I’ve frequently written about how low-code platforms are central to the future of enterprises large and small. But knowing you should be using a low-code platform is one thing, and deciding on which to buy is another thing entirely. Given the complexities of many companies’ needs, it can be exceedingly difficult to choose the right one for you.
Paul Vincent, a Gartner research director, tackles that issue in his article, “Gartner: What to consider before adopting low-code development.” Following are highlights of his advice.
First, he notes how important low-code tools are to today’s enterprises, writing, “Today, empowering employees with low-code development technology is part of the digital workplace charter, supporting the large scale of departmental and workgroup application development. Only applications that are of an extreme scale (for example, relying on custom microservices) or that contain novel capabilities require the traditional professional IT developer and are outside low-code tool capabilities…The principal benefits of low-code application development include productivity, time to market, a reduced need for specialist skills and a simplification of the tooling needed.”
When choosing the right low-code platform, he says, enterprises need to take into account the platform’s true costs. Check out if the platform has a per-user or per-application cost, and then calculate your expected fees. Make sure to include future growth.
Pay attention to whether the platform integrates with your existing systems, and others you may use in the future. Pay particular attention to the APIs it works with, as well as whether it provides its own APIs for accessing its data and services.
You’ll need to make sure the platform you buy adheres to the highest level of security, Vincent says. Make sure it offers, in his words, “strong support for best practices such as authorisation and authentication mechanisms and data encryption services.” And you should also take care to choose a platform which embed or automate DevOps operations.
Once you purchase the right platform, Vincent says, you should make sure that you’re using in a way that will maximize its benefits. He recommends that you should categorize “application use cases to identify those appropriate for low-code development and choose low code for the use cases that require faster time to market with reduced developer skillset.”
He concludes by pointing out how important low-code platforms are for the future of any enterprise: “Gartner believes there is a strong affinity between democratising infrastructure with the evolution of cloud services, and the democratising of application development with low-code. Today, all enterprises have a cloud strategy, and in future they will also all have a low-code development strategy too.”
The Best Low-Code Platform For Your Enterprise
Alpha Software solutions meet all of Vincent’s recommendations and more. Alpha TransForm and Alpha Anywhere can work independently or together as a single platform and are ideally suited for writing mobile maintenance apps. For the fastest and easiest path, Alpha TransForm helps business users craft online or offline mobile apps in minutes that utilize the latest mobile features (camera, GPS, etc.) for fast, accurate data capture. Alpha Anywhere has the unique ability to rapidly create mobile-optimized forms and field apps that can easily access and integrate with any database or web service and can exploit built-in role-based security or robust offline functionality. Learn more about Alpha TransForm and try it free for 30 days.
Read how successful organizations are enabling a wide range of employees to work together to create digital workspaces.
Download the Whitepaper: "The Democratization of App Development"
Comment