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Tag: low-code applications

  • Salesforce Launches Low-Code DevOps Platform

    Salesforce Launches Low-Code DevOps Platform

    Salesforce made generally available today a low-code DevOps Center service on its infrastructure through which developers are provided an opinionated platform for building custom applications. The Salesforce DevOps Center service is based on the same object model Salesforce uses to construct its own applications.

    Karen Fidelak, senior director of product management at Salesforce, said after nearly two years of development effort, this platform will make it simpler for both professional and citizen developers to build applications consistently using a common Source Control repository. That’s especially critical for professional developers that may need to access source code previously created by a citizen developer, Fidelak noted.

    In 2023, Salesforce will embed more robust continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) capabilities within the platform to make it simpler to deploy custom applications on the Salesforce platform, Fidelak added.

    In general, the number of developers willing to embrace DevOps best practices to build Salesforce applications has been surprising, since the platform was initially launched in 2020, noted Fidelak. She noted that both citizen and professional developers are looking to adopt best practices that provide a set of guardrails that ensure high-quality applications are secure. Salesforce anticipated a much higher level of DevOps resistance, added Fidelak.

    The DevOps Center platform enables development teams to track and deploy changes to custom objects on the Salesforce platform as Work Items that can be integrated with other Salesforce Flows, a set of process management tools the company provides. As development teams make changes in their sandboxes, DevOps Center automatically tracks them. Developers can then point and click to promote their desired metadata components via custom pipelines they define.

    In addition, Salesforce also provides optional integrations with version control systems such as GitHub to centralize the management and governance of artifacts.

    Finally, Salesforce is committing to tightening integration between DevOps Center and multiple software-as-as-service applications such as Tableau and middleware platforms such as Mulesoft, said Fidelak.

    It’s not clear how much low-code is moving through DevOps pipelines these days, but the volume is increasing as more developers rely on these tools to accelerate application development. The issue that creates is citizen developers typically don’t have the expertise required to build and deploy secure applications at scale—at least not applications that anybody other than themselves really wants to use. Ideally, citizen developers should be supported by application development platforms and DevOps teams that ensure security guardrails are in place for building applications at scale. DevOps teams should also reduce the friction that a citizen developer will most certainly encounter when building any application.

    The fact is, in the absence of that support, most citizen developers—who typically have other tasks that require their attention—will simply abandon an application development project should projects become overly complicated. None of this means organizations shouldn’t be working toward building their own army of citizen developers. The increased reliance on citizen developers is part of an inexorable wave of the democratization of IT. The challenge is making sure those applications are of the highest quality possible regardless of who actually developed them.

  • SAP Adds Low-Code Platform to Build Custom Apps Faster

    SAP Adds Low-Code Platform to Build Custom Apps Faster

    At the SAP TechEd 2022 conference, SAP SE today announced it has added a low-code platform, dubbed SAP Build, to its portfolio to make it simpler for organizations to build custom applications.

    Sebastian Schrötel, vice president and head of low-code/no-code solutions for SAP, said SAP Build is designed to make the company’s low-code tools more accessible to a wider range of developers, including so-called citizen developers that generally don’t have a lot of programming expertise.

    The goal is to make it possible to monitor, analyze and automate processes by leveraging more than 500 templates available within SAP Build. The goal is to make it possible to not only build applications faster but also deploy them via a single click, said Schrötel.

    The company’s approach to building custom applications separates its core applications from code developed by others by running pristine instances of SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications in a separate cloud, known as the SAP digital core. A custom application is then deployed in a separate cloud and accesses SAP data via application programming interface (API). That approach enables SAP to update its ERP environment without worrying about breaking custom extensions.

    Of course, not every organization has transitioned to that model, so there are still plenty of instances of SAP software running in on-premises IT environments extended using code written in Java or the proprietary ABAP programming language. Over time, SAP is hoping that custom code will either be retired in favor of a process it has added to its ERP platform or by a more modern instance of that process running with a custom application deployed on a separate SAP cloud platform.

