The need for fulfilling dynamic customer expectations and delivering market-relevant and trend-centric solutions has led to a rise in demand for solutions that build innovative products fast, right, and for the future. Much to the consistent talks around digital transformation and the growing emphasis on speed and agility in software development, strict hand coding-based platforms often fall short in meeting these modern needs. And this is where OutSystems low-code development platform can help bridge the gap.
A revolutionary platform in the software development landscape, OutSystems empowers organizations to rapidly build, deploy, and manage robust and enterprise-grade applications with minimal hand-coding. By abstracting away the complexities of traditional programming languages, OutSystems enables a new generation of technologists across skillsets, called citizen developers, to build feature-rich, scalable, and secure applications via an intuitive visual interface.
Here we discuss everything you will ever want to know about low-code development and the leading low-code platform, OutSystems.
But first, what is low-code?
In traditional software development, developers are tasked with building innovative products and solutions while writing massive amounts of code. However, in the current needs of agility, scalability, and high-performance, it becomes increasingly tedious and challenging for developers to meet with the ever-evolving technological and market trends. Low-code helps change that.
Low-code is a software development approach that allows developers (aka citizen developers) to engineer solutions with minimal hand-coding. You can leverage the user-driven capabilities of visual interfaces, drag-and-drop components, and declarative programming to create innovative applications without writing extensive lines of code.
In a leading low-code platform, developers get to employ its pre-built modules, templates, and reusable components to assemble feature-driven applications through a visual development environment. That means, developers design user interfaces, define application logic, and integrate with databases and/or third-party systems, all without spending time in tedious coding from scratch. Moreover, low-code platforms come bearing competitive features like automatic code generation, built-in debugging tools, and deployment automation to streamline development cycles and reduce the time, effort, and costs spent for application delivery and maintenance.
What is low-code development?
Low-code is an application development approach that minimizes coding to deliver applications faster by elevating coding from textual to visual. A low-code platform offers intuitive visual interfaces, drag-and-drop functionalities, built-in connectors, ready-to-use snippets, reusable codes, pre-built templates, and much more to create modern applications with intuitive UI/UX, seamless integrations, databases, and business logic much faster than traditional development.
The primary goal of low-code development is to accelerate the application development process, enabling faster time-to-market for software solutions. By abstracting away the complexities of coding, low-code platforms empower developers of various skill levels, including citizen developers and business users, to participate in the software development process.
Features of low code
In today’s highly competitive ecosystem, businesses are looking for a development platform that reduces the time required to build, deploy, and innovate powerful, cutting-edge applications. Besides graphical user interfaces, low-code development platforms provide higher agility and increased productivity and is easy-to-maintain and economical. Let’s discuss some of the features a low-code platform has to offer that a business must keep in mind before choosing the right platform for their application development.
#1.Visual modeling
Low-code provides drag-and-drop functionality and an intuitive visual user interface, which reduces the time and energy spent during hand coding, thus increasing development productivity. As this is mostly a visual development environment, any line of professionals can learn the platform, get certified, and effortlessly build industry-relevant enterprise applications. Furthermore, this model-driven development allows for easy visualization and ability to launch applications with one-click deployment.
#2. Reusable components
Low-code platforms allow you to easily build cross-platform applications by employing reusable components to achieve greater consistency and scalability. Citizen developers can use pre-configured modules, logic, templates, connectors, and more while developing the applications, thus reducing the overall time and efforts spent during engineering avant-garde products.
#3. Collaboration tools
Low-code platform breakdown data silos and results in stronger business IT collaboration with the help of built-in tools. This streamlines development and promotes better communication. The user interface promotes a seamless collaboration and easier communication and iteration between different stakeholders involved during the development process, such as business analysts, designers, project manager, QA testers, and developers, thus ensuring that the developed solutions meet the desired business objectives and user expectations.
#4. Scalable and secure environments
Low-code platforms accelerate the development of enterprise-grade applications while keeping in mind the security protocols and scalability needs. The cloud-based architecture of the low-code platform provides flexibility for immediate changes and supports continuous delivery to end-users.
#5. Seamless/native data integration
Low-code development platforms provide reusable components and microservices that can seamlessly access enterprise data. Low-code lets you securely integrate data from any source or system, even legacy systems using pre-configured APIs and connectors.
#6. Application lifecycle management
In the context of low-code, application lifecycle management refers to the suite of processes, tools, and practices implemented and deployed to manage, maintain, and govern the entire low-code application lifecycle. From development to deployment to ongoing maintenance, application lifecycle management ensures that all products built on low-code platforms align with business objectives and can be effectively managed and optimized throughout their existence. Low-code accelerates all stages of application development for faster delivery by utilizing automation and incorporating agile and DevOps practices.
