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Tag: low-code platforms

Vibe Coding Can Create Unseen Vulnerabilities

Artificial intelligence (AI) is having a dramatic impact on software development. AI-supported software development, also known as “vibe coding,” is the latest phenomenon to impact application development. Using AI to write software shortens application development time and puts coding in the hands of less experienced developers. It also introduces the potential for adding security vulnerabilities to AI-written software.

The appeal of vibe coding is compelling, especially for smaller businesses with limited budgets. However, vibe coding can put coding in the hands of line managers who better understand strategic goals. However, just because vibe coding simplifies development, taking the developer out of the loop can be a critical error. AI-written code requires expert review and validation.

AI tools are competing with no-code and low-code tools to reduce development times and cut costs. While AI offers substantial freedom in designing software, developer supervision remains essential to prevent security weaknesses and other issues.

The Birth of Vibe Coding

Vibe coding is a new phenomenon introduced by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy in a tweet in February 2025. Karpathy’s notion is to use generative AI to write applications. Rather than writing software line by line, he describes what he wants and lets AI create the app. As he explains, “But it’s not really coding – I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy-paste stuff, and it mostly works.”

In practice, genAI can be used for “pure” vibe coding, where the user trusts the AI to generate and refine working code to create a web application. There’s also AI-assisted vibe coding, where genAI acts as a collaborator, developing applications for user review and testing. The practice has gained momentum, and vibe coding platforms like GitHub Copilot, Replit, and Cursor are already available.

With vibe coding, anyone can develop a web app. Users describe what they want to do using natural language, and the AI generates the code. Vibe coding can be useful for experimentation, proof-of-concept development, and modeling new applications, but creating commercial-quality applications still requires developer expertise.

What vibe coding does is change software development to a problem-first approach, using AI to generate software without concern for how that code is structured. It’s akin to writing software in a black box; the application does the job but with no visibility into the underlying code or architecture. It makes optimization and debugging difficult, including identifying security weaknesses.

Security Issues with Vibe Coding

Vibe coding does accelerate app prototyping and makes software collaboration easier, but it also has several shortcomings.

Security is a serious concern. Large language models (LLMs) are inherently vulnerable to security risks when used by those without sufficient security experience. Moreover, the risk is amplified by the fact that AI is so flexible that it’s impossible to give out simple, universal rules on how to make AI write secure code for you.

LLMs may use outdated libraries, lack input validation, or fail to follow secure practices. AI code generators also lack an understanding of trust boundaries and system architectures. When using vibe coding, programmer oversight and review are necessary to prevent these issues from entering production code.

Working with black-box code also makes it difficult to provide context about the app. For example, improper configurations may expose internal logic by sending sensitive code snippets to external APIs. This can be a real problem in highly regulated industries with strict rules about code handling.

Vibe coding also tends to add technical debt, accumulating unreviewed or unexplained blocks of code. Over time, these code blocks proliferate, creating a glut and making code maintenance more difficult.

Since less experienced developers tend to use vibe coding, they can overlook security issues. Consider the recent Tea Dating Advice hack. A hacker was able to access 72,000 images stored in a public Firebase data repository because of a misconfigured Firebase storage bucket. Firebase may be a logical storage choice for scale and performance, but the genAI code generator may have chosen a more secure approach if informed that the data is sensitive and subject to privacy laws.

It has also been demonstrated that AI agents actually lie. In one well-publicized case, the AI agent generated fake data and reports, covered bugs, and deleted a production database to hide mistakes. Anthropic conducted a hypothetical test where the AI agent learned it was to be replaced. In response, the agent used information from the corporate email to blackmail the user in charge to prevent its deletion.

The Need for the Developer in the Loop

Vibe coding has its place in software development, but its role is not creating commercial-grade code. Like any other tool that abstracts machine code, vibe coding is useful for AI-assisted development. It’s an ideal tool for testing new ideas, creating proof-of-concept apps, and modeling an app for development.

Vibe coding is not as well-suited for creating commercial applications. In addition to posing security risks, the lack of visibility into the code structure makes troubleshooting, integration, and maintenance difficult. That’s why it’s essential to have a developer in the loop.