    SAP also has partnerships with providers of low-code platforms like Mendix and OutSystems that organizations can employ to build applications, but with the launch of SAP Build, the company is making a more concerted effort to encourage organizations to adopt the low-code platform it developed.

    While it’s not clear how eagerly low-code tools are embraced by citizen developers versus professional developers, the one thing that is certain is the pace of application development is accelerating. In many instances, professional developers are embracing low-code platforms as an alternative to procedural code to reduce expanding application development backlogs brought on by digital business transformation initiatives. In other instances, professional developers are employing low-code tools to collaborate more easily with end users as they build and deploy the applications that drive those processes.

    Regardless of the motivation, the impact this accelerated rate of application development will have on DevOps teams is profound. Not only do these applications have to be deployed in production environments, but DevOps teams must also secure and maintain a much larger application portfolio. As a result, the need to automate DevOps workflows will become more pronounced than it already is.

  • Low-Code/No-Code Options Key to Bringing Web3 Mainstream

    Low-Code/No-Code Options Key to Bringing Web3 Mainstream

    Driven by cryptocurrencies and NFTs, Web3 is one of the most talked about technology industry waves in the last several years. But even with all the money it’s generated and the media coverage received, Web3 hasn’t yet gained the mainstream acceptance that Web2 has achieved. One of the main reasons for this gap is that blockchain-based technology continues to be complex, requiring developers to learn new languages and development environments as well as gain expertise in concepts like cryptography, hashing, oracles, zero-knowledge proofs, proof of work, proof of stake and more. And even once users understand that they then need to figure out how these pieces all fit together. The required time and money investment has slowed adoption by developers—until now.  

    Web3 is finally coming into its own, thanks in part to the abstraction provided by SDKs and APIs. This technology is making it increasingly possible for all developers, not just Web3 developers, to participate and innovate on this new wave of technology disruption.

    If you look at many of the providers in Web3 like Infura (ConsenSys), NFT Port and OpenSea, for example, and their growth, there’s been a significant movement from these providers over the past couple of years from simply providing nodes for underlying blockchains to now offering higher-level APIs. This translates into developers and companies no longer having to set up their own nodes to provide SDKs and higher-level APIs that rely on data indexers and pre-audited smart contracts to simplify token minting and reading from blockchains. 

    With the evolution of APIs and SDKs, developers using these programs no longer have to learn the intricacies of creating contracts on different blockchains, multiple developer tools, syntax and languages nor must they possess a deep understanding of these different blockchains. Instead, developers can rely on APIs that abstract the underlying complexity, easing the burden for developers who need only pass parameters like chain for indexing, token or smart contract IDs and other general-purpose information. These APIs will evolve into providing more low-code/no-code offerings with larger graphical UI components that developers can simply drag-and-drop to extract value as well as create DApps that can also be retrofitted into their existing applications or app infrastructure. 

    This evolution will be similar to the way the cloud evolved; look at AWS’ and Azure’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) as a current example. Existing apps could be lifted and shifted onto the cloud. This led to platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings with APIs that were cloud-ready; with developers’ latency, security and scalability needs augmented by low-code or no-code offerings. This is also similar to Microsoft’s Power Platform which used drag-and-drop operations on many cloud components, allowing integration and extensibility of the Microsoft platform in a short amount of time. This spawned a new generation of ecosystem players as the bar to participate and innovate in the cloud lowered; now every type of developer, no matter what their area of expertise, can take advantage. This also meant that the new technology was accessible for all developers to solve business challenges more quickly while significantly decreasing time-to-market.  

    You can already see this parallel in the Web3 world. A lot of the key players building developer tools are starting to target the business and technical decision-makers. They are talking about how easy it would be for Web2 developers to leverage their high-level APIs and SDKs (something that Web2 developers understand extremely well) to use Web3 technology to solve new business challenges. And they can do so without setting up expensive innovation organizations and looking for scarce (and expensive) Web3 developers. The next step in this evolution would be to extend these APIs for NFTs, analytics, streaming, MEVs, estimating gas and more to have no-code, automatically generated components that finally allow more Web2 developers to transition to Web3 and, as a result, bring Web3 into the mainstream.

