eweekchat

Thanks, James! Looking forward to the edge computing chat in April.

Thanks for moderating, James!

Thanks for moderating a fun session

Thanks for having us! This was fun and interesting for sure

It has been a pleasure, good sir.

Thank you!

@jamesmaguire A9 #eweekchat Think about how you future-proof your choices. Your business will change and you can’t reliably predict how or when. How flexible and adaptable is a given solution when other aspects of your organization change? What tools do they give you to help?

A9: If not you, someone will solve no-code pain points.

A9 The relationship with IT and how the development can be supported. When it's all new & driven from users it can be easy to miss the chance to put in process early and you risk having to make a correction down the line to scale properly.

I'll leave everyone with a small tip when looking at vendors. Ask them for the most complex problem they are solving with their own low-code/no-code tool (are they actually dogfooding themselves?)

@pkohli2 support and collaboration from IT are absolute musts -- at least for companies big/sophisticated enough to have IT depts

A9 #eweekchat to me its democratization. I've had customers tell me they couldn't adopt technology because of the skilled labor gap. If every company is now a tech company, which is true. We face the largest skills gap in history. Every company deserves a chance to succeed.

@VinodIyengar 100% -- does your vendor 'eat their own dog food'? GREAT point

A9: Low-code development is still development. It's not a license to be lazy. Development is only 10% of delivery, and delivery is only 10% of an application's lifecycle. Eternal vigilance is the price of productivity.

A9 (2/2) #eweekchat Advancements like low code make it possible for companies of all sizes and pedigrees to secure their digital destiny. That is a very empowering thought. And a very sobering responsibility for all technology partners.

@NickBrackney A9: Agreed. No business of any worth outsources its excellence. If anything, low-code could herald a return to building-is-better-than-buying (or subscribing).

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@NickBrackney and all parts and departments of an organization, too -- it can unleash marketers or comms teams, publishers, sales organizations, even internal groups like HR who have little/no dev support even in big companies

@JamesBrightspot For sure but lets hope they still partner with IT... in the race to cloud so many mistakes were made because IT was disintermediated. Centralized IT should be the guide on the journey (when possible).

@jamesmaguire A8 #eweekchat The future of low code is handling more complex and sophisticated use cases in ways that are even easier, faster, and lower code to implement (and maintain) in an almost ‘Moore's law’ type progression over time…

@jamesmaguire A8 #eweekchat I think we will continue to see more and more defined ‘use case libraries’, sophisticated ‘recipes’ for various functions and workflows, and more seamless and ‘out of the box’ integrations without requiring custom coding to make it all happen.

@jamesbrightspot So the level of software sophistication written doubles every, oh, 18 months or so?

@jamesmaguire A8 #eweekchat Longer term I think much more targeted and vertically oriented solutions to the unique challenges of Marketers, Sales Teams, Media Organizations, Corporate Comm, HR and others who need to move their own complex solutions forward autonomously

A8: Digital transformation is an ongoing, constantly evolving process for enterprises of all sizes. That means that the need for and use of low code and no code approaches will also evolve and grow. Improvements are needed and ongoing.

A8 #eweekchat Last year we had Dr. Michio Kaku at an event and he talked about the move towards AI and machines driving activities. And in that world a premium is placed on soft skills in this world. Imagination, empathy, critical thinking... more so than the technical chops.

@jamesmaguire that's roughly what we see, yes -- and it has been accelerating not slowing down

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A8 The future has endless possibilities for leveraging low code/ no code and it is only growing in popularity. It will accelerate true digital transformation as business users look to automate processes and make improvements easily and simply

@NickBrackney I think that point gets lost in the rush to grow.

Like I mentioned earlier, we'll see widespread adoption for even 'hard' problems, more customer facing use-cases - like low-code apps and models serving end-users, higher confidence in IT to manage deployments at scale

A8: You'll see low-code everywhere. Every SaaS offering of any complexity will have an automation or orchestration facility, and that'l be low-code.

@NickBrackney Yes!

@mikefitz low code everywhere -- yes!!

@pkohli2 endless is a great way to describe it, for sure

@NickBrackney Exactly, we are building AI to do AI to enable customers to focus more on the impact, domain, value questions

A8: You already have see specialized business process suites that are low-code. Data mining options. You'll see specialized low-code tools emerge for custom solutions to any of many specialized problems and industries. Code will be the fallback when things get weird

A8: Low-code vendors are part of app dev discussions from start. No-code tools are used across most departments for stakeholder-facing work.

@mikefitz @jamesmaguire 100% agree on the low-code solutions for specialized business processes -- that's a key part of how they will continue to evolve, specialization +integration

@Llanor_A evolution and growth are critical for sure -- as any organization knows that has survived the last 2 years, who knows what you will need 2 years from now!

@JamesBrightspot A lot of this evolution is coming out of unexpected social and tech changes.

@llanor_a The rise of the citizen developer -- how knows what changes this will create.

@jamesmaguire A7 #eweekchat Winning solutions will be flexible to adapt to complex, evolving workflows / stitch together different pieces of the tech stacks from multiple providers / present in intuitive UI that doesn’t require extensive support - with little/no dev effort

A7: Niche players with specialized high-quality tools (either for specific application domains or specific vertical industry scenarios)

@jamesbrightspot So open source?

@mikefitz agree -- as long as those niche players are built to integrate with others

A7: Also the biggest of the big. Companies understandably avoid risk, so they look for the biggest, most established vendors they can find. With marketing budgets to make sure they're noticed. They'll do well whether or not they deserve it.

@jamesmaguire not typically open source, in my view, though they can be -- I think it's really about platforms built to be extensible and 'play nicely with others' in an integrated stack

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A7 #eweekchat I'd argue the infrastructure/cloud vendors. The gate to consuming more resources is developers. Enabling more users to build means more infrastructure is needed.

A7: Each domain is seeing its own set of tools and they are all quite unique in their approach. A lot of interest around easy app development spans many industries

A7: The low-code tools/platforms that best embrace established interoperability standards. In the age of the cloud, we integrate via protocols, not buses.

For low-code, open source is a big part - especially if the aim is to attract existing developers

A7 In my experience, since low or no code development requires the interfaces to orchestrate, understand and act upon various underlying apps, many customers are choosing well-established RPA companies such as Automation Anywhere to access both legacy and modern systems

@mikefitz big can be good, sure, in the "nobody gets fired for hiring IBM" sort of way -- but monolithic platforms get bogged down quickly and nimble, niche ones can be better options

@JamesBrightspot I couldn't agree more. In fact, I'm personally the least fond of low-code tools that try to be all things to all people. Low-code is about outsourcing part of the solution to the platform so you can focus on what matters. Specialization is part of the deal.

@NickBrackney no doubt the cloud providers win in all of this!

@JamesBrightspot Agreed, the key is a reliable vendor who has built an ecosystem of partners, customers and community. Doesn't necessarily have to be big

A7: I'm actually not all that big on whether or not they're open source. Mainly because the whole point is that you shouldn't *want* to modify the tools -- you're supposed to be able to rely on them so you can focus on what's unique to your applications. V

A7: Low-code vendors that demonstrate the value over custom and dedicated vendor solutions. No-code vendors that solve pain points for non-devs.