3 ways standardization enhances low-code and open-source security

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In simplifying software development, low code can also help reduce cybersecurity complexity, thanks to enhanced standardization and integration.

Over the past couple of decades, the technical footprint of many enterprises has become very complex and difficult to maintain. As business leaders struggle to keep up with the constantly evolving customer demands and all the ancillary challenges that come with it, that complexity is only likely to increase. This has also made it harder to maintain accountability for managing risk. In other words, enterprises are becoming too technically complex to secure.

As enterprises grapple with a rapidly expanding data footprint, with data coming from myriad different sources, the need for standardization and simplified management becomes clearer. Add the unprecedented rise of remote work and the internet of things (IoT) into the mix, and that need is even greater. Organizations are now using an average of software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps, presenting a 14-fold increase over just six years.

Naturally, achieving a sufficient degree of information security becomes exponentially harder the larger and more diverse the software stack and data footprint. While many cloud vendors are now embracing open-source standardization to reduce complexity, problems like vendor lock-in and a general lack of digital sovereignty persist. This results in reduced control which, in turn, can lead to compromised security and a lack of compliance with industry standards.

For established enterprises, the challenge is even greater. Even if they have a robust digital transformation strategy in place, most are still grappling with legacy technology which, in turn, means data sources that are difficult to adapt for modern, cloud-based apps and architectures. This often results in enterprises not knowing exactly where all their data physically resides or which controls are in place to protect it. After all, you can’t protect what you don’t know about.

By embracing a combination of low-code software development and open-source licensing, enterprises can democratize development and achieve greater control over their data assets. Low-code simplifies and standardizes the creation of business apps, while the open-source model helps maintain digital sovereignty and control. With the right strategy and support, this powerful combination can greatly enhance an enterprise’s security posture. In this article, we’ll find out exactly how.

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How to choose a rapid application development platform

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A rapid application development (RAD) platform should support visual software development, easy maintenance, and facilitate seamless team collaboration.

There are two main factors that drive any successful digital transformation: adaptability and speed. Most organizations need custom software to tackle the need for adaptability since off-the-shelf software is rarely likely to address the unique needs of individual enterprises. At the same time, software development is, traditionally, a slow and cumbersome process, where projects can take months or even years to complete, hence the need for a faster solution.

The need for speed goes hand-in-hand with the need for adaptability in an era of rapid change, where technology is constantly evolving and the demands of employees and customers are evolving with them. These factors combine to make rapid application development, or RAD a necessity in today’s enterprises. In this article, we will explain what RAD is (and what it isn’t) and how to choose the right platform for your organization’s needs.

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How iPaaS bridges the gap between low-code and professional development

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How integration platform as a service (iPaaS) offers a comprehensive and standardized way to develop and integrate business-critical applications.

Every business technology system consists of multiple subsystems working together to form a cohesive environment that can handle mission-critical operations and workflows at the speed and agility demanded by today’s market. Running a business also demands the collaboration of people and systems from across a wide range of operations, such as sales, marketing, and customer support. Each of these departments uses different apps and systems, which all need to work together to achieve smooth operations. If they do not, each department will operate in a silo, to the detriment of customer and employee experience alike.

Among the most pervasive challenges facing today’s enterprises is the need to integrate new apps and functions into increasingly complex and disparate technology environments. Further adding to this overarching challenge is the fact that developing and integrating new software is often a lengthy process fraught with myriad difficulties of its own. These include addressing the demands of information governance, security, privacy, and availability, to name a few. This is why organizations need integration platforms to build more efficient and scalable technology systems that can easily adapt to ever-changing business needs.

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Why low-code is the perfect learning tool for software developers

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While low-code development is known for its drag-and-drop simplicity, the ability to view and edit the underlying code also makes it the perfect learning tool.

Most professional software developers agree that it takes several months just to get familiar with the basics of coding, and that assumes having a high level of general technical knowledge to begin with. Given the rapid pace of advancement in the software development space, skills in problem-solving, attention to detail, coding concepts, and the ability to adapt to constantly evolving technologies are also vital. These factors partly explain why there is a growing skills gap in software development.