Organizations can cut development time and costs without compromising quality or control by using alternative automated coding tools. No-code tools enable businesses to create complex applications with little or no programming experience. Rather than using AI to generate code, no-code solutions provide software modules that can be assembled as building blocks to create new software. No-code draws on the expertise of proven software, since each module is thoroughly tested, making it easy to model software functionality using a simple graphical user interface to map out workflows.

Using AI for software development seems like a great solution, but relying on computers to write computer programs is fraught with problems. Vibe coding can be valuable for experimentation and ideation, but it requires software expertise to write applications that are both functional and secure. No matter how advanced the automation tools are, they still need an expert’s hand to create high-quality software.

November 11, 2025
Exploring Low/No-Code Platforms, GenAI, Copilots and Code Generators

The emergence of low/no-code platforms is challenging traditional notions of coding expertise. Gone are the days when coding was an exclusive skill set reserved for a knowledgeable few. Low/no-code platforms have democratized software development. They empower individuals from non-IT or technical backgrounds to translate their business ideas into applications without the need to master complex programming languages.

These low/no-code platforms, with their user-friendly drag-and-drop interfaces and pre-built components, have simplified application development. Imagine building a smart home application with just a few clicks and drags — low/no-code platforms are making it possible.

Add generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) into the mix, and the new development practices change the field remarkably.

The Impact of Gen AI on Low-Code Platforms

Expect low-code platforms to evolve further, becoming more intelligent, adaptable and seamlessly integrated into the software development lifecycle. There will be a shift towards platforms that use Gen AI to understand user intent, automate routine tasks and generate complex code snippets.

Gartner predicts that, by 2026, over 80% of enterprises will use GenAI APIs and models or deploy GenAI-enabled applications in production environments, up from less than 5% in early 2023.

Combining low-code and Gen AI will empower developers by automating routine tasks and allowing them to focus on high-level logic and creativity. Gen AI acts as a multiplier that can accelerate and optimize developmental operations.
McKinsey estimates that generative AI could add $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy by 2040.

Another Tool: AI Copilots and Code Generators

Another promising application for AI large language models (LLMs) is AI-powered assistants. Enter copilots and code generators — AI assistants that take the hassle out of coding.

While low/no-code platforms have transformed application development, copilots and code generators add an extra layer of efficiency.

AI copilots use a chat interface to simplify coding through a chat interface, where developers articulate their code requirements in natural language prompts, and the copilot generates the code accordingly. These assistants provide real-time assistance, offering contextual suggestions and code snippets, and they can anticipate potential bugs. Moreover, they can explain code blocks, generate unit tests and propose bug fixes, which enhances the coding process.
AI copilots are like trusted assistants, ready to aid you with specific coding tasks or generate complex code – and they do it swiftly.

The Big Question

As a result of low/no-code platforms gaining traction, the skill sets required in the tech industry will transform. Gone are the days when proficiency in multiple programming languages was a must-have.

With low/no-code tools taking center stage, does this mean coding is becoming obsolete?

A big no.

While basic programming knowledge remains valuable, it’s no longer the sole requirement for building innovative applications. With low/no-code platforms democratizing application development, individuals from diverse backgrounds can leverage technology to create impactful solutions.

Do GenAI, copilots, and code generators render low/no-code platforms obsolete?

Again, no.

While GenAI, copilots, and code generators excel at certain specific tasks, low/no-code platforms offer a holistic solution, combining visual interface design, database integration and more. They’re the Swiss army knives of development, catering to a wide range of needs beyond just code generation.

Gen AI, copilots and code generators are not here to replace low/no-code platforms or traditional coding practices. Instead, they are positioned to complement and enhance them. The fusion of these technologies holds great promise in simplifying software development, boosting efficiency, and unlocking new avenues for innovation.

The Final Word

With better code suggestions and automated testing capabilities, low/no-code platforms deliver high-quality solutions that meet the demands of today’s tech-savvy users.

With the thrilling combination of low/no-code platforms and GenAI, the future of software development is promising. While these advancements may disrupt traditional coding, they also present opportunities for innovation and creativity.

It’s time for us to embrace this change and build a brighter tomorrow, one line of code — or lack thereof — at a time.

