There has been a lot of hype around how businesses can benefit from AI, cloud computing, and machine learning to make their application development more efficient. But perhaps the biggest obstacle that businesses face is the gap that lies between non-programming users and the applications they need.
IT has forever carried the heavy burden of developing applications for all departments. They hand-code applications from scratch face an endless number of requests. As the demand for more applications goes up, IT teams have not been able to keep up.
Large organizations have constant and urgent requirements to develop scores of of applications to meet important business goals. But when IT is overwhelmed with a long queue of requests, they can’t always fulfill their application development and delivery promises. Some departments may end up resorting to shadow IT and developing satellite apps through the backdoor approach.
There is only sustainable solution to this problem – put the power of application building in the hands of users.
It may seem impossible for someone with zero knowledge of coding to develop enterprise-grade applications, but it’s not a far-fetched idea anymore. Thanks to the quick pace of advancement in low code technology, smart enterprises are already empowering their line of business users to build their own apps.
Low On Coding, High On Disruption
Forrester projects the market growth for the red-hot low code platforms to exceed $15 billion by 2020. The leading American research firm defines low-code platforms as “platforms that enable rapid delivery of business applications with a minimum of hand-coding and minimal upfront investment in setup, training, and deployment.” It argues that the platforms close the develop gap because they help:
- Expand the pool of mobile development talent, and
- Accelerate the efforts of developers
Low code platforms empower non-IT business teams to create, customize, and control applications that are core to their operations.
Take an enterprise with 5,000 employees scattered across the globe. Even if the company has a top-notch IT team with a strong bandwidth to create applications at a great speed, they are doomed to experience burnout because requirements from departments will only grow – never come down.
What if non-IT teams like HR, Finance, and Sales could overcome the guilt of being IT oblivious and create applications in their own terms?
What Low Code Offers
“Low code” means low on manual coding but high on power. A low code platform:
- offers simplicity in application coding
- reduces the burden of custom coding
- enables IT to be more productive
- speeds up the software development process
- ensures accuracy and efficiency
- allows talents across all teams to take on application development
- helps combat Shadow IT
Low code’s Consumerization of IT among less tech-savvy teams also gives way to rapid application development, a process by with which business can build multiple applications with blazing speed.
Low code technology is a blessing for companies who need speed and volume, but still want to be in total control of all the coding. They can create applications fast and tweak them to meet ad hoc requirements.
How Low Can You Go?
A low code platform doesn’t serve everything on a platter; you still need to have a developer mindset. Platform vendors expect users to have fundamental coding skills to be able to fully use their product.
For example, if you have a low code workflow management software, you still need to first structure the workflow in a way that makes sense to a programmer, thinking through multiple conditions and iterations. In this sense, low code platforms are incomplete products because they expect users to be able to make use of features that require coding.
For companies that are moving to the cloud future and don’t have IT capabilities, low code might be a compromise. For many, it might feel like a trap when they adopt a low code solution but still have to dirty their hands in coding. They wish if there was a hands-free way of building applications.
Say “Yes” To No Code
No code is the future that low code is marching towards. No code not only eliminates the need for coding, it also translates the whole language of application development into common business user thought, rather than programmer-ese.
The world of no code platforms allows people from every line of business to design applications the way they want to, with near-instantaneous results. A no code development process doesn’t require human involvement except for data input and occasional supervision.
A no code environment takes the entire responsibility of the application development lifecycle, while offering the users to work with a simplified development interface. Unlike working in a half-baked low code platform, no code allows you to start with zero knowledge of programming.
And how do the benefits of a no code platform stack up? It delivers all the benefits of a low code platform and amplifies them further. No code is:
- Faster
- Simpler
- More efficient
- Easier on your IT team
- More accurate
- More inclusive
- More secure
Experts, including IT leaders, are already vouching the inevitability of no code platforms over custom-coding and quasi-low code options. Today’s businesses are reliant on IT more than ever, but no code is democratising the IT domain for everyone.
In today’s world, every employee needs to be able to function as their own IT team. When the power of IT goes beyond the command-and-control model to the level of employee empowerment, it makes a company’s vision more attainable.
Suresh Sambandam
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