  • Despite Democratization, IT Department More Central Than Ever

    Despite Democratization, IT Department More Central Than Ever

    There’s been talk of the decentralization of IT within organizations for years, and events of recent years have certainly accelerated this trend. Yet, IT has never been more important to the success of the organization.

    According to ManageEngine’s newly released IT at Work: 2022 and Beyond study, an increasing number of IT-related decisions are being made outside of the formal IT department. Yet, the survey also found that just as non-IT employees and the lines of business take a larger role in choosing their technology stack, collaboration between IT and other areas of the business has actually increased, not decreased as many feared would occur.

    The survey found that 76% of North American decision-makers reported their organization encourages non-IT employees to develop their own applications using low-code/no-code platforms and most departments, most notably notable quality control (24%) and finance (21%), are independently turning to AI/ML solutions to perform their jobs.

    These findings echoed an earlier survey conducted by IDG for Snow Software. This survey found that 67% of respondents believed that at least half of their IT budget is controlled by their various business units and not the IT department. Interestingly, 78% agreed that this is a positive development for their organization and that it would ultimately enable their business to become more innovative and agile.

    That may be so, but many North American IT decision-makers responding to the ManageEngine survey (48%) also believed that a lack of training and basic technical knowledge (47%) are holding back their staff from taking full advantage of the technology available to them. Still, 76% of survey respondents reported that their staff is more technology-savvy today than they were before the pandemic.

    Those benefits aside, a full 99% of respondents said that their organization also faced challenges due to IT decentralization, most notably maintaining IT security (56%), overall quality maintenance (41%) and the reliability of ongoing support (37%).

    Paradoxically, despite the increased technology autonomy within organizations, the ManageEngine survey found that 82% of North American business and technology leaders agreed that collaboration between IT and other lines of business increased in the past two years. Further, 89% believed that the IT department’s success is directly linked with the general success of their organization.

    “Those enterprises that succeed here will be those that are able to not only have the right policies in place that encourage IT and line-of-business collaboration but the technology also in place that will identify applications and cloud services independently deployed by those line-of-business managers,” said Scott Crawford, an analyst with 451 Research, S&P Global Market Intelligence.

    It’s clear that the ease with which low-code/no-code platforms, cloud services and other cloud platforms made business technology accessible to non-IT decision-makers has decentralized and democratized IT decision-making. What’s interesting is that IT departments have found their relevance and importance within organizations increasing, and not decreasing as many feared. Those IT departments that have succeeded, and that will continue to succeed, are those that find themselves capable of supporting the technology decisions their various departments have made rather than centrally trying to control those decisions.

    The ManageEngine survey is based on the responses from 3,300 global IT and business decision-makers with 500 of those respondents residing in North America.

  • The Future of Low-Code Development

    The Future of Low-Code Development

    Fear of automation (automation anxiety) has existed since the 16th century. It has been a major driver of negative attitudes toward technology and machines (also known as technophobia). With more sophisticated low-code and no-code development solutions on the horizon, even software developers face bouts of disquietude related to their job security. 

    While low-code solutions have the power to improve customer experiences rapidly by automating redundant business processes, can they replace developers altogether? The following guide will attempt to peer into the future of low-code development by analyzing current trends and upcoming advancements. 

    Understanding Low-Code Development’s Recent Popularity 

    Low-code describes tools, platforms, and other technologies that allow you to build applications with as little coding as possible. Many of these platforms let you build entire web or phone applications through a drag-and-drop interface.

    However, most small-to-medium size enterprises use these low-code tools to build simple background services to help optimize employee workflows. Recently, we have seen the popularity of rapid software development and deployment methodologies such as Agile and DevOps.