April 18, 2024
The Future of Low-Code is Open

The low-code market is seeing meteoric rise across the world, as companies try to keep up with digitization demands and shrinking IT budgets. Even as we witness increasing low-code adoption among professional as well as citizen developers, an intriguing question comes to mind – What lies ahead for low-code, and could it ever become a mainstream approach for modern development teams?

The answer may well be an open source, low-code platform that offers high productivity, while supporting seamless integration with the overall fabric of modern software development practices within an enterprise.

It’s feasible to assume that low-code will evolve to become open low-code, resulting in greater innovation and agility.

To further understand what this means, let’s dive deeper. What are open systems?

According to Wikipedia, open systems are computer systems that provide some combination of interoperability, portability and open software standards.

Over the years, the software industry has seen great benefits from designing, implementing and consuming open systems. TCP/IP protocol standards, UNIX systems, Web browsers, REST APIs – all of these are shining examples of open standards that went on to become highly successful and widely adopted. By remaining open, they enabled higher interoperability, streamlined development and fostered rapid innovation.

Low-code is now at a critical stage in its adoption curve. For the last few years, we have seen citizen developers successfully execute shadow IT with low-code and churn out applications at a breathtaking pace. Today, low-code platforms are hardened for enterprise use, are programmed to understand the scalability and security needs of a complex application and have integration capabilities mature enough to seamlessly fit in with existing tools and technologies. As a result, we are now seeing greater adoption of low-code within the professional development community, covering a diverse set of use cases from simple dashboards to complex applications. The natural next evolution of low-code is that it becomes mainstream within enterprise IT, and is used to build mission-critical applications and systems. So, how does this next phase play out for application development?

The Case For an Open Low-Code Platform

The approaches and techniques of modern software development teams has changed dramatically to meet the demands of modern, software-enabled business. Developer velocity and organizational agility have become key benchmarks for high performing software development teams, as those metrics have a direct correlation with software excellence and superior business performance. According to a research report by McKinsey, teams that belong to the top quartile with regards to developer velocity score have 60% higher total shareholder returns and 20% higher operating margins. Such teams can experiment faster and release code to production without delays.

As application teams continue to embrace low-code for mainstream development, it is vital that low-code platforms support developers so they are encouraged to employ modern application development and delivery best practices. Low-code should introduce minimal disruptions to a developer’s working practices and workflow. Also, it is important that low-code can integrate seamlessly with the fabric of the overall enterprise application architecture. This can happen if a low code-platform is open standards-based and flexible so that the rest of the enterprise application infrastructure can coexist with it.

What Makes a Low-Code Platform Open?

Developer-Centric Features

Developers like control, flexibility and a unified experience. They find comfort in sticking to their preferred languages, tools and application development and delivery workflows. A low-code platform that offers productivity with equal flexibility, with a focus on building robust enterprise architecture, is bound to be the future of application development. Platforms should focus on providing a unified developer experience across concept, design, integration, development and deployment stages of the app life cycle, employing a technology stack that is modern, best-of-breed and cloud-native. It’s equally important to provide a way for developers to easily bring any external innovations into the low-code platform.

Visualization, Customization and Ownership

Many low-code platforms do not generate 100% of an application’s code. Also, most of the code generated by proprietary platforms is also proprietary, and quite often remains hidden and not easily accessible or extensible. A platform that generates open standards-based, real code is a great asset, especially for professional developers building complex applications that require extensive customization and deep integration with enterprise tooling (security, testing, debugging, integration etc.). The code generated should be based on developer-friendly, best-of-breed application stacks and standard design patterns. This way, application teams will have complete familiarity with and understanding of the code. Enabling full export of the code allows teams to own the code created by the platform.

Flexible Application Architecture

The application architecture should be loosely coupled, supporting microservices and micro front ends that can be independently built, deployed and scaled. This way, architecture can support cloud-native application development easily. Also, all other aspects of the application life cycle should allow for plug-and-play capability. This includes, but is not limited to, plugging in custom UI components (widgets, templates), custom security providers, custom back end code, logging frameworks, event driven systems, etc. A plug-and-play model ensures that development teams can integrate custom providers that are fine-tuned for the enterprise.

