Digital Transformation Requires A New Approach To Application Development

The business landscape is always evolving. Keeping up with changing dynamics, increasing process complexity, escalating customer expectations, and regulatory changes require agility. Taking advantage of market opportunities requires quick decision-making and rapid, efficient execution.

Moreover, the digital transformation imperative has led enterprises to develop a long list of software priorities that are quickly outstripping their development and delivery capacity and prompting business groups to seek alternatives to traditional IT delivery.

In 2018 Forrester analysis states that

1. Enterprises are under pressure to do more with what they have.

Firms will need to find efficiencies in process, technology, and capacity to meet digital transformation goals without cutting into the bottom line. The top drivers for digital transformation include

1. improving existing IT capabilities to promote agility and innovation,
2. innovating with new products,
3. improving customer experience (CX)

But reducing the cost also a key requirement while business needs to products innovation and improved customer satisfaction.

2.Developers struggle to deliver what the business needs in time quickly and securely.

Security is the most common challenge facing enterprises today: 59% cite it as a challenge as they role out digital solutions. Meanwhile, delivering solutions as quickly as the business needs them and redesigning business processes are top of mind in terms of difficulty to overcome. Arming cross-functional teams with development and collaboration tools appropriate for everyone’s skill level will also help firms overcome another top challenge: lack of technology skills. But this expansion into business development cannot come at the expense of security.

3.Business experts are key to delivering process transformation.

New digital business initiatives and customer engagement are the highest-priority application use cases at the firms we surveyed.. It’s encouraging, however, that end-to-end process automation also ranks within the top five. Automation is critical to agility, cost reduction, and smooth customer experience. This is also further proof that the business has greater value in application development — not only for its proximity to the customer but also
for its knowledge of its processes.

The solution: low code automation, orchestration, and app development.

LOW-CODE DEVELOPMENT ALLEVIATES KEY CHALLENGES,

Low-code platforms employ visual, declarative techniques instead of programming to build applications, accelerating the pace of pro developers and allowing business experts to lead or participate in solution delivery

84% of enterprises have turned towards low-code development tools to handle some portion of development needs. Why

To reduce the strain on IT resources,
Increase speed to market and get better output
better involve business decision-makers in the development of digital assets

even though enterprises using low-code report impressive progress toward digital transformation goals, almost a third of these same firms are hesitant to use low-code platforms to develop their most demanding or top-priority applications.

Low-Code Powers Enterprise Digital Transformation.

By identifying low-code platforms with features that address the six enterprise requirements, firms can not only build and deliver critical applications faster and at scale, but also gain a deeper understanding of the business results of their digital transformation overall. Enterprises yet to adopt low-code or hesitant to deploy an existing low-code platform for their top applications can learn from the enterprises that are powering their digital agendas with low code development.

1. Low-code platforms running top applications extend flexibility, speed, and automation.
2. The results of using low-code for top applications align to the needs of the digital transformation agenda
3. Enterprise low-code use is likely to grow as platforms improve support for complex business logic.

Top Low-Code application platforms.

1. OutSystems.
2. Appian
3. PowerApps
4. Oracle Application express.
5. Salesforce
6. ServiceNow
7. Retool
8. Pega

Market Definition/Description

According to the Gartner analysis IT leaders are facing mounting challenges around application delivery. Developer shortages and skill-set challenges are impacting their ability to deliver increasing levels of business automation in a rapid and reliable fashion. In response, the vendors of low-code application platforms (LCAPs) have been improving the ease at which business applications can be delivered, providing broader capabilities requiring smaller and less specialized teams of developers.

An LCAP is characterized by its use of model-driven or visual development paradigms supported by expression languages and possibly scripting to address use cases such as citizen development, business unit IT, enterprise business processes, composable applications, and even SaaS applications. These platforms are offered by vendors that may be better known for their SaaS offerings, or their business process management (BPM) capabilities, as well as specialist vendors for rapid application development. The primary goal is increased application development productivity with reduced skill-set requirements for developers.

Vendor Strengths and Cautions.