    Many businesses have begun to integrate cross-functional collaboration models to optimize these pipelines. This has spawned multidisciplinary development teams known as fusion teams. These teams often consist of a mixture of software developers and non-tech business analysts who may not have coding experience.

    IT leaders have found that the best way to bridge the gap between fusion team members is through low-code development platforms. Many of these platforms have begun to roll out new features to facilitate smooth collaboration between fusion teams as well.

    Low-code platforms have always been used to create rudimentary solutions to urgent business problems. However, recently, they have advanced to address new problem domains.      

    A Brief History of Low-Code

    Microsoft Access is one of the earliest examples of a commercial no-code/low-code tool. It allows you to build databases using forms and other graphical tools. The tool was originally intended to help users build small personal databases without using SQL (or Transact-SQL). However, workers began sharing these Access-created databases among their peers.

    Eventually, large companies would start building entire workflows around these databases. There are many reasons why this may become a liability for these companies. Using a fully specialized relational database management system such as Microsoft SQL or MySQL is the safer bet. 

    Organizations must still use the services of experienced software developers and database administrators. These professionals can ensure that databases are secure and compliant with standards such as HIPAA and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

    Thus, despite Microsoft Access allowing non-technical users to create databases without any knowledge of SQL, programmers were still required to connect the dots. Low-code tools such as Access allowed business users to develop concepts and prove markets before bringing in developers to expand on the core ideas.

    Developers would then remodel the data (for optimization) and build applications around these Access databases.  

    The Current State of Low-Code Development

    Today, more involved and sophisticated low-code development platforms (LCDPs) can be used to build desktop and mobile apps. We have seen low-code tools empowered by cloud-native SaaS applications, allowing users to build scalable architectures easily. These LCDPs can allow you to build custom mobile, desktop and web apps that can satisfy advanced use cases such as accepting payments or simple ones such as restricting access to certain content.  

    A software developer’s focus is to write code; that is their daily life. Thus, they may not have the on-the-job experience of the professionals or the use cases they write applications for. Who is more equipped to write robust medical apps than doctors and other medical staff? Who can fully sympathize with the plight of construction workers better than other construction workers? 

    That’s why the “citizen developers” movement has become so prominent. In fact, research conducted by Gartner revealed that over 41% of non-IT professionals customize or build their own software solutions to address business problems. Despite these statistics, businesses still need the input of developers. The problem domain has just evolved.

    Where Do We Go from Here?

    As sophisticated as LCDP and NCDP tools are becoming, they still have their limitations. In the future, businesses will be able to address these limitations in a couple of ways. 

    Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    Machine learning and artificial intelligence will be highly influential in the direction of low-code/no-code technology. Platforms like Microsoft’s AI builder already provide a low-code approach to building machine learning-powered automated software. You can then integrate these template-built ML models into your business applications or software stack. 

    We have seen how they have been used in medical and veterinary communication software to automate scheduling and communications. Thus, LCDPs can be used to make machine learning more accessible to non-coders. 

    However, machine learning can also make low-code platforms more effective. For instance, ML-powered data mining can be used to find the latest updates and the best solutions to business problems. It will allow NCDPs/LCDPs to provide more relevant and tailor-made suggestions to citizen developers.  

    In the future, it may be possible to build an automation process or application by simply supplying a specification through text, a UML use-case diagram, or speech. This allows for more flexible project composition options.  

    Improving the user experience is one of the most important priorities of IT leaders today. Machine learning paired with low-code will help businesses rapidly address these challenges.   

    Hiring Professional Developers to Overcome Low-Code’s Limitations

    Eventually, business owners and non-IT staff run into problems that low-code solutions simply cannot address–at least not out of the box. In these situations, it would be best to hire a developer.

    Enterprises will still require the services of professional application developers for more involved and complicated use cases. This will be the case even with machine learning and artificial intelligence powering future low-code solutions. 

    The truth is while business users may hold a deeper understanding of the relationship between business objects, only trained and experienced software developers can efficiently implement these concepts in code.