Modern Development Best Practices

Modern application development practices have evolved to allow teams to experiment faster and release code to production at a never-seen-before pace. Optimizations in performance and scalability have resulted in applications that can support millions of end users. As developers warm up to low-code, the platforms should align with and implement all modern development practices while building applications. The idea is to minimize friction in a developer’s journey towards low-code, so that they continue to leverage the same design principles, application tooling and enterprise integrations as they do in the complex programming world.

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)

Developers need a way to continuously deploy software so there is always a version of the application ready for production. Low-code platforms should support an IaC option, so code generated is always deployable seamlessly on the developer’s infrastructure of choice. Platform should integrate to build, test and release systems (version control systems, CI/CD, artifact repos, container image repos, Kubernetes clusters and public or private cloud instances, for example). This way, artifacts built by low-code are continuously integrated and deployed to the enterprise’s operational systems.

Low-code is at an inflection point within enterprises, as it becomes the platform of choice for digital transformation and application modernization. This is the opportunity for low-code platforms to become a key ingredient of an enterprise application architecture. An open low-code approach will allow application development teams to benefit from the underlying best practices prevalent within the organization.

Low-code is not merely a productivity tool; it has the potential to be a technological and cultural catalyst that drives enterprise innovation and business agility.

May 20, 2021
DevOps Trends to Watch in 2021

Engineers at fast-paced startups often wear both Dev and DevOps hats. Early in my career, as a developer at a sentiment-analysis startup, I was tasked with writing scripts to spin up servers, configure them, install necessary software and deploy the code we wrote. My custom shell scripts, Python scripts and cron jobs did all the heavy lifting so that we could reliably deploy software and scale resources on AWS. Fast forward to today, and that problem of confidently building and securely deploying software has become an even more enormous challenge at scale.

The Cloud-Native Application Stack

A simple looking e-commerce app today can easily be a big set of coordinating microservices that are powered by containers, orchestrated using Kubernetes and hosted on multi-cloud/hybrid cloud. This combination enables faster delivery of code, cheaper hosting bills and more efficient use of server resources.

While the application components certainly became smaller over time, organizations today are tasked with managing tens of thousands of containers in a production environment. In a 2020 Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) survey, 92% of respondents said they use containers in production, a 300% increase from just 23% in the first survey from March 2016. Such coordination complexity at scale is being managed by software delivery pipelines. Just as Ford revolutionized the automobile industry with its assembly line, these integrated DevOps products are massively impacting verticals like finance and insurance.

DevOps Trends

Trend: Developers are now Decision Makers and Influencers

We are excited to see the increasing impact and influence of developers when it comes to the selection of tools. The top-down sales motion largely doesn’t work in the cloud-native world, and needs to be supplemented by bottom-up community adoption. The best developers pick peer-recommended tools to solve these tech challenges. Developers today leverage large communities, self-organize and pick the best open source tools to kickstart small projects that have potential to impact the growth curve of any organization. For vendors, developer evangelism becomes an important strategy for customer acquisition.

Trend: Integrated Software Delivery Pipelines

CIOs typically pick category-leading products for each category of the DevOps toolchain, like CI, CD, SAST and SCA. Historically speaking, integrating these tools to maintain an effective CI/CD pipeline has been painful and requires stitching together tools using custom scripts. We hear the frustration when we speak with maintainers of such scripts. To address this challenge, we think end-to-end integrated DevOps platforms will become the norm. Such platforms will offer a few best-in-class components with built-in automation, and will enable organizations to integrate other DevOps tools in a plug-and-play manner.

Trend: Shifting Left with Code

The shift left phenomena, which enables fixing of bugs/security issues early in the software development life cycle when it is cheapest to do so, is accelerating. By implementing a shared security responsibility model and enabling developers to take more ownership related to infrastructure, security and other critical production issues with code, organizations are shipping code faster and cheaper with less bugs.

Trend: Low-Code DevOps Automation

Many workflows are pretty standard in the DevOps world. Go look at an alert in production; prioritize it, look at the knowledge base for a fix, create incident, apply fix, resolve ticket and then repeat. This example is an oversimplification, but there are many repeat use cases that can be automatically managed. These workflows can and should be automated, which can make DevOps teams more effective. We think that customizable low-code automation interfaces will evolve to act as secret weapons for effective DevOps engineers.

