Jamison Cush: Hi, I'm Jamison Cush with
TechTarget. And I'm talking with Gregg Aldana with
ServiceNow, about low code platforms. And if you'd
like to learn more about enterprise low code app
development, please click the link above or in the
description below. Gregg, why has low code becomes
so important? And what's the difference between
the low code and no code?
Gregg Aldana: Well, I'm glad you asked that
question, Jamison. So we've seen a dramatic shift
over the last 18 to 24 months in the industry. And
the reason that low code is become so important is
because so many companies have to move and
automate all of their business processes so much
faster than before. During the pandemic, last
year, everyone was was sent home and was remote.
And so there was this overwhelming need to
automate all of these manual processes that people
can no longer rely on being for in office
interactions. So, I think we're predicting about
500 million new apps have to be built over the
next five years. And that's more applications that
have been built over the last 40 years. And there
are not enough developers out there to hire your
way out of this problem. So companies are turning
more and more to low code platforms. So they can
address two things. One, they can be more
productive with their professional developers, and
deliver applications more quickly. But they could
also use these low code platforms to empower more
developers and more business users within their
enterprise. An d some of the differences between
no and low code platforms is no code platforms are
platforms where you don't have to have any
background in application development, or even any
kind of structured processing. You can literally
like somebody who would open up a spreadsheet, I
call that a no code application. A low code
application is where it kind of starts out is no
code, which you can inlay or some simple scripting
or some simple macro type of business logic if you
need to.
Jamison Cush: So you mentioned the sort of
benefits to traditional developers, but it seems
at least on the surface, that low code could be a
threat to the traditional developer, or the
traditional developer role in an enterprise.
Gregg Aldana: Yeah, I would, I would say I would
dispel that myth. That low code doesn't represent
really a risk to traditional developers, it's
actually an opportunity. And I would say the
biggest fans of low code development in low code
development platforms are professional traditional
developers, because it addresses two major things
for them. One, it allows them to move faster that
they can develop very sophisticated applications
very quickly, because they're not spending time
building components from scratch, they can get out
of the box, low code platforms, but at the same
time, for some of the low hanging fruit, they can
pass off that development to business users to
citizen developers in the business units. So they
don't have to waste their time with their backlogs
on the lunch menu app, or maybe that are lower
priority applications, they can empower more
people so that they can focus as professional
developers on the most challenging and most
critical problems where their skill sets are
needed.
Jamison Cush: So it sounds like there's a great
opportunity for collaboration that might not have
been there before.
Gregg Aldana: Absolutely. And one of the areas
that's that's enabling this collaboration between
citizen developers and traditional professional
developers, is local platforms are allowing people
to introduce governance and management. So whereas
and I would say many years ago, people were very
scared about giving development tools to business
units, or to citizen developers in the different
areas because they were afraid of sprawl. But some
of the new low code platforms like ServiceNow, are
allowing the professional developers to offer this
capability to their business users, and then be
able to control it and governance so that it
doesn't go off the guardrails.
Jamison Cush: So how do these low code platforms
handle integrations with other more sophisticated
requirements?
Gregg Aldana: Well, there there's not a one size
fits all, I would say, on some platforms, they
offer, like ServiceNow, offer integrations out of
the box without writing any code with having pre
canned spokes, that can be just drag and drop type
of components, to bring in data and to send data
to external systems. And all of those actions are
pre canned. And we've seen more and more
professional developers build these spokes and
build these integrations, and then offer them off
to their, to their business users to be able to
bring in data into and retrieve data. And to put
data back here without writing a lot of code. But
not all platforms are created equal. And in some
low code platforms, you have to bring into third
party to do tool to do some of these integrations.
Jamison Cush: So let's, let's just take it back
up, get more high level. Yeah, you're an
enterprise or a business and you're looking into
low code platforms. What would be a sort of simple
checklist you can look at to assess a low code
platform?
Gregg Aldana: Um, well, I think some of the things
that you need to consider when when choosing a low
code platform is the integration question here.
Does this platform allow no code or native
integration? Do I have to bring in another tool
for that? And by bringing this low code platform,
does this fit with my overall enterprise strategy
and technologies that I already have? Are my
taking on more technical debt? Does this platform
have a configuration management database where I
can get more and more value around the more
applications that I that I developed, I think you
also need to look at whether or not your low code
platform will allow you to discourage or get your
hands around siloed behavior. Because the idea is
you don't want to necessarily want to have less
reuse and more waste and have different platforms
in different areas, you want to be able to control
that and have a more predictable investment and
get a better return on your investment. So you're
looking for a platform that you can offer to
business users, but yet control and really kind of
eliminate the the app sprawl. So you're looking
for a platforms that provide guardrails that allow
you to, to give limited visibility and make sure
that you give a consistent experience. You don't
want an application that's built by the marketing
team to look different than the application that's
built by the IT or the sales team. So you really
want to bring that together and make sure that the
platform has a common experience across all the
different areas. But I think the biggest thing
that you're looking for when you're assessing a
low code platform, does it lower your risk or
increase your risk. And what I mean by that some
low code platforms are very siloed. And they're
very slow. But they're, they're very specific for
addressing very specific business problems. But
what that can do is that can introduce more risk
into your enterprise by having too many different
technologies. By having a central technology, you
can actually, you know, reduce that risk and
control the compliance and make sure that you
don't have people using technologies to put
information out there that violates security
principles or whatnot.