How No-Code and Low-Code Transform the Software Industry

CIO Applications| Tuesday, August 04, 2020

Low-code software can be completely customized with a "low" (minimal) amount of programming. As a result, it would take only a few hours or days to develop a custom application as compared to weeks or months.

Fremont, CA: The software industry is expected to face a massive transformation in the years to come, similar to the disruption other industries like healthcare and manufacturing have witnessed recently. For instance, Google Docs became popular among people through its cloud-based software, forcing Microsoft to change its Office 365 business model. Cloud-based software is now the trend. The impending software industry transformation involves low-code and no-code software that promises to make the software itself omnipresent than that is today.

Let us look at how now-code and low-code software can become the next industry disrupter:

Faster Application Development

Low-code software can be completely customized with a "low" (minimal) amount of programming. As a result, It would take only a few hours or days to develop a custom application as compared to weeks or months. Although low-code software still requires coding by an expert programmer, it is faster and cheaper than ever before. Zoho and Salesforce are examples of low-code platforms.

No-code software, on the other side, allows anyone to tailor an application to their needs without any programming knowledge or experience. Airtable and Pipedrive are examples of no-code platforms.

Currently, both types of software are sometimes grouped together into the "low-code" category, but no-code software may emerge as its own market category since no-code software allows any person with or without the minimum technical knowledge to customize their business processes and dashboards.

In the years to come, it is expected that most application developments will be made using platforms and tools that provide turnkey ways to program.

Implications

Enterprise software providers like Oracle and SAP need to simplify their solutions to allow for greater customization faster. GitHub and Zapier are examples today. As a result, gone will be the days of tolerating yearlong enterprise software customizations or hiring a development house to program your application entirely from scratch. Consequently, the days of tolerating yearlong software customizations or employing a development house to program their entire application from scratch are gone.

Investors can gain enormous profit by supporting the larger existing players who can move quickly to the new low-code model, even if it means giving up short-term services revenue for longer-term competitive advantage.