Trend: Security at the Speed of Dev

Software release cycles a decade ago used to be four to six months long — if not longer — but today, the software delivery life cycle and release cadence is accelerating. The 2019 State of DevOps report suggests that the top performers deploy software 1,460 times per year, which is effectively four deployments per day. Security, compliance, vulnerability management, authentication and authorization all have to move at this speed, otherwise delivery of secure code is just not possible. We see the most innovative CISOs adopt a shared ownership model of security that enables application component owners to detect and fix vulnerabilities. In this shared model, a good balance between agility (so that development is not blocked) and security (so that risk can be managed) needs to be struck.

Are You Building the Next Big Thing?

Cloud infrastructure is an enormous opportunity that Gartner expects to grow to $412 billion by 2024 and many enterprises are just getting started. If you haven’t been paying attention, Satya Nadella now runs Microsoft and Andy Jassy will soon run Amazon. Both these leaders are pioneers in cloud, having led Azure at Microsoft and AWS at Amazon, respectively. This shows how much the largest companies, as measured by global market cap, believe in the opportunity related to the cloud. We couldn’t agree more.

April 21, 2021
Low Code: A Modern Approach to Software Development
Low-code development is not a new concept, but since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, it has become increasingly popular. Low code helps businesses adapt to ever-changing environments quickly by allowing them to build, customize and deploy apps with little to no coding. It enables organizations to accelerate their innovation, automation and transformation efforts.

“With low-code applications, business analysts, project managers, operations teams and other business users are empowered to implement solutions for themselves,” said Prodly CEO Max Rudman. “Consequently, technical developers have more time to focus on projects that require specialized skills. Because developers are now able to focus on tasks that really do require programming expertise, they become more productive, too.”

On Nov. 19, the low-code community will come together for the first Low Code Today Virtual Summit to take a look at low code/no code in today’s new normal and highlight the impact of the rapid acceleration of low code use in the wake of COVID-19.

Here’s a sneak peek of some of the discussions that will take place during the event by some of the distinguished speakers presenting at Low Code Today.

Accelerate Digital Transformation With Low Code

In this interview, ServiceNow CIO Chris Bedi shares the main benefits of low code and talks about the ServiceNow Citizen Developer Program. During his keynote presentation, Chris will share a CIO perspective on rolling out low-code applications at scale, best practices from rolling out ServiceNow Citizen Developer Program and suggested guardrails to ensure a successful and secure implementation.

Empowering Citizen Developers With Low Code

During this interview, Kianda Chief Operating Officer Derya Sousa explains how low code accelerates digital transformation and empowers citizen developers. Derya will be presenting at Low Code Today Virtual Summit along with Kianda CEO Osvaldo Sousa. During their session, Derya and Osvaldo will discuss how organizations use low-code/no-code platforms to build fully responsive, easy-to-deploy enterprise applications – all without the need for any coding.

How Low Code Is Transforming Software Development

Rackspace CTO Jeff DeVerter joined us to explain how low code is transforming software development and how Robotic Process Automation (RPA) complements low-code application platforms. During his keynote presentation, he will explain the newfound prominence of low code and outline how enterprises can best utilize the technology to accelerate the delivery of software and applications.

Low Code Today features a full day of keynotes, panel discussions, Q&As, workshops and more from low-code pundits and pioneers. Attendees will get an intimate look at how organizations are embracing low-code technologies to advance their business while improving user experience.

Some other speakers presenting at the virtual event include:
- Matt Calkins, CEO at Appian (keynote speaker)
- Jennifer Sable Lopez, Sr. Director, Community and Advocacy at OutSystems; Malcolm Ross, Deputy CTO at Appian; Marcus Torres, VP Product Management, Platform Business and Foundation at ServiceNow; Sephanie Louis, Global Head of Developer Community, Pega (keynote panel)
- Lori Breitbarth, Sr. Principal IT Program Manager at MedTronic
- Dan Stoll, Director of Technical Product Marketing and Sean Fiene, Senior Technical Enablement Manager at Nintex (joint discussion)
- Mayur Shah, Senior Director Product Management at WaveMaker
- Purnima Bihari, Technical Product Manager at Security Compass
- Boris Crismancich, Head of Business Development at Katulu
- Mitch Ashley, CEO at ASG and Parker Yates, CRO at MediaOps (joint discussion)
The virtual environment features auditoriums with three tracks where attendees can watch the sessions by industry experts and an exhibit hall lined with booths showcasing the latest solutions from leading low-code companies. In the exhibit hall, attendees can download resources and interact with partner sponsors including ServiceNow, Appian, OutSystems, Prodly, Skuid, WaveMaker and DB Maestro.

