Low Code: what it is and what are the advantages for the IT team

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When we talk about most IT departments suffering massive backlogs, struggling to hire skilled developers amidst a market shortage, and continually being asked to do more with less, do you see your company represented? 

That's why Low Code development is getting attention . Did you already know this term?

Low Code offers great potential to help developers better deal with these challenges. Not only are they easy to use, they also speed up the development process, as you don't have to write all the code for a project by hand.

The purpose of this content is to explain what Low Code is and show the benefits it can provide. You'll see that, although the development of systems in this style is not something so new, the emergence of businesses in the cloud and the growing demand for automation makes it one of the main trends of the moment . Check out!

Read too:

Why integrating systems optimizes the time of operations in your company?

What is Low Code?

software development is an approach that allows you to produce software and applications faster and with minimal manual coding process . These solutions provide building blocks that IT users can assemble into automated workflows.

These building blocks abstract the code behind actions and commands, making it possible for IT to assemble workflows and business applications without the need to work manually. In other words, it's like a jigsaw puzzle: there are already blocks – or pieces – ready to fit together to deliver the final result you expect.

So instead of writing thousands of lines of code using complex syntax, you can use Low Code development to build complete systems, integrate with modern user interfaces, integrations, data and logic quickly and visually. Thus, the software is delivered faster .

That's why Low Code is already known as a strategic approach for the IT area and for the business as a whole. In practice, using this work model saves time and costs for the development team, which quickly manages to see a series of benefits in comparison with other platforms.

Low Code Development vs Traditional Development

Traditional coding is done with an entire team of developers and programmers gathering specific requirements, developing a plan, and working to create custom code for a system to meet specified needs. 

While the traditional approach results in deliveries to the required standard, these projects are often complex and expensive. Delays also happen due to various factors such as:  

  • Various software coding bugs;
  • Inaccurate time estimation;
  • New challenges found in the testing stage;
  • Infrastructure delays;

Furthermore, a traditional development approach requires an ongoing maintenance cycle by the developer to keep the software secure and up-to-date. 

Low Code development platforms, on the other hand, help speed up the delivery of new software by allowing developers to rapidly build applications for specific business use cases .

Rather than spending time and manual effort to code an application from scratch that is made up of common features and components, Low Code allows developers to work from pre-existing templates and drag in pre-built elements, forms and objects to achieve the result they need, with more agility and less complications.

Trend for the future you can count on right now

Low Code tools promise success in software development and workflow automation.

This is a clear trend for the future, but one that companies can start to take advantage of today. That's what Gartner studies indicate.

Therefore, we separate some excerpts from recent research that prove this relevance of Low Code:

“As a software engineering leader looking to evaluate and select a low-code application development technology, you must: identify the specific low-code technologies that support your productivity and time-to-market needs by analyzing the requirements specific applications, automation, integration and workflow”.

Source: Identify and Evaluate your next Low-Code development Technologies

By Analysts: Jason Wong, Paul Vincent, Saikat Ray, Akash Jain, Keith Guttridge, Kimihiko Lijima, Adrian Leow, Yefim Natis.

"By 2025, spending on low-code development technologies is expected to grow to nearly $30 billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.9% from 2020 to 2025."

Emerging Technologies: High-Velocity Demands Accelerate Low-Code Application Platforms. Published 30 April 2021. By Analysts: Laurie Wurster, Fabrizio Biscotti, Jason Wong, Paul Vincent

Furthermore, all major software as-a-service (SaaS) already offer some features that incorporate Low Code development technologies. In this case, as SaaS grows in popularity and these vendors' platforms are increasingly adopted, the Low Code market will see commensurate growth .

5 advantages of Low Code for the IT department

Now, we are going to present the main advantages of using Low Code from the perspective of the IT professional who acts strategically.

1. Greater business agility

Most low code platforms provide direct integrations with major vendors and allow IT to transform APIs , web services and command lines into reusable building blocks.

This accelerates the time it takes to integrate and deploy new tools and technologies, helping companies stay ahead of market trends and consumer demands. 

Low Code is synonymous with agility at all stages of the development process!

2. Greater productivity

By streamlining the development process and increasing the use of automation, IT is able to accomplish more in less time. In addition, talking about Low Code includes tools that simplify the life cycle of processes.