Appian

Appian is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Its LCAP (version 20.1) offers low-code app building, rich multi-experience capabilities, business process orchestration, automated decisioning, AI/ML, and RPA. The platform focuses on complex processes such as end-to-end case management and other applications requiring sophisticated automation, rules, and analytics. Its technological differentiators include full-stack automation capabilities, prebuilt no-code integration with various AI services, and end-to-end life cycle support for DevOps. Appian has operations in every major world region, with a focus on large enterprises. Its 2020 roadmap includes enhancements to AI-service integration, DevOps capabilities, RPA, and expanded AI support for application development.

Strengths

• Product: At the core of Appian’s LCAP strength is its rich process-driven application development. Appian’s ability to offer a complete stack of low-code automation tooling that can handle complex workflows, business rules, and case management along with RPA is a key differentiator. Added to that, it offers low-code tools to build multi-experience apps to enable customer and employee experiences.
• Market understanding: Appian brings in a complete end-to-end solution for its customers by enabling low-code capabilities to build business applications, perform complex process orchestration, and automate routine repetitive tasks with RPA. Customers looking for a full-stack automation platform should consider Appian’s LCAP.
• Overall viability: In a crowded market with many small, privately owned vendors, Appian stands out as a stable, publicly-traded company with a focus on low-code technology. Although smaller than many of its competitors, Appian has many enterprise customers and government agencies running its platform, which should ensure its long-term viability in this market.

Cautions

• Application development: Some of Gartner’s Peer Insight reviewers found that Appian’s low-code development product is more suitable for professional developers. Appian’s proprietary expression and the scripting language is typically an inhibitor for “citizen developers” building algorithmic expressions. Although Appian has built some collaborative features to support multiple personas — including both citizen and pro developers — Gartner has not yet seen much adoption.
• Sales execution and pricing: Appian pricing has been observed as highly variable in Gartner inquiries. Recently, the vendor has made some changes with a simplified basic subscription model, an annual “Quick Start License” and other options that may allay customer concerns in the future.
• Business model: Appian has a high proportion of professional services revenue associated with its LCAP business. While some of these services are likely legacy business process reengineering consulting, and others related to large projects associated with its targeting of larger enterprises, the proportion of services to product revenue implies more specialist developer requirements.

Microsoft

Microsoft is a Leader in this graph. Its LCAP consists of Microsoft Power Apps, which includes entitlements for Power Automate and the Common Data Service. Together, these form part of the Power Platform (which adds Power BI for business analytics and Power Virtual Agents for low-code chatbots). Microsoft’s operations are in locations worldwide. Its customers are in a variety of industries and of varying sizes. Power Apps operates in canvas and model-driven modes, and Power Automate provides business logic and integrations. Innovations on Microsoft’s roadmap include support for Power Apps in Microsoft Teams to deploy solutions and templates, enabling remote workers, and expanding AI and RPA accessibility.

Strengths

• Product strategy: Microsoft enables fusion teams with no-code and advanced pro developer capabilities. Microsoft offers one of the simpler design-time tools in Power Apps, one that is used for designing canvas apps and that employs a drag-and-drop approach with an expression language that feels like Microsoft Excel. This makes it well-suited to citizen developers and business unit developers.
• API and integration services: Power Apps and Common Data Service (CDS) have a rich set of APIs and OData endpoints available to perform full create, read, update and delete (CRUD) operations on data to support integration with third-party iPaaS. There are more than 300 data connectors available including cloud-service database connectors that cover Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Amazon Redshift, and cloud-hosted versions of the on-premises systems.
• Innovation: Ready-to-consume AI models allow developers to consume rich AI capabilities in their apps and flows without configuring and training a model. Prebuilt models are available to extract text from images, extract specific elements from text, categorize text, identify languages, and perform key phrase extraction and sentiment analysis. AI Builder provides no-code support for data and visual AI models, available as an extension to Power Apps.

Cautions

• Market responsiveness: In 2019, Microsoft saw wide adoption of Power Apps, in part due to availability within the vendor’s popular Office and Dynamics offerings. In October 2019, Microsoft changed these entitlement conditions, a change that disrupted many clients and appeared to confuse business partners. Microsoft grandfathering of prior license rights for deployed customers has helped in some situations.
• Sales execution and pricing: Power Apps’ pricing model and entitlement rules, especially across entitlements for features in Office 365 and Dynamics 365 plans, are complex enough to require a 17-page licensing guide. Customers also pay extra for features such as AI Builder and the B2C portal. Customers should consider how their licensing and costs may change as their platform usage grows, and be aware of the potential for further license changes.
• Process and business logic: Power Apps support workflows, but the interface for business process flows is separate and only available in model-driven apps. More complex process orchestration may require the use of separate products such as Microsoft Azure Logic Apps. Additionally, the BPMN notation standard in Power Automate is only supported through tight integration with Microsoft Visio.