To check out the full agenda or to register for free, visit the Low Code Today website.
November 17, 2020
How Low Code Is Transforming Software Development

Low code/no code is a business catalyst enabling technologies to automate processes and allowing developers to create real-time solutions for their business. With low code, businesses are able to build, customize and deploy apps with little to no coding.

In this interview, Rackspace CTO Jeff DeVerter explains how low code is transforming software development and how Robotic Process Automation (RPA) complements low-code application platforms.

Jeff is one of our distinguished speakers presenting at Low Code Today Virtual Summit. During his keynote presentation, he will explain the newfound prominence of low code and outline how enterprises can best utilize the technology to accelerate the delivery of software and applications.

Find out why low code doesn’t mean “lone-coder” and why it’s important to have capabilities increased for the citizen developer by attending Jeff’ session at Low Code Today Virtual Summit on Nov. 19. To check out the full agenda or to register for free, visit the Low Code Today website.

November 13, 2020
Accelerate Digital Transformation With Low Code

This year many organizations have gone through a lot of changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses need to be more agile, adapt to the new normal and accelerate their digital transformation. We have a new future of work we need to be ready for, and that requires more automation than ever before. Low code enables organizations to accelerate their innovation, automation and transformation efforts. Low-code platforms enable developers and non-technical teams to quickly deliver applications by automating the creation of apps with a drag-and-drop interface.

In this interview, ServiceNow CIO Chris Bedi shares the main benefits of low code and talks about the ServiceNow Citizen Developer Program.

Chris is one of our distinguished keynote speakers presenting at Low Code Today Virtual Summit. During his keynote presentation, Chris will share a CIO perspective on rolling out low-code applications at scale, best practices from rolling out ServiceNow Citizen Developer Program and suggested guardrails to ensure a successful and secure implementation.

To find out more about the future of work with low code and how it can benefit your business, attend Chris’ session at Low Code Today Virtual Summit on Nov. 19. To check out the full agenda or to register for free, visit the Low Code Today website.

November 12, 2020
Low-Code Development: The Future of Communications Experiences

The benefits of embedding real-time communications features into business and consumer applications are well-known. When it comes to customer service, most people would much rather click-to-call from within a web experience, social media site or business application to connect with another person, than find their phone to dial a number and wait in a queue.

In today’s new digital world–where instant gratification comes when consumers can choose their communication channel of choice and get their issues resolved more quickly–businesses only stand to benefit from delivering better service with fewer intermediaries. Customer service isn’t the only beneficiary of innovation in communications platform as a service (CPaaS)–web developers can add options to get answers automatically, or from an expert, without the presence of a full contact center. Even small businesses with limited staff can interact with customers through communications channels embedded into their websites or mobile apps, automatically directing questions about specific products, orders or services to the right person through text messaging, email or voice.

This is all made possible through CPaaS–and this is where the future of customer communications experiences lies.

Breakthroughs in CPaaS Are Powering Embedded Communications

CPaaS is one of those industry acronyms that has been tossed around for a few years now, but what exactly is it? CPaaS is a cloud-based platform that enables developers to add real-time communications features to their own applications without the complexity of building infrastructure typically required when developing apps.

The ability to embed communications capabilities directly into apps or websites enables businesses of any size to engage customers more effectively across different communications channels, including mobile, web and desktop environments. The result is a much-improved customer experience leading to increased customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and recurring revenues.

Breakthroughs in CPaaS are making it increasingly easier to embed voice, video, messaging, chat, presence and collaboration into experiences than ever before. Instead of building backend infrastructure and interfaces, CPaaS-based applications are made accessible through low-code development platforms. These platforms allow developers to access the robust application logic within the CPaaS with just a few lines of code, made possible through APIs. These APIs empower developers to quite literally copy and paste code by dragging and dropping application components and connecting them together to create a mobile or web app.

