Over the last twenty years, the variety of tools and technologies in IT has evolved. Previously, IT teams relied on highly specialized employees, such as DBAs who knew AS/400 or directors who could list COBOL as a native language. But now, IT departments no longer manage homogeneous stacks but diverse, complex software environments.
IT alone can’t drive modern organizations’ digital transformation in today’s digital era. Businesses can’t rely solely on custom scripts, and few developers have the expertise to keep up with the rapid pace of modern digital transformation. We need an application development platform where code is abstracted away, and every professional without specialized knowledge runs the tool or technology.
Why not let app developers think about the experience they want to deliver rather than worrying about how they’ll build it?
This blog will explore low-code development platform that enable IT people to quickly assemble, build, and deploy business applications tailored to their organizations’ needs without researching, writing, and testing new scripts.
How Has Low-Code Technology Evolved?
Low code is an all-in-one platform for developing anything from IT processes to business software. Empowering developers with low-code app development, building reliable, cross-platform business applications easily while keeping experts in their specific business domains to innovate, solve challenges, and enhance customer offerings.
Technical/non-technical developers build apps easily and across multiple digital touchpoints, from mobile to wearables to IoT devices, unlocking the potential of every employee in your organization. While citizen developers create apps with low-code platforms easily, professional developers use them to accelerate complex tasks.
That said, there are a few features that low-code application platform have in common to build and deploy apps, as follows:
Simplifies Complex Coding using Low-code API Integration
The low-code development platform, as a part of an integrated development environment, provides a set of predefined and customizable APIs that teams can directly integrate into proprietary applications and build software applications without requiring specialized coding developers. The platform handles all the complexity of SDLC, you only need a basic understanding of how APIs work.
Reduces Dependency with Drag-and-drop Workflow
Application developers can automate the development process using a low-code platform’s drag and drop interface and graphical user interface (GUI), eliminating dependencies on traditional computer programming approaches.
Delivery on time with Workflow Testing Facilities
Low-code platforms are equipped to manage an application’s entire SDLC, from development and testing to deployment and maintenance with robust workflow automation capabilities. Testers can easily automate tests using visual models, even allowing non-technical users to participate in test automation. You can easily track an application’s status, versioning, and updates with a low-code platform.
Why is an All-in-One Low-Code Platform Essential for Modern Software Development?
A low-code environment integrates complex backend systems and adds innovative experiences seamlessly on a single platform for modern software development. Businesses accelerate app delivery without avoiding steep learning curves, shadow IT risks, lack of governance, technical debt, cybersecurity or compliance concerns.
According to the market and research report, the global low-code development platform market is predicted to generate a revenue of $187.0 billion by 2030. With low-code platforms, modern IT enterprises reduce the application development complexity, cost, and delivery time. This eliminates the need for costly IT resources that can be better utilized for the business’s more strategic priorities. Low-code development tools facilitate rapid application creation through user-friendly interfaces, reducing the need for extensive coding knowledge and enabling organizations to innovate faster by streamlining development processes.
Highlights of the role of the low-code platform in the app development cycle :
- Offer one unified platform for all skill sets to build apps under one infrastructure, license, governance model and security standard.
- Promotes strong collaboration between business users and IT, where users can independently solve their digital challenges.
- Reach users wherever they live digitally across any device, progressive web apps (PWAs), native mobile apps, and even wearables and kiosks, all on a single code base.
- Combine the speed and ease of low-code application development platform with enterprise backend services and integration capabilities to accelerate app development.
- Modernize legacy applications to evolve, extend, and even replace existing apps with reduced time, complexity, and cost by avoiding complete rewrites and disjointed off-the-shelf solutions.
How to Choose the Right Low-Code Platform for Your Business?
Low-code application platform offers secure, governed and flexible software apps. When choosing a low-code platform, check on ease of adoption and a convincing experience that gets users up to speed quickly. For example, if the number of development requests consistently increases, you should adopt a low-code platform to prevent an IT backlog. By allowing citizen developers to create their own applications, these platforms reduce the number of app requests placed on the development team, enabling them to focus on more complex tasks while still allowing for customization and iteration on the applications developed by non-technical users. Similarly, if you anticipate a period when developers must consistently add capabilities to an application to meet rising demands, low-code platforms will be a perfect fit.
Businesses should consider whether platform capabilities match their business needs. You can compare the use cases of the framework according to your business needs.
Businesses should also check for the following features in a low-code development platform:
- Performance-wise, it has a responsive user experience
- Need click to build apps and workflows with drag-and-drop tools
- It should be low code which extends to custom code
- Integration with your data and systems
- Security, privacy, and governance controls
- AI and low-code automation tools to streamline complex workflows quickly
- Should support for common third-party development
Conclusion
Software applications built primarily on native code often prove challenging to change or update over time. You must pivot quickly to stay updated with changing market demands without breaking much code. Low-code software development platforms empower users with varying levels of technical expertise to innovate and create the software experiences they need with minimum coding experience.