Fortunately, low-code software development presents something of a shortcut, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable learning tool in its own right. What low-code does do is remove many of the more repetitive elements of software development by allowing professional and citizen developers alike to leverage the full potential of reusable components. Moreover, since low-code removes the need to code in such cases, it allows non-developers to quickly deploy standard business logic, regardless of their level of programming expertise.

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How low code helps software developers embrace rapid change

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Low-code software development has proven instrumental in facilitating innovation at scale in today’s constantly evolving and unpredictable business environment.

Until the widespread adoption of modern software systems, most routine business processes remained largely unchanged and, indeed, unchangeable over short timespans. In those times, innovations often took many years to enter the mainstream, and organizations could afford to rely largely on traditional processes and monolithic technology architectures.

Today, however, change is the only constant in the business world, which faces unprecedented disruption as it tries to tackle rising instability and unpredictability across global supply chains and constantly evolving customer demands.

In light of these growing uncertainties, business leaders face enormous pressure to adapt with the times in order to stay relevant. Continuous improvement is essential for keeping customers happy, employees motivated, and for satisfying the need for operational resilience. Thus, the ability to accommodate rapid change has become a universal business imperative.

More than ever, these factors rely on software. A few years ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella claimed that every company is a software company. Technology is increasingly embedded in everything we do, both at home and in the workplace. Back-office teams have become reliant on tailor-made customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions to handle increasingly vast amounts of digital information at scale. Customers expect a responsive service and a persistent presence from the companies they do business with. Furthermore, these demands change and evolve all the time, thus necessitating an agile approach to software development and maintenance.

It is for these reasons that low-code software development has been gaining more and more ground over the years. Read more

7 ways low-code solutions accelerate digital transformation

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By making software development less burdensome on resources, low-code contributes to the acceleration of digital transformation and business-wide innovation.

It is often said that every company is a software company. Computers play a key role in almost everything we do. They are becoming embedded in everything from the cars we drive to the homes and cities we live in.

For organizations, computers and software have become critical for handling everything from customer relationship management to supply chain management. At virtually every customer touchpoint, there are digital interactions that leave a trail of data, from which they can unlock valuable insights, provided they have the right software solutions.

Digital transformation is the driving force behind these innovations. It is the process we use to create new business processes and customer and employee experiences or improve existing ones. It is the reimagining of business in the digital age, and software naturally plays a central role in that process. This is why the pressure is constantly growing on organizations to ease the burden of software development and, in turn, accelerate digital transformation.

Organizations that fail to embrace digital transformation face a very real and growing risk of losing their competitive positions and becoming irrelevant in today’s fast-changing world. One of the main causes of such failure is the difficulty in overcoming the inherent complexities of software development and the lengthy project lifecycles that come with it.

To overcome the challenges, organizations must be able to develop and integrate new tools and capabilities quickly, scale their applications in the cloud, automate routine workflows, and continuously modernize customer experiences.

To accomplish these tasks, software teams need a way to quickly deliver applications and iteratively improve them based on user feedback. Traditional software development is wholly unable to keep up with the need for speed and scale, which is why organizations need low-code software development to accelerate digital transformation.

Here are some reasons why low-code matters in digital transformation:

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Low code versus no code, and what it means to enterprise software developers

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Low code and no code are frequently lumped together, despite taking significantly different approaches. Here is what the debate means to enterprise developers.

The software industry is currently facing a massive wave of transformation driven by growing demand, evolving customer expectations, and fierce global competition. This has left enterprise software teams struggling to keep up with the constant pressure to innovate rapidly and keep widening skills gaps in check.

Every enterprise needs software, and off-the-shelf solutions can only go so far when it comes to meeting their unique requirements. However, while there is often a clear need to develop bespoke solutions, doing so often comes at a significant expense, especially when factoring in the ongoing costs of software maintenance.

Many of these challenges come down to the fact that traditional software development is costly and time-consuming and requires specialized skills that are in short supply and huge demand. This is why the case for no-code and low-code application development is growing all the time. According to Gartner, two-thirds of application development activity will be low code by 2024.