As an industry, we’ve spent the better part of the last few years building out embedded real-time communications solutions. With low-code development, new communications capabilities take only minutes to create and launch, versus years, months, weeks or even days. By making it easier to add immersive communications solutions into existing applications, low-code development allows companies to introduce innovations such as communications-enabled business processes and automate any component of business processes.

The Future of Communications Experiences

There’s no doubt–the future is low-code solutions. In our digital world, with the right CPaaS technology, and a little creativity and planning, businesses can now accomplish things that would have been impossible without the support of APIs.

We are just at the beginning of even more exciting and valuable applications. By accessing the massive compute and software application capabilities of CPaaS through just a few APIs, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and natural language processing is possible. Applications including voice recording, transcription and analytics for greater insights will be made a reality. Bots that sound like humans and can speak in multiple languages, with multiple choices for voices, will leave old breakthroughs like interactive voice response in the dust.

We’re still early in the cycle, but the benefits and applications of low-code development continue to grow. Jump in–you may be surprised how easy it is to roll out new services that customers will love, and your business will thank you for.

May 11, 2020
Sacrificing Security for Speed: 5 Mistakes Businesses Make in Application Development

Earlier this year, the Democratic party in Iowa announced its plans to use a smartphone app to calculate and transmit their caucus results. Using technology to improve the speed of governance, one would think, “What could possibly go wrong? A lot, apparently. The app’s failure on results day was attributed to reporting and coding issues.

While security was the matter of concern from the day of its announcement, the inevitable happened. Data and security breaches happen almost every minute. University of Maryland researchers find cyberattacks every 39 seconds. The last decade has seen many data breaches, putting personal information of billions of users in the hands of dubious entities. Every enterprise, from Yahoo to Facebook and Target to Home Depot, has been under attack—and this is likely to continue. Research has found that cybersecurity breaches will result in over 146 billion records stolen by 2023.

Poor security is putting enterprises, governments and citizens at risk every day. Yet, in a hurry to leverage technology, companies bring unsecured applications to market all the time. In essence, they sacrifice security for speed. Adding to this, today’s modern web and mobile applications are built with latest and greatest technology stacks and frameworks, heavily reliant on client side functionality, and integration to multiclouds and third party systems using a myriad of APIs. Also teams are more diverse and work collaboratively using remote workforces.

These trends increase the security challenges the application development teams need to be aware of, and leverage platforms that provide built-in controls and protection against these to avoid security breaches and attacks.

While prioritizing speed over security in application development take into consideration the following mistakes that you need to avoid and address.

Not Looking at Data Security Holistically

Data tends to be the most important and valuable aspect of modern web applications. Poor application design and architecture leads to data and security breaches. Application development teams generally assume that by providing the right authentication and authorization measures to the application, data will be protected. This is a misconception. Right measures to provide data security involve focussing on data integrity, fine grained data access and encrypting data while in rest as well as in motion. In addition, data security needs to be looked at holistically from the time the request is made to the time response is sent back across all layers of the application runtime.

Not Considering Security Across the Application Development Lifecycle

Today’s modern web applications are highly sophisticated and built with a big focus on simplistic user experience combined with high scalability. This combination can be challenging for application development teams from a security perspective. Most development teams focus only on silos when securing the application (only client, server or integration layer). Teams should focus on end-to-end full stack security when developing applications. Also application teams should enforce security best practices incorporated by default as part of the collaborative development process.

Not Focusing on API Security

Most of the modern web applications use APIs from systems and services which include internal enterprise systems, cloud SaaS APIs, partner APIs and third party product APIs. Today, almost all web applications tend to expose their own functionality to the external environment as a core set of APIs. What’s more, nearly 100% of web applications today tend to expose its own functionality as a core set of APIs to the external world. Teams need to make sure they are using external APIs with proper security guidelines and protocols as well as exposing their own APIs with multiple choices of protecting them. API access needs to be protected with both coarse grained as well as fine grained measures.

