The market for low-code and no-code software – which encourages the rise of non-professional developers and accelerates software development – is now a significant market, which will double over the next five years. Recent research by ISG puts the market at around $25 billion right now, and the industry is expected to grow at a compound growth rate of 28% per year, reaching $45.5 billion in 2027. to watch technology spiral out of control and insecure will curb this growth? Can there really be an unfettered “non-professional developer” class, or is this just wishful thinking?
Proponents of “low-code” and “no-code” point out that the benefits they offer more than outweigh the problems that arise. For starters, this approach increases the speed of software development tenfold, says Anindeep Kar, principal consultant at ISG. In addition, by the end of next year, half of medium and large enterprises will have adopted low-code “as one of their strategic platforms”.
The appeal of “low-code” and “no-code” is that it is a “force multiplier” that can help address the issues that keep businesses and organizations from aligning. technologies, explains Anindeep Kar. A lack of alignment “has historically been one of the biggest factors in the failure of digital transformations,” he says. “By blurring the line between lay and professional developers, low-code and no-code are doing to application development what site reliability engineering did to infrastructure management. Low-code and no-code help offset chronic resource shortages, increase developer velocity, and accelerate the development of intelligent automations or low-complexity business process flows.”
Changes in the air
Low-code and no-code are increasingly seen in digital businesses that support hybrid and remote workplaces. “No-code supports the ‘cloud-forward’ approach, driving faster and more convenient cloud migrations,” said Borya Shakhnovich, CEO and co-founder of airSlate.
The growing presence of low-code is also driving changes in IT and business functions. These platforms “offer professional developers the opportunity to act as consultants”, adds Anindeep Kar. Additionally, companies that are successfully using this technology “to increase profitability have employed a collaborative mix of non-professionals and professional developers to accelerate the time to value creation without compromising centralized governance,” says Anindeep Kar. In addition, professional developers and IT staff were granted “access to faster development tools, and the opportunity to focus more on architecture and strategy and to exercise skills related to company.”
The shadow of shadow IT
The main concern with low-code and no-code is its potential to exacerbate the spread of shadow IT. Applications developed by non-professional developers “are often developed without proper IT oversight, so a security breach or non-compliant solution can result in significant financial damage,” warns Anindeep Kar. Additionally, the expanded landscape of shadow IT “can exacerbate existing IT technical debt with orphan couplings. This occurs when a shadow application uses data from IT applications without the IT department being aware of this dependency. Changes to a dependent computer system may cause the ghost application to be disrupted, disrupting business operations.”
Borya Shakhnovich acknowledges that shadow IT presents a risk, particularly because it is possible that “one or very few users know how the system works, and governance problems multiply.” It also opens up a new role for IT professionals: “establishing appropriate oversight, so non-professional developers can have the freedom to improve their work,” he says. “While low-code and no-code solutions tend to be both efficient and cost-effective, there are instances where security issues or the need for complex functionality can limit their effectiveness.”
Shared data
Another disadvantage of low-code and no-code is the inability to customize solutions. “Low-code and no-code platforms are rigid,” warns Nag Vaidyanathan, CTO of Duck Creek Technologies. “Many aren’t flexible enough to respond to the nuances or uniqueness of a particular business feature.” Additionally, low-code and no-code may require “a level of maintenance based on changing business needs. This includes deviations from the norm due to special circumstances such as integrations , the need to modify inherent out-of-the-box code, overhead, debugging, creation of shadow computing groups, as well as redundancy or duplication of functionality across multiple areas of a business.”
This is where IT needs to step in and take matters into its own hands. IT will have to “create and manage APIs for self-service data,” says Anindeep Kar. “It’s not a trivial problem. It’s about extracting data from departmental silos, establishing rules – and writing APIs that enforce those rules – that allow people to access only the data they are allowed to see, and to ensure that data is used appropriately. Data governance is going to become a much more important part of IT’s job.”
Source: ZDNet.com