Over time, businesses and tech experts have been looking for ways to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. However, one main challenge has been developing textual code from scratch for every application component, which is time-consuming. The emergence of the low-code servicesapproach delivered a sigh of relief to developers and businesses. This development method elevates coding from textual to visual. Advanced low-code development platforms, such as Mendix, have numerous built-in components, which you can drag and drop to your app to boost its capabilities and functionality.
But what is low-code development? And what are its features and benefits? Join us as we provide an in-depth review of these elements and more.
What is Low-Code Development?
Traditionally, application development was based on textual coding. However, low code takes an entirely different approach to creating apps. It is a visual model-driven app development method that allows developers with varying skill levels (novice and professional) to develop apps quickly and with minimal coding efforts.
Instead of having a technical coding environment, low-code development solutions provide a model-driven, drag-and-drop interface. As a result, you can build high-quality, value-driven enterprise applications, regardless of your development skill levels.
Features of Low-Code Development
Low-code development platforms like Mendix provide numerous features to help you create apps faster and more efficiently. Some key features of low-code development include the following:
1. Visual Modeling
Low-code solutions like Mendix provide a model-driven development (MDD) environment. This development environment offers visual models for defining an app’s data, user interfaces, and business logic, among other crucial application components. With MDD, you can visualize how an application works as it is being developed, enabling all stakeholders to be on the same page.
2. Reusable Components
Low-code development is all about developing apps with minimal coding efforts. As a result, advanced low-code development platforms like Mendix provide numerous built-in and reusable components to help you deliver an application faster. This enables you to develop cross-platform applications using pre-configured connectors, templates, logic, and modules.
Moreover, skilled developers can extend and customize these components to modify and improve their functionality. Usually, these components are available on app stores provided by the low-code platforms. For instance, Mendix’s pre-built components are available on Mendix Marketplace.
3. Full Application Lifecycle Support
Low-code app development solutions support the entire development lifecycle, from ideation to deployment and maintenance. These platforms have tools that streamline requirement definition and management, version control, project management, deployment, and testing, among other stages of app development.
What’s more, holistic low-code solutions like Mendix integrate DevOps tools and agile development practices. This enables you to develop scalable and agile applications for your business.
4. Collaboration Tools
Low-code development aims to bridge the gap between business and IT teams. It provides a visual development approach easily understandable by business stakeholders and non-IT personnel. So, IT and non-IT teams are actively involved in the development process.
In such a development environment, collaboration is necessary. Therefore, low-code development platforms provide tools for messaging, revision tracking, feedback loops, and more. These tools keep everyone speaking a similar development language.
5. Scalable Environments
Low-code development focuses on flexibility and scalability. So, low-code development platforms allow you to augment existing apps and deploy new ones quickly as business needs and customer demands change. These platforms often support cloud-native deployment, which delivers scalability on demand, promotes continuous delivery, and offers flexibility.
6. Data Integration
Another key feature of low-code development is that it supports the secure integration of data and logic from different sources, services, and systems. Low-code development platforms help you build apps using pre-configured connectors and APIs or empower your skilled developers to create custom integrations.
Benefits of Low-Code Development
Here are the top benefits of low-code development to an organization:
1. Frictionless Legacy Modernization
Modernizing your legacy systems is key to successful digital transformation programs. However, legacy systems often monopolize your IT resources, making adding new app development platforms challenging.
Legacy modernization can be complex and challenging. Fortunately, low-code development mitigates the challenges of legacy modernization. It allows you to create new user interfaces (UIs) or rebuild your system faster. With low code, you can build custom apps that:
- Can incrementally substitute antiquated systems
- Connect seamlessly with existing software landscapes
- Extend your legacy system’s capabilities
2. Improved Customer Experiences
Due to the high competition, it is increasingly becoming hard to differentiate your products. Businesses have one shot for survival; delivering customer-centric solutions. Low code can help you provide consistent, unrivaled digital customer experiences.
You can use low-code development to quickly develop customer-facing mobile, IoT-enable, and web apps, all in one platform. Since this development approach is collaborative, the teams nearest to the customer can add significant value by creating or working closely with professional developers to build customer-centric digital solutions.
3. Accelerated Development
Did you know low code can minimize development time by about 90%? Every business is looking for ways to create and deliver digital solutions faster and more efficiently. With features, pre-configured components, visual modeling, one-click cloud deployment, and assistance bots, accelerated development is the foundation of all low-code platforms.
4. Scalability
Low-code development platforms are cloud-based, providing the scalability to modify existing apps and deploy new ones as needed. Users of low-code platforms can onboard easily and quickly. Also, system administrators can oversee their entire ecosystem and grant access based on user roles.
5. Collaboration and Communication
As we look into the future, collaborative development is crucial. Low-code development brings IT and non-IT teams together by providing a visual language, facilitating seamless communication and collaboration throughout the app development process. As a result, it helps align business, stakeholders, and IT, fostering faster application development.
Final Thoughts
Low-code development has a high potential to streamline application delivery. It offers a faster and more efficient way to build and deploy apps with minimal coding effort. Also, it supports the entire application development lifecycle and features collaborative tools, promoting streamlined app development.
So, what are you waiting for? Venture into low-code development today with Mendix and develop and deploy low-code apps the easy way!