- Traditional way of software development and coding will be finished or extremely reduced soon.
- Demand for low-code is so high and it is no longer sustainable to develop apps traditionally.
- UAE and the Gulf markets are tired of projects that cost millions and take more time than they are supposed to.
- Low code will change the way businesses approach IT and software and it is already happening.
Low-code programming is a long-term career and a good opportunity for developers to learn and excel in life as the demand is there due to the shortage of skilled career developers to meet the growing software needs, a senior OutSystems official said.
Speaking to TechChannel News in an interview, Rodrigo Castelo, Vice-President for Middle East and Africa at OutSystems, said the low-code programming method opens the market for new professionals to work in a sector that has a shortage of manpower and even opens new job opportunities.
“Low-code is a reality and it is going to stay. It is very easy for professional developers to learn low-code programming. Traditional coding will be used, in the future, only for niche use cases,” he said.
According to research firm Gartner, 70 per cent of applications developed by 2025 will be carried out with low code.
Urgent need
71 per cent of CEOs anticipated that skills and labour shortage would be this year’s biggest business disrupter, creating an urgent need for entities to bring training and skills development in-house, according to a survey by Fortune and Deloitte.
When all the businesses across industries feel the pressure to speed up their digital transformation, they are looking for new ways and platforms to surpass the barriers posed by the shortage of skilled developers and their approach to the traditional way of developing software and solutions.
“As CIOs face a skills shortage, it is very difficult for companies to achieve their digital transformation goals in a reasonable timeframe with the traditional solutions they have today as projects are taking longer to finish than they should with the traditional way,” Castelo said and added that OutSystems offer a product that allows companies to make custom enterprise applications very fast and with a low cost of ownership.
“We automate a lot of traditional coding. The traditional way of software development and coding will be finished or extremely reduced soon. The demand for low-code is so high and it is no longer sustainable to develop apps traditionally,” he said.
However, he said that not all low-code platforms are the same.
“Some platforms focus on niche use cases like IT service management and some on simple applications while some on mobile and some on processes. Our platform focuses on all these applications whether it is mobile or desktop,” he said.
Built with security in mind
According to Gartner, the global market for low-code development technology hit $13.8 billion in revenue in 2021 and the adoption of low-code software development platforms is growing by more than 20 per cent a year.
By 2023, low-code development is expected to be adopted by more than half of all medium- to large-sized companies.
When asked whether big tech companies like Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, etc. will survive in the low-code era, Castelo said that these companies selling packaged software will have a presence in the market but if a company wants to develop a custom application or something unique to that, then they will have to go for low-code platforms as it is economical, less expensive and it makes sense.
“There aren’t enough developers anywhere. We work with a lot of partners and system integrators to do projects. We have several successful use cases in the UAE and Saudi Arabia where we have converted professionals and not developers to build applications with our systems,” he said.
On whether security and vulnerabilities can be an issue to the faster development of applications with low code, Castelo said that their systems are fully built from the ground up for high performance, with scalability and security in mind.
“The platform is built to help massive scale at a faster pace with automation and AI-assisted tools built in. Companies have to stop relying on old and outdated legacy systems as it not only costs a business financially to maintain outdated systems and wastes developer creativity,” he said.
Moreover, he said that the UAE and the Gulf markets are tired of projects that cost millions and take more time than they are supposed to.
“Low code will change the way businesses approach IT and software and it is already happening,” he said.