    Thus, no-code will not bring about the extinction of the professional developer. Instead, it will facilitate improved collaborations between citizen developers and professional developers. This is especially important for medium to complex projects.

    Security Must be Addressed

    The industry’s recent trends and heavy emphasis on cybersecurity and network security are another reason why software developers will not become obsolete. For instance, many developers have found that they need to pay more attention to API security, thanks to uncovered vulnerabilities in APIs such as Log4j. 

    As such, they must integrate security earlier in the development pipeline to prevent any possible data leaks and breaches. Most low-code tools use APIs to build applications. Unfortunately, citizen developers cannot secure their applications the same way professional application developers can. Even as LCDPs receive security updates regularly, it may not be enough to protect business applications from future cyberattacks.

    Again, this is why collaboration between citizen and professional developers is so important. Only the latter can truly ensure that business software is secured appropriately.

    Better Collaboration is the Future of Low-Code

    Future no-code and low-code tools must be able to easily promote collaboration between professional developers and non-developers. These platforms should provide relatively easy and secure ways for developers to access code to modify and extend it as freely as possible.  

    In most cases, software developers already have frameworks and tools that they prefer to use for their workflows. From IDEs, CI/CD automation to testing software; low-code platforms should be able to plug into or interface with these established environments and tools. 

    Again, this attribute is extremely important, especially with the sweeping popularity of development and delivery methodologies such as Agile and DevOps. These techniques and models require smooth collaborative action between cross-functional teams. The more flexible an LCDP, the better. We’ve seen how unnecessary programming constraints of modern LCDPs can obstruct progress in cross-functional settings. These shortcomings must be addressed. If LCDPs/NCDPs fail to do this, their existence in the market will most likely be short-lived.

    Conclusion

    We do not see low-code platforms completely deprecating professional software developers in the near (or far) future. However, they will change how developers build software. Business and job requirements for programmers will evolve too as low-code has the potential to improve collaboration between developers and non-developers. 

    Citizen developers can use low-code tools to model what they want for their final product before allowing experienced developers to expand and build upon these ideas. Thus, these low-code development platforms must be accessible and easier to use for citizen developers but less restrictive and more flexible for professional application developers. They must allow professional devs to code more freely. This will be the focus of low-code platform developers in the coming years.

  • AppSmith Adds Git Support to Low-Code App Dev Framework

    AppSmith Adds Git Support to Low-Code App Dev Framework

    AppSmith has added support for Git repositories to an open source framework for building custom applications using a low-code platform based on the JavaScript programming language.

    Rishabh Kaul, head of marketing for AppSmith, said the Git support will make it simpler for developers to manage version control as they iteratively build applications using a set of graphical widgets provided by AppSmith.

    AppSmith is used primarily by developers to build internal applications that automate a specific task or workflow. Support for Git makes it possible for multiple developers to more easily collaborate as they add work to a Git branch and make requests within the context of a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline.

    That also makes it simpler to test applications and roll back to a previous version in the event something should go wrong, said Kaul.

    The Community Edition of AppSmith will make it possible to connect to unlimited public repositories and up to three private ones before requiring developers to upgrade.

    In recent years, use of low-code tools has increased dramatically as organizations embrace tools that enable them to build applications faster. Not every application requires developers to employ tools for working with procedural code. There are typically hundreds of use cases where an organization could build and deploy an application that would eliminate the need for an internal team to license yet another packaged application.

    In general, AppSmith and other open source tool and framework providers are betting that, as the economy continues to shrink, the adoption of these tools will increase as organizations continue to become more sensitive to costs. That approach will allow them to continue to provide applications tailored to automate specific tasks.

    The challenge, of course, is that as the number of applications being built and deployed steadily increases, the DevOps workflows that regularly update, secure and maintain those applications become much more challenging.

    It’s not clear what percentage of applications are now being built using some type of low-code tool. However, the overall size of organizations’ application portfolio is generally much higher than it was prior to the pandemic. Many of those applications are driving digital business processes intended to make the workforce more efficient at a time when many employees continue to work from home.

