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, what are the factors
driving the demand for low code platforms today?
And how would those factors change over time?
Gregg Aldana: Well, Jamison, what I think is
really driving demand today is speed. What we saw
coming out of the pandemic last year is that
digital transformation and having automated
business processes is no longer a nice to have.
Companies just need this as table stakes just to
stay in business. So we're seeing this demand, as
people start to come back to work, that they're
expecting all of these processes to be digital. So
companies cannot keep up with the volume here,
they have to develop more processes, and automate
them that much more faster. And so there is a
backlog of applications that need to be built,
they need to be built faster than before. So enter
in low code platforms that address both of those
problems. One, they introduced tools, and
components and platforms that allow businesses to
automate faster, but it also provides tools and
technologies that allow you to empower more
developers. So you're not just relying on your
expensive integrators or your elite developers in
IT. But now you can empower business developers
and citizen developers in all the different
business units. And I think how that's going to
change over time is I think it's going to get even
faster. I think low code platforms today is, as
we've seen, probably over the last two or three
years, they keep getting more and more productive,
and more and more out of the box capabilities, so
that people can build applications faster. And
really where I see those changing over time is
that some of that process of building applications
is going to become automated with the introduction
of RPA, robotic, process automation, as well as
hyper automation, where you're going to have
people developing applications to automate
business processes, you're also going to have
programs bots, if you will, also helping out those
low coders to help them build applications and
automate processes much faster.
Jamison Cush: So I keep hearing you say Faster,
faster, faster. I mean, how fast are we talking?
So compared to traditional development, like from
idea to application, how fast can we exit these
low code platforms initiate and push out
application?
Gregg Aldana: We're talking hours, hours and days,
I've seen customers literally go from idea into
production in three hours with with a ServiceNow,
low code App Engine. I think some more typicals is
anywhere from a few days, for a few weeks, City of
Los Angeles was able to use the service now low
code App Engine to automate a process to have
citizens of Los Angeles register for COVID
testing, they went from idea into production
within 72 hours, St. Jude Research Hospital, they
had a problem last year where they were trying to
automate the signing of digital signatures on
contracts. And they were able to build a low code
application and roll it out to 5000 employees, and
they went from idea into production in three
weeks. So I think that's a that's a pretty typical
timeframe.
Jamison Cush: So how would you decide then what
type of application or use case might be a good
fit for low code app development? Let's say if
you're just trying to get your feet wet in it?
Gregg Aldana: Well, you know, I get this question
a lot. And, you know, it's, it's the typical
answer kind of depends. It depends on the the
tolerance for risk that your company or your
business or your industry have. Um, and it also
depends on the the mission criticality of it. But
I would say what might be a good use case, for a
first locode project, if you're just trying to get
your feet wet. I'll quote a CIO of an automotive
company that there was a customer of ours, I
looked around my office at all of the things that
we hated doing that were manual that were time
consuming. And we decided to use logo to just
automate them. And so a good example would be, you
know, capital investments, and all of the tracking
and project status updates. So this one CIO, in
particular was like, this is just such a time
consuming exercise. We use spreadsheets, we use
email. It's such a very inconsistent and time
consuming experience that no one likes, let's make
it better with low code. And they were able to
build an application within two weeks to automate
all of this. Everybody loved it, they celebrated
the success and then it kind of started from
there. So kind of start small, but you want to be
very visible in that and you want it to show
people very quickly the impact that logo can have.
Jamison Cush: So what about integration or
integrating low code apps into existing systems? I
can imagine that a challenge that a lot of
companies will be facing,
Gregg Aldana: I would say with certain platforms
that it is a challenge, I would say with a lot of
low code platforms in the industry today. They
start off as low code and they're advertised as
low code. And then once you kind of get into that
integration category, they become very pro code
and sophisticated coding very quickly. Um, and I
just have to share that, you know, the difference
with the ServiceNow platform is a ServiceNow takes
a no code and low code approach to integrations.
There's a native integration hub built in to the
low code App Engine solution, the platform
overall, that allows users and citizen developers
to basically do no code integrations, they can
drag and drop spokes. And there's over 400 spokes
already available out of the box with ServiceNow
locode App Engine, so that you can provide these
spokes. And you can just drag and drop and all the
actions already automated. So it makes
integrations ALMOST LOOK pedestrian.
Jamison Cush: And how about scale? I mean, how do
you scale apps that are built on these low code
platforms?
Gregg Aldana: What we're seeing is, is that when
people are building low code apps with enterprise
technologies, they're automatically tapping into
that trusted and tried scalability. So what we see
with a lot of ServiceNow customers, they've
already been using the IT Service Management and
the human resource service delivery solutions on
this enterprise platform for so many years. Now,
they want to tap into that same low code App
Engine to build their own specific App Engine or
their own specific enterprise applications. So
we're seeing that when you're selecting these
technologies, and you want to standardize on the
the different low code platforms here that scale
abilities are very critical factor because not all
local platforms are created alike.