There are 5 reasons why architects should accept low code

Author | Xin Xiaoliang

Isaac Sacolick, president of digital consultancy StarCIO, recently said that software architects mentioned that software architects should pay attention to low-code platforms, and he consulted with several technical experts in the field based on Brian Platz's views to share these insights.

Brian Platz, CEO and co-founder of Fluree, offers five points to explain why there is so much interest in low-code technologies and why this continues, mainly as follows.

Avoid technical debt

A study by outSystems, a leader in low code, shows that companies spend more than 40 percent of their IT budgets on technical debt rather than running or building other businesses, and the two most critical issues are the flow of development teams and too many development languages and frameworks.

Low-code solutions tend to be visual programming paradigms that are easier to understand and maintain when new developers are assigned to provide support. In addition, low-code platforms often have APIs and other standard ways to extend and dock code, making it easier to find and track application processes.

OutSystems Technical Debt Threat Research Report:

https://www.outsystems.com/1/growing-threat-technical-debt/

Jay Parnau, senior technical success manager at OutSystems, mentions her own harrowing experience: "Before using low code, I spent half of my time as a developer avoiding new technical debt or being on call at 2 a.m. when someone else's system was paralyzed by someone else's mistake. ”

Quickly create new employee experiences

Dr. Rosaria Silipo, Chief Data Scientist and Evangelistic Director at KNIME, explains how the low-code platform can help streamline communication and requirements gathering, guiding teams to build employee experiences and workflow applications faster. "Low-code tools are easier when trying to communicate with other departments," she says. A low-code, visual-based programming tool might be the answer to communicating with departments that don't know much about code. By using low-code tools, professionals can save valuable time that can be dedicated to other problems, including those that require coding. ”

Gloria Ramchandi, senior director of product at Copado, agrees, saying that low-code can also help development teams meet the business needs of building modern applications. She added: "Senior developers and architects have had to keep up with the growing demands of enterprises to build software faster. Using a low-code platform can break down code barriers, help teams reduce time-to-market for important builds, and increase the speed of innovation. ”

Streamline workflows and data integration

If building an application is easy, how can architects avoid application silos? How can low code help integrate workflows between applications, software-as-a-service, and enterprise systems?

Chris Smith, a developer advocate for Retool, recognizes this integration challenge. "The world of business software is increasingly fragmented, with hundreds of vertically specific cloud applications helping each functional area of the enterprise operate more efficiently. As this happens, these applications need to be integrated into a growing number of business workflows that are customized for each business. Developers embrace low-code platforms because they provide fast, functional building blocks that solve this fragmented integration problem. ”

It's not just about workflow integration. Architects must also consider how to interface with more and more data sources. Dr. Silipo believes that low code can be an easy way to connect to multiple data sources. "Data sources are owned by different vendors and often do not provide standard access patterns. A low-code tool might take over this task and provide standardized, easy access to many different data sources. ”

Automate more business processes

While businesses invest in improving the employee experience and integrating workflows, it's also important to automate steps in business processes. Mahesh Rajasekharan, CEO of Cleo, believes that low code is another option for increasing what can be automated and reducing manual processes.

Rajasekharan said the global pandemic is a wake-up call for many businesses and technology leaders. "An important lesson from the lockdowns caused by the pandemic is that we recognize that many companies still have a lot of manual business processes, while seeing how they have hampered business during the pandemic. To achieve new levels of automation, businesses will embrace low-code technologies that will enable them to automate anything to eliminate risks and gaps in core revenue-generating processes."

Accelerate digital transformation by unlocking monolithic systems

What has historically prevented technology organizations from improving the employee experience, streamlining workflows, increasing the number of integrated data sources, and automating more business processes?

While technical debt in general is a challenge, monolithic systems are hard-to-move boulders. How can architects ensure that what is developed today is easier to maintain, support, and extend to future business needs?

Developing microservices and deploying serverless architectures is a viable approach, but most enterprises cannot apply these architectures to every business need. Zeev Avidan, Chief Product Officer at OpenLegacy, suggests that low code provides an alternative that can become a paradigm shift for IT.

"Low-code and no-code can help revolutionize all aspects of IT, from front-end application development all the way to the most complex traditional integrations," Avidan says. For many developers, a major obstacle to digital transformation is the challenge of accessing data and business logic located in a single core system. ”

There is no doubt that organizations driving digital transformation have increasing needs for application development, integration, and automation. Low-code platforms allow architects to extend an enterprise's development capabilities by prioritizing the most strategic business cases and using low-code as an accelerator for other business needs.

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3650649/5-reasons-software-architects-should-embrace-low-code.html