    Less clear, however, is how many new applications are being built by so-called citizen developers. One way or another, however, it’s becoming easier for end users that have some basic software understanding to build applications. Inevitably, those application development efforts will also need to be integrated within the context of a DevOps workflow.

    Regardless of how an individual DevOps team may view low-code tools, they have permanently altered the application development landscape. The issue is no longer whether low-code tools will be used by developers but rather to what extent. In the meantime, DevOps teams would be well advised to review just how extensible their existing pipelines need to become.

  • ACCELQ Further Automates Testing of Low-Code, No-Code Apps

    ACCELQ Further Automates Testing of Low-Code, No-Code Apps

    ACCELQ today unveiled the cloud-based ACCELQ Live test automation platform that is continuously integrated with a wide range of low-code and no-code application development and deployment platforms.

    ACCELQ CEO Mahendra Alladi said the goal is to make it simpler to run complex tests across a multi-cloud computing environment.

    Usage of low-code and no-code tools has greatly expanded since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many organizations are now relying on these tools to accelerate a wide range of digital business transformation initiatives. The challenge they encounter is that many of these processes depend on multiple applications that have lots of interdependencies across which it is difficult to conduct tests, noted Alladi.

    The ACCELQ Live platform reduces testing complexity by automatically updating itself as, for example, Salesforce or ServiceNow platforms are updated. It also provides access to pre-built codeless automation assets modeled on business processes via a live link. The company is also moving toward creating a marketplace where software vendors and service providers can build and deploy pre-built testing assets, as well.

    Gartner predicts the adoption of low-code and no-code technologies will nearly triple by 2025. Testing those applications creates a major challenge as the pace of application development increases. The only way organizations will be able to keep pace is by embracing test automation platforms infused with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, said Alladi. In effect, ACCELQ’s ACCELQ Live represents an effort to democratize the testing of cloud and enterprise apps, he added.

    As organizations increasingly appreciate their dependence on software, the way tests are being conducted is rapidly evolving. In addition to dedicated testing teams, developers and application owners are becoming more involved as responsibility for testing applications continues to shift further left. The challenge organizations face is the volume of applications that are simultaneously being constructed has significantly increased. Platforms that automate many lower-level testing functions are gaining traction as a means to enable humans to focus more of their time and energy on testing more complex functionality. The goal now should be to first rely on test automation platforms as much as possible and then employ humans to fill in the gaps as necessary, said Alladi.

    It may be a while before most organizations achieve that level of test automation. However, with each passing day, it’s apparent that AI will play a larger role in application testing. The issue that many DevOps teams are now working through is how to incorporate test automation platforms within the context of a larger workflow.

    In the meantime, the rate at which application testers become burned out should decline as more routine errors are uncovered by machines. It’s not likely AI will eliminate the need for dedicated testing teams any time soon, but as more rote tasks become automated there is going to be more time to focus on enhancing overall quality at a time when application environments have not only become much more distributed but also a lot more complex.

  • How to Get Started With Low-Code/No-Code

    How to Get Started With Low-Code/No-Code

    Software development is complex. It can take years of practice to become an experienced developer. But the good news is that you can build many applications without ever learning to code.

    Low-code/no-code development is the practice of using a visual interface and drag-and-drop elements to build applications for business processes without coding.

    These types of tools can be used by non-technical users to build many types of applications; these can then be integrated with other software systems. By learning low-code/no-code development, you will be able to create software for yourself or your business much faster than if you were to learn how to code the traditional way.

    In this post, we’ll cover why you should learn no-code development, along with some great learning resources and communities you can join to get started with low-code and no-code development.

    Low-Code/No-Code is Gaining Popularity

    The internet is a very different place today than it was even a short 10 years ago. In the past, websites simply aggregated information to an audience on the web. Today, websites are designed to engage and encourage visitors to take action, from filling out sales forms to education and training to shopping and scheduling appointments.