In this article, we will look at what that means for enterprise software teams.

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How enterprise software teams are unlocking the value of low code to adapt and scale

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Internal low-code development platforms empower collaboration at scale, accelerate software delivery, and establish an enterprise-wide culture of innovation.

Change is the only constant in the fast-paced world of enterprise technology. Businesses face growing pressure to innovate and adapt as customer expectations evolve and disruptive new solutions enter the market. Thus, agility has become a necessity in everything from software development to digital transformation.

Most IT and business stakeholders are well aware of this fact. 95% of business leaders believe that technological innovation in strategic business initiatives add value. They realize that IT is no longer a mere cost center, but a key driver of revenue and growth. They understand that being able to respond quickly to change is vital for staying relevant in today’s market.

Unfortunately, there remains a serious misalignment between perception and reality. Almost two-thirds of business stakeholders claim that their IT departments implement fewer than half of their proposed solutions. Solutions that are implemented tend to go over budget and over time which, in turn, has led to a significant rise in uncontrolled shadow IT.

This begs the question of how many potentially value-adding innovations never saw the light of day because software teams lacked the technical skills and budgets to develop them. After all, traditional software development is costly and time-consuming and requires technical expertise across a broad range of domains from coding to user experience design.

Business processes need to be regularly modified and customized to best respond to change, which means that software teams need to be flexible and agile. They must be able to work quickly to keep up. But rather than face the constant risk of burnout and rising technical debt, they must be empowered by agile leadership, the right tools, and a collaborative company culture.

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Low-code versus traditional development: A primer for independent software vendors

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Independent software vendors take pride in having talented developers, but that doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from the low-code revolution.

Independent software vendors (ISVs) face constantly increasing pressure to deliver innovative software solutions to their customers in as little time as possible while maintaining the level of quality they expect.

Unfortunately, this also means that even though their solutions may be functionally complete, the speed at which they need to be rolled out usually means making some sacrifices. Often, issues with the underlying code present themselves soon after delivery, necessitating rework. Thus, technical debt remains a serious and growing problem for ISVs faced with ever-growing demand.

Low-code development platforms (LCDPs) offer an increasingly viable alternative to traditional software development thanks to their ease of use and faster delivery times. That said, software vendors often still view low-code with a degree of skepticism, assuming it to be only suitable for small projects and citizen developers.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Low-code is already transforming the world of software development and delivery, with the low-code market size increasing by 22.6% in 2021 alone. Indeed, low-code is fast becoming the new standard in software development to the point it is outpacing traditional software development in many sectors. Already, 84% of enterprises are using low-code to reduce the strain on their IT departments and involve the wider business in the development of mission-critical digital assets.

ISVs need to keep up if they are to remain relevant in the years to come, and the adoption of low-code will undoubtedly prove essential in that endeavor. However, that is not to suggest that traditional software development will become obsolete – after all, low-code is not quite the same as no code. Rather, it presents a compromise between the two, whereby applications can be developed quickly and, in the rare cases where an LCDP cannot accommodate certain advanced use cases, skilled developers can still rely on coding.

In this blog, we will explore the differences, as well as the commonalities, of both low-code and traditional software development and how they concern ISVs wanting to increase their speed to market while continuing to uphold rigid quality control standards.

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The 8 best low-code development platforms for software vendors

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Here are some of the best low-code development platforms for software developers wanting to fuel rapid application modernization and economies of scale.

Independent software vendors (ISVs) face constantly growing technical debt as they struggle to meet the demands of clients seeking to accelerate their own digital transformations. Among the reasons for these challenges is the fact that many ISVs are heavily reliant on underlying technology that is outdated and lacks the agility for developing software applications quickly.

Low-code development platforms (LCDPs) were originally created primarily to meet the needs of citizen developers in enterprises that lacked the in-house expertise needed to build bespoke applications from scratch. However, LCDPs have now evolved to the point where they not only assist with software development, but also transform the entire software delivery process.

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