What Is a Low-Code Platform?
A low-code platform is a family of tools for the visual development and production of business-ready solutions based on a drag-and-drop interface. Instead of writing thousands and thousands of lines of complex code and syntax, you can use Low-code to visually and quickly create fully working applications with modern user interfaces, integrations, various data sources, and diverse logic. Applications are developed much faster and with minimal manual coding.
Low-code platforms are on the rise and the growing demand of low-code platforms is obvious. Writing software by hand is time-consuming. Businesses can’t deliver software fast enough to meet their growing needs, and there aren’t enough software developers available to fulfill the demand. Essentially, the software is not being delivered on time, and the quality and security of software are major concerns for businesses.
According to the Wall Street Journal, low-code platforms will grow 70% by the year 2025. Gartner predicts that Low-code platforms will be responsible for more than 65% of all app dev activity by 2024.
Full-Stack
Empower developers
Extend reach outside IT
Integrate & Extend
Never start from scratch
Limitless and easy integration
Full-Lifecycle
Be agile and timely change
Automated software lifecycle
Experiences
Reach all touchpoints
Widest range of experiences
What Problem Does Low-Code Solve?
The ever-increasing pressure on organizations and companies and their IT departments are forcing them to look for and offer innovative solutions. However, not all companies and organizations have the financial and human resources to meet the market demand for speed with the traditional approach to creating such innovative solutions and their further development. Most of them find themselves buried in unfinished business and projects and struggle to hire enough qualified staff to complete them and are constantly forced to do more and more, but at less cost. In addition, the pandemic has taught us that the ability to adapt to new and unpredictable demands is critical to business survival.
Low-code significantly reduces the complexity of software development, companies of any size that adopt this approach can increase their productivity and development speed while using low-code platforms. This adds value to developers by allowing agile teams to build on their understanding of how to build and maintain high-quality web and mobile apps while trying out new technologies. With Low Code, a UI/UX designer can do front-end development, and a back-end developer can try to prototype a consumer app.
Put simply, Low-code is a way for developers to do much more. Thanks to Low-code, they can spend more time creating and less time on monotonous, repetitive work. Sure, it’s fun to learn the latest fancy JavaScript framework or play around with cutting-edge NoSQL data storage, but while you’re wasting time debugging unfamiliar code, your competitor has an MVP in front of customers.
What Can You Build with Low-Code?
Low-code are delivering innovative software solutions across industries – from fintech solutions to agile workplace innovation and massive legacy migration projects, provides everything needed to create modern, cross-platform enterprise and business web applications with capabilities that complement already existing solutions. low-code can address a wide range of use cases.
What’s the difference between Low-Code and No-Code?
No-code platforms are designed entirely for citizen developers (technically-minded personnel not trained as professional developers), who develop small internal applications. No-code platforms are usually simpler to use but are extremely limited and not suited to develop enterprise-grade applications. Many organizations that invest in no-code platforms get pushback from professional developers due to the inherent customization limitations enforced by no-code architectures. On the other hand, low-code platforms like Smart Process Designer provide a level of flexibility that ensures developers can extend the platform’s expressiveness and will never hit a wall.
Reasons to use the low-code platform
From idea to implementation for reduced time
Visual design, ready-to-use logical components, printable forms, and reports templates, as well as built-in connectors and rich integration tools, help you quickly create new applications. As a result, as the speed of business transformation increases, IT teams have an excellent working tool to increase productivity and shorten the software development cycle.
Improve customer experience
Today, customers are more demanding than ever. Low-code platforms give you the flexibility to easily adapt to market changes and customer needs through the rapid implementation of modern IT solutions or the continuous updating of existing software in accordance with current trends.
Control over IT-infrastructure
Business demand for non-standard IT solutions is growing exponentially, which leads to an overload of IT departments. This forces companies to use third-party applications and solutions outside of their controlled infrastructure. The presence of disparate programs creates additional security risks and leads to data inconsistency. Low-code solutions allow you to create the necessary functionality in a single information field, which eliminates the need to use third-party applications and the risk of confidential data leakage.
Digital transformation accelerating
Companies are forced to automate more and more internal and external processes in order to keep up with the times and be competitive in the market. Low-code provides an opportunity to use modern, fundamental technologies that help accelerate the transformations necessary for business, adapt faster, and implement the latest innovations in the process of digital business transformation.
Cost reduction for development and future support
Not require deep knowledge and development experience, which helps to solve the problem of lack of IT specialists that many companies face. Easy-to-use tools allow analysts or business users with no knowledge of programming languages to set up applications with minimal input from IT experts – and this reduces the cost of expensive company resources.
High-security level
Information security is the keystone of a modern platform. The safety of information from various kinds of penetrations, the necessary tools for administration, event auditing, access control, and threat assessment. This allows you to easily configure and control the security of the system and the security of the finished solution.
Successful collaboration between business and IT
Today, enterprises can choose for themselves tools that are not only in demand, but also economically viable. In order to quickly deliver the technologies that businesses need using internal IT resources of the company, it is necessary to establish a close relationship between business and IT. Low-code platforms provide such an opportunity – thanks to ready-made functional modules, a clear user interface, and powerful tools for professional developers, they allow literally everyone in the company to speak the same language and create applications of any complexity in one environment.
What’s the difference between Low-Code and BPM?
In Business Process Management (BPM) and case management solutions, low-code is a feature, not a strategic offer. These platforms offer a scaled-down visual development IDE allowing for the creation of apps that work within the software’s own framework and architecture. These platforms are purpose-built for a narrow use case and are good at what they were built for – but they won’t satisfy the full enterprise suite of use-cases for digital transformation.