    Fortunately, the tools available on the market today have made it possible for individuals without coding experience to build beautiful websites, useful business applications and productivity and automation enhancements to workflows using no-code tools. In fact, 26% of executives say that no-code, low-code development platforms are their most vital automation investment.

    Forrester Research believed that by 2022, the market for no-code and low-code development platforms will increase to $21.2 billion. Another report from Gartner estimated that by 2024, 65% of application development activity will be credited to no-code development.   

    No-Code is For Everyone

    While there is still a place for code and professional developers, no-code development gives individuals a way to build applications and boost their productivity and their effectiveness faster, cheaper and better than ever before. In addition, it relieves the burden on IT, software development and DevOps teams who can offload the work of creating applications to the actual users of those applications.

    No-code also allows for collaboration of citizen developers with other cross-functional teams in the business, while developing apps that can solve for their unique challenges.  

    Better Agility

    No-code can also accelerate digital transformation. The most important advantage of no-code development is speed. On average, it takes a few minutes to build a simple app or a website using no-code tools. When you’re developing more complex projects such as an entire business management system, this speed can be a major competitive advantage. It lets you quickly test your ideas and iterate until you get the results you want.

    Since most development is done with a drag-and-drop interface that is built visually using pre-built modules, you can create apps faster. Usually, even testing is automated, which further speeds up development time. In fact, no-code platforms can reduce development time by 90%.

    Reduced Cost

    Forrester reported that when one company passed up hiring two IT developers and implemented low-code tools instead, they saw an increase of about $4.4 million in business value from the resulting apps over three years. Naturally, since low-code/no-code technology removes the need for and additional cost of developers, it helps you cut those costs as well. 

    Increased Productivity

    People who make the switch from traditional coding to no-code development often say that it feels like a new world. It’s fast, easy and efficient—and you can create beautiful results with relatively little effort. 

    It is estimated that 71% of organizations that leverage citizen development could speed up app development by at least 50%. And 29% of companies noticed delivery speed doubled. These numbers suggest that citizen development and no-code development can increase productivity tremendously.

    No-Code Apps Are Customizable and Scalable  

     If a company wants to add a new feature or change existing ones, many no-code apps are flexible enough to adapt. The majority of no-code app development platforms allow you to add new features and customize your app. Low-code apps, on the other hand, are slightly less flexible and often have predefined components that make it difficult to customize the app.

    Plus, because of the drag-and-drop elements, no-code app development platforms allow you to build an app quickly. You don’t need coding skills to create an app. Instead, you will rely on prebuilt modules and templates.

    Getting Started With Low-Code/No-Code 

    There are lots of great resources out there to help you learn how to build your apps and workflows without code. Here are some of our favorite places to start!

    1. No Code HQ

    No Code HQ is a great resource for learning how to build your website or app without the need to code.

    It is a community of no-code builders, where they showcase their newest projects, share news and experiences and engage with and learn from each other. You will get tutorials about no-code development, templates and tools to start your no-code project.

    2. Nucode 

    This community has more than 5,000 no-code builders and experts. They learn and share experiences and showcase the progress of creating no-code products.

    3. No-Code Makers

    This forum is for no-code experts to learn, interact, share and collaborate with other no-code community members and creators. They regularly update the community with news about no-code tools and experiences. 

    4. Nocoders Academy

    This is another space for no-coders that arms you with valuable information. You will find many tutorials, learning materials and over 200 free resources on various tools. Soon, the site said there will be a formal traning academy with mentors and tutors. 

    5. NoCode.Tech 

    This is a directory of over 200 tools and strategies implemented by developers and no-code makers. Even a novice can learn how to build no-code software and receive community support. 

    The idea of learning to code can be overwhelming, even for experienced designers. This is why no-code is so appealing to so many people—it is essentially instantaneous, which allows you to create projects without worrying about the coding process. Have fun!