This can include monitoring and alerting capabilities that notify staff when a process is at risk of failure. Or, if a server is at full capacity, redirect processes to avoid bottlenecks and delays.

3. Closer relationship between the different areas of the company and IT

Business teams have a habit of deploying and managing software s without IT staff consent. The reason for this is always the same: the delay for IT to support this demand.

On the other hand, when using a Low Code development tool to rapidly deploy new processes and applications, the IT team's need and dependence on this type of action is drastically reduced.

Furthermore, interfaces can be made more intuitive to allow business users to run and monitor processes, while developers can focus on the most pressing demands.

4. Automate more processes in less time

Low Code platforms, along with the right devops tools, can accelerate development speed to automate end-to-end tasks and processes.

Workflows can be started based on IT and business events, templates can be used to quickly develop new processes, while variables and flow control make it easy to manage data across platforms.

Meanwhile, the pre-built integrations and accessibility of the APIs make it possible to automate virtually any digital business process.

5. Democratization of software development

This is also an important benefit of Low Code solutions, precisely because it reaches more people in a positive way.

This is because Low Code enables users to access technical or business knowledge, such as data analysis, machine learning or application development with a much smaller learning curve , depending mainly on the use of logical reasoning.

In practice, you no longer need to be a senior developer to use highly specialized tools and systems in your work.

Take the opportunity to also listen to Episode #2 of Sky.Cast , Skyone's podcast. In it, we spoke with Guto Rosa, Product Manager at Skyone Studio, about the topic of No Code and Low Code . Don't miss it!

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What are the features of a Low Code platform?

A typical Low Code development platform includes one or more of the following features:

  • A visual IDE : an environment for visually defining user interfaces, workflows, and data models and, where necessary, adding handwritten code;
  • Connectors to various backends or services : Automatically handles data structures, storage and retrieval through these APIs;
  • Application Lifecycle Manager : Automated tools to build, debug, deploy and maintain the application, both in test and in staging and production;
  • Design-to-Code Transformation : Integrated systems that provide designers and developers with a common platform to design prototypes and then easily turn the designs into clean, production-ready code.

It is these features that explain why companies seek Low Code with the features available today, and not just thinking about the future.

3 Low Code Tools

If you are looking for Low Code tools soon after knowing these benefits, you are on the right track!

After all, the differences are great when compared to traditional tools. 

This type of platform goes beyond offering Low Code as a replacement for custom development and offers everything you need to develop robust enterprise solutions that differentiate your business from the competition.

Thinking about the points that should be taken into account when choosing a Low-code tool, always choose it thinking about its importance for the success of the business. 

Below we present 3 examples of tools that help any company:

1. Salesforce Lightning

Salesforce Lightning provides a set of tools for building business applications. The platform will allow developers to build applications with custom and standardized components. It also offers features to speed up the production process.

With this tool, you enable IT and business to build applications together using no-code builders. According to the company, with Lightning, you can save up to 25% of the time developers spend creating customizations .

2. Pipz

Pipz ACDP (Actionable Customer Data Platform) in Brazil with omnichannel solutions for companies that focus on the customer. With a focus on offering an advanced marketing automation platform, it allows you to create conversion pages, forms and automation flows with Low Code or no coding solutions.

Its difference from other solutions is the ease of developing its own solutions based on ready-made models, already available on the platform itself. Just edit and start using.

3. Skyone Studio

Skyone Studio is an IPaaS platform developed by Skyone. With it, you can automate your business processes by integrating software and systems . It also manages all your integrations through a single, simple and secure connector.

Using modern architectures, we have developed a platform that uses APIs to ensure simple and secure integration.

Skyone Studio: how to integrate systems with a Low Code approach

Skyone Studio acts as an important Low Code solution: it was developed precisely with the aim of solving business problems that have excessive IT costs. This reduction also allows for more strategic action. 

In summary, it is the solution for companies that need to integrate systems without requiring advanced development . It works like this:

  • We develop scalable integrations, that is, each one of them can be replicated for several companies with similar needs;
  • You receive a set of automated tools to connect software applications that are used in different environments, such as the cloud and on-premises systems.

This differential makes the investment value more accessible. As it is not developed exclusively, but to meet a range of integrations, your costs will be even lower.

Since you need to have more features in your management system to manage the company more effectively, without making large investments of time and costs, Low Code with Skyone Studio is the way to go! 

Get to know all the details of this solution now!

 

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