easy and fast.
But let’s say you convince your developers to adopt it, the stars align correctly, and you successfully release version 1. While breaking out the champagne, someone asks you to add bill negotiation and text alerts about scheduled payments and financial tasks. Can low code save you, then? It depends.
There are all kinds of low-code platforms that tell you they can develop and deliver applications with no limits. They make convincing cases about “development without limits” and how they have what it takes to update your financial planning app indefinitely. But do they? Or are they part of a buzzword bandwagon? It depends.
Put an LCAP on It
Low-code and no-code are two of the hottest buzzwords around. The market is predicted to be worth over $175 billion in 10 years (up from $11.45 billion in 2019).
Why is it so popular? It’s probably because it is essential to get to market with applications that address recent changes in consumer behaviour and the workforce (think hybrid work) at top speed. And, in certain use cases, low code is legit. OutSystems is no stranger to the accolades or to reaping the benefits of offering one of the top platforms in this market. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms has named us a Leader.
We’re proud of this distinction because we were low-code before low-code was cool. OutSystems has been offering customers a visual way of developing software and applications since 2001. But there are other things the OutSystems platform does. Much of what we offer goes beyond regular low-code. To help you understand what that means, let’s go back to “Space, the final frontier.”
The Trouble with Tech’s Tribbles: Regular Low-Code Tools
In the “Trouble With Tribbles” episode of Star Trek, everyone fell in love with the cute little animal that someone brought aboard the Starship Enterprise. Until the Tribbles multiplied like crazy, that is. Then they started threatening the food supply when they took over the grain elevator. Although the Tribbles helped the Enterprise crew identify a villain, their value needed to compensate for their limitations.
Low-code tools have a similar history. At the end of 2021, more than 440 vendors were touting their “low-code/no-code” wares. This is the equivalent of the grain elevator in the Enterprise. Like the Tribbles, tons of these tools fall on your head if you look in the low-code market.
The low-code tools you find in reports or touted by venture capitalists as the hottest tech item on earth don’t have value. They do. Some can help you build a prototype or even version 1 of your financial planning app fast, and others provide specific value in industry use cases and business process workflow. Still, others are extensions to core software with different capabilities, so they are limited in what they can achieve from a data, integration, and application perspective.
This makes it difficult to update and change version 1 when new needs and expectations arise. Regular low-code, whether it’s designed for app development, business process automation, core software extension, or taking spreadsheets to a new level, has all kinds of limitations.
High-Performance Low-Code: So Much More than Regular Low-Code
The OutSystems platform is different because it isn’t regular low-code; it’s high-performance low-code.
High-performance low-code differs from regular low-code by uniting design, code, and deployment into a single system. The OutSystems high-performance, low-code platform radically simplifies and accelerates the process of creating business-critical software and consumer-facing web and mobile applications. It offers modern technology that helps you build and change nearly any type of application, from consumer apps and portals to internal digital solutions that make the lives of your workforce easier to custom core systems designed for your unique business.
With OutSystems, specialized capabilities simplify the complexity of creating enterprise applications and connecting to enterprise data. AI-assisted development guides developers through processes, suggesting the best actions and sources for help, eliminating friction and long lead times. The platform even enables individuals with diverse expertise to participate seamlessly in designing, building, deploying, and managing applications. The result? Serious applications. Serious productivity.
Platform services and many security checks provide scalability, governance, protection from threats, and compliance. AI finds and solves issues early, eliminating design errors and duplication of effort. Real-time application performance data helps identify anything that needs to be corrected or optimized. This all sets you up for continuous innovation.
Continuous innovation is not on the regular low-code menu, but OutSystems was built for it. OutSystems platform services, AI, and visual tools enable the constant introduction of features and capabilities. Developers can evolve apps as quickly as the business changes and new technology is introduced.
If, in the process of looking for a low-code solution to your app development time crunch, you read the Gartner LCAP MQ and chose OutSystems, congratulations. Not only do you still have a job, but you will be the hero who uses high-performance low-code to solve your organization’s most critical challenges. When you tell the rest of the team that version 2 will be done in a week, the person that asked for the bill negotiation and text notifications will be ordering the champagne.
Did you choose a different tool, or are you just starting your search? If so, the Gartner LCAP report is a valuable resource. Download it today!1
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If you want to learn more about how low code can help you adopt a successful digital conversion strategy, you can contact BAYPM. However, if you are more interested in learning about the pros and cons of leading low code platforms, check out Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise low code implementation platforms.