  • The Future of Code

    The Future of Code

  • Low-Code: Bridging the Gap Between DevOps and Business

    Low-Code: Bridging the Gap Between DevOps and Business

    The need to innovate faster, manage multiple environments, optimize an application’s life cycle and achieve continuous delivery are aspirational goals that a successful DevOps team strives for. But there are loads of challenges, as meeting these goals increases the pressure on DevOps teams to adopt improved application architecture, new tools and developer workflows.

    The overarching principle of DevOps is continuous effort, including continuous business planning, collaborative development, continuous testing, continuous release and deployment, continuous monitoring and collaborative customer feedback. This is where low-code development platforms are emerging as an integral way to empower DevOps teams.
    If you look closely, ​​low-code and DevOps share common benefits: The ability to offer faster, scalable and complex applications consistently to meet business needs.

    However, many DevOps teams still rely on conventional manual coding and automation. Low-code can also supplement the talent shortage by enabling folks without extensive programming experience to develop and deploy applications faster.

    How Low-Code Platforms Impact DevOps

    Automated Application Deployment: Low-code platforms increase the speed of DevOps while also reducing the overall complexity by providing a unified platform to enable the cultural shift. From managing version control to validating builds, low-code platforms do all the heavy lifting for your developers. With low-code, you can deploy almost anything in a single click—user interface, workflows, database and/or integration components.

    Clutter-Free DevOps: Low-code platforms allow you to integrate with different programming tools using APIs, SOAP and REST web services.

    Hassle-Free Migration: Organizations can keep their legacy systems alive longer by making their functionality available to many other systems. Consider developing an Android and iOS mobile application on top of your existing CRM system. While your core system maintains, a low-code platform allows you to develop add-ons or new apps on top of it. Furthermore, because low-code platforms provide easy-to-use tools, citizen developers may participate in the migration process.

    Maintenance at Scale: With low-code, you don’t have to worry about updating apps over time because the platform designer always updates and refines the stored interfaces—and, as a result, your application—without even bothering you.

    Enterprise-Grade Security: Security is a top consideration when building scalable apps. Low-code platforms enable your IT and DevOps teams to manage data and user access. Each user can be provided with access to only the information and functionality that they require based on their roles and responsibilities.

    Compliance and Security: Legitimate low-code platforms adhere to the Global Compliance Assurance Standards, as well as ISAE and ISO certifications. Security should be a top priority for your platform, which will serve clients from a variety of businesses, including government entities. Besides integrating robust security and governance features, make sure that your platform has also implemented an ISO/IEC 27001-compliant information security management system (ISMS).

    Democratizing IT: Bringing Business and DevOps Together

    A major challenge for DevOps is to constantly meet the changing needs of the business. The invariably dynamic nature of processes demands continuous optimization, which turns out to be a bottleneck for business, especially if IT can’t deliver applications on time. To make this whole approach scalable, low-code platforms provide multiple environments for your business and DevOps team to test, build, deploy and modify applications collaboratively.

    A comprehensive low-code platform offers the means of both visual programming and coding capability. For usability reasons, these tools are clearly separated and presented to the development team in a way that allows citizen developers and business users—who are most commonly the domain experts—to use the visual components while developers can work on adding custom code to extend the capabilities of the application.

    While a complex app can only be developed by an experienced professional developer, modifying the look and feel of an app or building/modifying basic functionality can be carried out by business users/citizen developers.

    Moving IT Up the Value Chain From Executor to Enabler

    IT teams are now viewed as critical to enabling their businesses to achieve greater productivity and profitability. By providing a self-serve model using a low-code platform, you can enable citizen developers to build custom apps, employees to use portals at their convenience and create dashboards to improve everyone’s visibility, among other value-adds.

    The key is to provide your teams with the right set of tools with the right level of access while still enabling IT to manage and monitor these low-code applications’ reach. For DevOps and IT ­leaders, it provides an opportunity to empower businesses with strategic insights and recommend solutions that best suit business goals, mitigating risks and offering budgeting strategies, rather than just being a facilitator of technology.