Not Providing Strong Authorization and Authentication Methods

Authenticating your application and authorizing what users can access is an important part of application security. Without this, you are leaving your attack surface wide open. Your application needs to incorporate stringent and strong measures for authentication to prevent unauthorized access. This includes multi-factor authentication, passwordless authentication, single sign on and if using passwords very strong password policies. It must also offer fine grained role-based access control preventing access of sensitive and confidential data to non-privileged users. Moving to a market with ambiguous weak authentication, lack of fine grained control, improper session control and insufficient logging might not seem like a probable risk until you’re attacked.

Not Incorporating Vulnerability Testing Throughout the Development Lifecycle

Security threats are evolving faster than anyone can keep track of. The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), a community of application developers and security professionals, identifies the top 10 security risks each application team must mitigate. This includes risks across injection, data exposure, misconfiguration, security deserialization and so on. Development teams should incorporate vulnerability assessment as a continuous process and not leave it at the end of the deployment cycle.

Automating Security with Development Platforms

Integrating security into your application development process does not have to slow you down. By utilizing key technologies such as a low-code platform, you can accelerate development and enable security procedures at the same time.

While promising accelerated development, what an ideal low-code application development platform offers is a visual development environment and code-customization with two-way workplace sync with IDEs. It also enables autogeneration of code, ensures extensibility and reuse with prefabs, and allows for full integration with CI/CD pipelines.

One of the important features of a low-code platform is built-in security, one that ensures automation of the development of application-level security features. A perfect platform provides a configuration for prevention of security vulnerabilities such as XSS and CSRF and ensures in-built encryption, robust authentication and authorization systems, along with enterprise-grade auditability and traceability.

While speed may be the name of the game, rolling out your applications without considering security would have little positive impact if they fail to function and are not secure. One of the best ways to integrate security across your application development lifecycle is to leverage the benefits of low-code platforms that are designed for professional development, those that have built-in, application-level security features. While your application development plans may be time-critical, security cannot be an afterthought, because sacrificing security for speed may make it longer for you to mitigate the risks than achieve your application development goals.

May 7, 2020
Low-Code Providers Continue Enhancing Their Development Platforms

Enterprise low-code development continues to grow in popularity as software vendors continue to unveil tool enhancements designed to help business users and non-developers build functional applications and business processes.

The help from low-code platforms (and other platforms that are integrating low-code capabilities) couldn’t come at a better time, as enterprises continue to struggle to digitize operations and dig through their application backlogs.

Consider open source digital process automation platform Bonitasoft and its recent increased support for low-code development and what the company promises to be accelerated user interface development for more customized user experiences. The platform (including a new Bonita Cloud edition) helps to enhance collaboration between professional developers and so-called citizen developers, according to the company.

Recently, low-code development platform provider OutSystems announced it is adding new artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities into its platform. The company said the enhancements provide customers the ability to help automate the creation of self-service portals, respond to text and voice queries and improve customer service.

OutSystems said citizen developers now can more easily build communication channels into their apps and better utilize virtual assistants such as Alexa, Google and Siri, as well as common chatbot platforms. The company claimed developers don’t need any specialized development skills or knowledge in data science to use these features. “These new, high-level components package everything organizations need to implement rich use cases from end to end. As a result, many more companies can easily adopt AI and machine learning to positively impact their business,” said António Alegria, OutSystems’ head of artificial intelligence.

According to the research firm Gartner, by next year, consumers will manage 85% of their relationship with enterprises without having to interact with a human. However, despite the use of AI having tripled over the past four years, two-thirds of organizations have yet to deploy AI in some form, it noted.

According to Research and Markets, the global low-code development platform market size will reach just over $27 billion by 2022, up from $4 billion in 2017 and a 44% annual growth rate.

According to the research firm, it is the increased demand in software automation and innovative applications and the ease of development of web and mobile apps that are driving enterprise demand for low-code development. “Moreover, the cloud-based deployment mode is gaining high traction in the market, as it requires less capital investment, helps decrease the operational and maintenance costs, and reduces the management’s efforts,” the research firm said.

While many analyst market predictions do fall short, as long as low-code platforms reduce costs and help organizations move forward rapidly with their digitization efforts, low-code development is here to stay and will continue to grow.

— George V. Hulme

July 9, 2019