Oracle (APEX)

Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a Challenger in the above mention graph. Oracle is well-established in the database and business applications markets. Its APEX product is mainly focused on data-oriented applications created by Oracle SQL developers. Its operations are geographically diversified and its clients are Oracle DBMS customers, although Oracle reports good solution sales to the small and midsize business (SMB) market. APEX has added high-performance user experiences for data search across large datasets, and the ability to access data from any external REST-enabled source. Oracle is increasing the rate of investment in APEX with JavaScript server-side components and other relational DBMS data sources planned. Oracle’s alternative LCAP offering — Oracle Visual Builder — is based on its service-oriented architecture technology stack and is discussed separately.

Strengths

• Overall viability: Oracle is a large and successful DBMS and SaaS vendor. The former ensures a large and ready audience for APEX, and a large developer base of developers that use SQL and its procedural language extension (PL/SQL) to exploit it. A subset of this is also a large and active community of APEX users.
• Sales execution and pricing: Oracle has multiple ways to consume and purchase APEX, but it is also a free service for Oracle Database and Oracle Cloud users. For most users, its net cost is included in their DBMS platform costs. This makes APEX excellent value for any Oracle Database platform user. Oracle is extending APEX usage as it sells solutions to new markets like the SMB market.
• Marketing strategy: Oracle markets APEX as the low-code application tooling for Oracle DBMS subscribers, extending their data-oriented applications to powerful web and mobile applications, and is an ideal upgrade for Oracle Forms applications. APEX applications can be extended through JavaScript, Java, and SQL to access all the advanced features of the Oracle Database platform.

Cautions

• Market understanding: Most LCAPs provide multifunction application capabilities for reduced-skill development. Oracle provides separate suites with differing editing metaphors for integration, BPM and business rules, as well as Oracle Visual Builder as a service-focused LCAP. APEX users who require such capabilities can access them through separate licenses and REST API calls (or coordination of shared data tables). While this separation of concerns ensures best-of-breed support, it requires additional configuration and developer skill requirements outside of APEX.
• Business model: Oracle’s use of its database platform as the core engine for APEX makes APEX consumption dependent on use of its DBMS. While this remains a large market, Oracle’s market share is reducing. However, Oracle is still a market leader in DBMS, and APEX is being extended to support additional languages and to access other data sources.
• Innovation: While Oracle’s roadmap for APEX is extensive, it is focused on catching up on capabilities like server-side JavaScript support that are already generally available elsewhere in the market. Its main function as a SQL RAD tool is of specialist interest to most low-code consumers, even though SQL and PL/SQL is not difficult to learn. Advanced features of the Oracle Database platform generally require SQL code to access.

Pega

Pega (Pegasystems) is a Visionary in this graph. Its LCAP is a component of the Pega Infinity platform, which offers built-in iBPMS, MXDP, CRM, and RPA capabilities. Pegasystems has operations across the world and a focus on large enterprise customers. Pega Infinity is mainly aimed at business process automation that requires web, mobile and conversational apps. Pega has invested in making its platform microservices-based and enhancing its serverless messaging. Its roadmap includes a complete UI upgrade and a desktop application focused on non-technical business users. Additionally, the vendor has announced a serverless and distributed process management solution.

Strengths

• Overall viability: Pega has grown steadily as a public company for many years and the Pega Infinity platform has a solid track record. Pega also has a large ecosystem that includes a broad array of implementation partners with strong business and industry capabilities across the world. It has a strong North American presence and a rapidly increasing customer base in Europe and APAC. Prospective customers should feel confident about the viability of Pega and its platform.
• Innovation: Pega has introduced Process Fabric, a business portal to coordinate user access to processes and applications. It also provides a UI design system and was an early provider of citizen developer governance tooling.
• Product offering: Pega Infinity extends its LCAP with process-driven development, case management, augmented analytics, rules management, and RPA services. This combination of included technologies is attractive to large enterprises that want end-to-end, intelligent, and event-driven process automation. Pega enables unified multi persona developer experiences with Pega App Studio and Dev Studio. It also supports other user roles such as data scientists with Prediction Studio.

