The melee of China's low-code development platform - say low-code at once

Author: Liu Xin, founder of APICloud

Today we speak low code in a language that the public can understand.

These two years, whether it is the capital level, or enterprise IT department's concern, "low code" is an absolute hot spot. T he Internet community also seems to have emerged overnight with a variety of low-code companies. W hat exactly is low code? I s low code a new technology? W hat value does low code development bring to the enterprise? H ow do businesses use low code? W hich platforms are really low code and which are murky fish hot spots? We made it clear today.

What exactly is low code? Why do businesses need low code?

"Low code" literally can be understood as "writing less code than normal application development." Let's comb through the value of the "low code" development platform:

1. You can "develop CloudNative Cloud Native Applications" "on the cloud";
2. How to develop on the cloud? Using visualization or even what you see and get, through drag-and-drop development;
3. What cloud-native applications are developed on the cloud with drag-and-drop visualization? Mobile-focused "personalized applications" that need to cover back-end and PC-side management capabilities.
4. Developed application features? Peripheral applications that are often initiated by the business unit to be quickly launched and have an overall application life cycle of no more than one year.

The prevailing definition of low code is that, to meet the needs of small and medium-sized mobile-oriented applications initiated by enterprise business units, cloud-native applications can be quickly developed on the cloud with visual drag-and-drop and a small amount of code, often referred to as a low-code development platform.

Knowing exactly what low code is, we can guide enterprises in using low code.

Recommendation 1, "If you want to develop an OA or ERP, you should stop using low code."

As early as 2016, Gartner released three classification model reports for enterprise software, in which the Speed Tiered Applications Report divided enterprise applications into three types: infrastructure (e.g. ERP), differentiated (e.g. CRM), and innovative (e.g., mobile applications). T he first two are areas covered by traditional enterprise IT, an inherent IT model maintained and led by traditional IT staff. As enterprises become more and more Internet-oriented, the third type of innovative application demand is growing rapidly, that is, non-traditional IT-led applications initiated by business units, such as "Internet attributes" "on the cloud", "short on-line cycle", "experimental" "short life cycle", "demand uncertainty", "traditional IT departments are unwilling to pick up hot potato" and so on, the core of the emergence of low-code platforms is to meet these development needs, rather than to rob the market for OA, CRM, or even ERP.

By distinguishing the types of enterprise applications, you can determine which applications in the enterprise can be developed with low code.

Recommendation 2. Enterprises need low code developers, of course, can not expect business units to develop low code, but also can not rely solely on inherent IT departments

Low code abroad starts to catch fire with a vision that Citizen Developer, a business unit with no technical background, can use a low-code platform to develop innovative applications for businesses. B ut the reality is very bone-chilling, even if there is an English advantage to understand computer code, it is impossible to develop business personnel can develop the application. After all, low code is not code-free, or there are considerable coding and technical requirements.

Having IT use a low-code development platform to help businesses develop innovative applications sounds reasonable, but there is a paradox in practice, because IT departments already have many proven tools and systems that can improve programmers' development efficiency, and there is no need for a new one. What's more, "decent" programmers don't want to use a set of tools that "seem to work for themselves and actually get rid of their careers" to improve their development skills.

The needs of the business unit are real, and so are the inherent IT teams' reluctance to take on the innovative applications around them. Because of this low code development platform, and low code platform is often "the business unit's own budget to find new people (internal or external) to meet the development needs of these innovative applications", so low code development platform, to have a large number of mature developers, to build their own "low code development ecology" is the core priority.

In this melee of low-code rivers and lakes, how to distinguish between "Li Wei" and "Li Ghost"?

In fact, it is very interesting to study foreign low-code leadership companies, you will find that all leading companies are very "old" companies, basically no newly established companies. T hese companies used to have their core competencies. Such as Outsystems, Mendix used to do BPM (workflow), Kony used to do MADP (mobile development platform), Microsoft, SAP low code development is the core of the previous aPaaS and MADP reorganization.

It can be seen that the low code development platform abroad is not a new innovative technology, but a new model based on the existing technology base. T hat is, a mainstream LowCode low-code platform that combines BPM-based processing, visualization, and aPaaS componentized cloud nativeity, as well as MADP's rapid development of innovative applications for cross-platform mobile Internet. Whether a low-code company has at least one of the three important genes, BMP, MADP, and aPaaS, is an important criterion for judging whether the platform is a low-code company.

"Low code" as the name implies, "writes less code than normal application development." But not all ways to save code can be called "low code", and true low code has some essential qualities.

Looking at the definition of their products by well-known foreign companies such as Outsystems, Mendix, Appian, and Kony, the core elements that a low-code development platform must have are called "3-plus":

• 3 capabilities: visualization (drag), MADP (mobile first), aPaaS (development environment on the cloud).
• 1 must: Have a companion ecology (mature developers, the ability to connect to other cloud or in-house systems).

Of course, many people also talk about concepts like "model-driven," "form-driven," "mid-table capability," "continuous integration," and so on, all of which may be covered, not unnecessary. D ifferent low-code development platforms focus differently and are not repeated here. In summary, it's easy to tell the difference between a "true and false" low-code development platform.

Low Code Development Course Recommendation: APICloud (3.0)-APP-Small Program Live Development Training