Cautions

• Product strategy: Pega’s marketing efforts have yet to succeed in redefining the Pega brand for the LCAP market. Pega built a product strategy centering around its flagship process platform, and most of its customers use Pega Infinity for end-to-end complex process automation that depends on sophisticated iBPMS needs. Pega’s focus on combining too many different features catering to different markets is confusing and dilutes its focus on the needs of LCAP buyers.
• Sales execution and pricing: Users of Gartner’s client inquiry service that are also Pega customers talked about an unpredictable utility pricing model often resulting in higher than expected cost of operations. They also mentioned additional budget requirements for significant professional services to ensure successful deployment.
• Business model: Pega’s business model supports a large, if declining, consulting business to help customers fully implement its major features. In addition, Pega’s pricing involves add-on fees for some abilities, such as AI assistance for developers and disconnected mobile support. That this can result in relatively high per-user pricing is confirmed by users of Gartner’s client inquiry service.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a Leader in this graph. Its Salesforce Platform is broadly focused on the development of business applications of various levels of complexity, use cases, and developer skills. Its operations are global, and its LCAP clients tend to be large enterprises across industries with existing investments in Salesforce solutions. The company’s strategy is to expand its LCAP support for integration, orchestration, and composition, and to unify its runtime technologies for shared development and governance.

Strengths

• Overall viability: The continuing strong growth of the overall Salesforce business, and its industry-leading ecosystem of partners, provide strong drivers for adoption of the company’s LCAP offering. Well-executed business leadership enables the company to grow through acquisitions without disrupting its core investments in customer experiences.
• Business model: The continuing popularity of Salesforce SaaS offerings with both existing and new customers has formed a strong channel for the company’s platform services, including its LCAP. Hundreds of native AppExchange partner applications have extended the Customer 360 Platform. Most customers of Salesforce SaaS or AppExchange-delivered, partner-built SaaS use Salesforce Platform capabilities to extend and customize the application experiences.
• Innovation: Salesforce is building a unified development and governance environment that bridges multiple Customer 360 Platform technology stacks (Heroku and Apex). This promises to deliver a broad, multipersona development experience that empowers customers of different skills to operate based on shared IT goals within business-IT fusion teams. New mobile features in Salesforce Platform have also advance Salesforce’s multiexperience capabilities.

Cautions

• Architecture: The fundamental architecture of the Salesforce Platform (formerly Force.com) differs from the newer forms of distributed-cloud-native infrastructure. Modernizing it without affecting customers may be a challenge and business users may face new requirements for maintenance of their production applications.
• Integration: Despite the acquisition of MuleSoft in 2018, Salesforce’s LCAP is still lacking low-code support for integration and API management, and its process management is relatively limited. Both of these abilities are essential to modern application design and delivery.
• Market strategy: The vast majority of Salesforce Platform users are also users of Salesforce CRM, and most of them rely on CRM data in their new applications. Because of this, Salesforce Platform remains mostly applicable to clients using Salesforce SaaS.

Enterprise businesses with more complex app development and compliance needs may have a harder time integrating low-code app creation tools into their development and legacy app stack. But enterprise-ready tools such as Appian, Mendix, OutSystems, and Salesforce show that it’s possible to do so when you account for issues such as identity management and security. Meanwhile, Nintex Workflow Cloud, PowerApps, and Salesforce App Cloud all boast a long list of third-party integrations and application programming interfaces (APIs) to connect existing apps and services. As stated earlier, Appian and Microsoft PowerApps take the Editors’ Choice nods this time around, with Mendix and OutSystems right behind them as the preferred choices for complex enterprise requirements.

Depending on your business needs, any one of these tools would be ideal for helping your organization get started with low-code app development. Democratizing access to simple app-building tools within your company has the potential to improve productivity, solve business problems faster, and give both your tech-savvy and average Joe employee the means and the ability to apply the innovation of SaaS and modern mobile apps exactly where they need it. Read on to decide which low-code development platform is right for you.