Benefits of a low-code platform
From improving productivity to accelerating application development and enhancing process agility, a low-code platform offers several benefits over traditional development platforms to help enterprises gain a competitive advantage. Let’s discuss a few benefits of a low-code development platform:
#1: Rapid application development
The biggest selling point for any low-code development platform is its accelerated application development capabilities. Low-code platforms empower developers to code fast,right, and for the future using its visual interfaces, drag-and-drop functionalities, and pre-built templates. This negates the need for extensive hand-coding, allowing enterprises to quickly create applications and launch them to the market in a far less time than traditional development approaches.
#2. Increased agility and flexibility in application development
In today’s cut-throat industrial ecosystem, it is increasingly imperative for enterprises to be able to change, adapt, and innovate at a rapid pace. You no longer can rely on a monolithic legacy system to do the deed for you. And this is where low-code technology can help enterprises quickly change their solutions as per their business models and market demands. Low-code platforms come bearing agility, thanks to its visual development environment that allows for rapid prototyping, iterative development, and quick modifications. This allows enterprises to adapt and scale their applications efficiently and easily.
#3. Maximized productivity
As low-code development platform abstracts the need for writing extensive code lines by automating repetitive tasks and removing technical complexities, it frees developers to focus on other high-value tasks, thus boosting productivity. By leveraging pre-built modules, templates, and reusable components, developers no longer have to write code from scratch, resulting in more application deliveries in less time. Low code technology platform facilitates development, maximizes productivity, and empowers businesses to focus more on mission-critical operations.
#4. Improved customer experience
Organizations create new and innovative products much faster that meet customer expectations and boost employees efficiency and motivation. They can also adapt and change their existing products more easily based on user feedback and data. This includes the capabilities necessary for delivering multi-experiences across channels and devices, allowing businesses to deliver integrated solutions.
#5. Reduced development costs
With the crunch of resources, a low-code platform allows your business to use existing resources and staff by training them as citizen developers rather than hiring new developers for all new projects. This saves up costs spent on infrastructure and training staff.
#6. Increased collaboration between business and IT teams
With easy development, a low code environment removes barriers between business and IT to support continual collaboration and improvements. The visual-model-driven approach empowers businesses to collaborate on cross-functional projects that deliver new applications maximizing diverse knowledge and skills.
#7. Easy maintenance
Implementing reusable components and modules, development teams don’t have to start each project from scratch or write long lines of codes. Hence, adapting to evolving customer expectations becomes easier in a low-code platform, and businesses can focus on innovative solutions to stay ahead of the competition.
#8: Integration capabilities
Seamlessly connected systems form the backbone of data management to enable a 360-degree view of processes, operations, systems, and information. Poorly connected systems or nor connected systems make it difficult to analyze data for actionable insights and further implement those to the operational processes. Low-code platforms offer seamless integration with existing systems, databases, and APIs. This allows organizations to leverage their current technology investments and easily connect their low-code applications with other third-party enterprise systems, enhancing interoperability and data exchange.
#9: Improved scalability
Your enterprise systems must also be ready to scale up and down as per business requirements. If you run a growing business, you will soon grow over your current systems and then look for scalable solutions. Low-code platforms understand the need for scalability and are designed to handle it efficiently. As your business grows and user demands increase, low-code platforms can easily accommodate these scaling needs without suffering any performance or speed lag issues. This scalability ensures that applications can handle excessive workloads and user demands.
What is OutSystems?
OutSystems is a low-code platform that empowers you to develop pixel-perfect mobile and web apps via drag-and-drop functionalities easily integrated with third-party systems and customized per your business requirements. OutSystems incorporates the power of AI, cloud technology, DevOps, and visual modeling; enabling citizen developers to participate in app development and create user-centric apps. While OutSystems provides pre-built templates for application development, you can still add custom codes for innovative features and functionalities. As you don’t need to code apps from scratch, it results in future-ready mobile and web applications fast and at scale.
Here are some noteworthy features of OutSystems low-code platform:
- The OutSystems cloud-native architecture allows you to create unique customer experiences that transform your legacy architectures, simplify enterprise app development, and accelerate business processes.
- The OutSystems low-code solutions result in enterprise-level apps with serious productivity, eliminating high maintenance costs and easing optimization and enhancements.
- OutSystems empowers enterprise owners to expedite application development from months to weeks. Its drag-and-drop capabilities and graphic user interfaces streamline the application development process.
- Not just the development of apps, OutSystems also eases and speeds up the integration of applications with on-premises and existing cloud databases.
History of OutSystems
Paulo Rosado founded OutSystems in 2001 with a vision to develop applications fast, robust, and inexpensive at any point in the app lifecycle. OutSystems is a modern development platform that simplifies building apps, reducing costs and risk by continuous development, providing rapid development, enterprise-grade scalability, and security. OutSystems addresses two major challenges of business:
- Enabling and humanizing digital transformation for enterprises of all sizes
- Faster app development, delivery and change cycles
With the recent version of OutSystems 11 addresses the biggest issue that businesses are facing today – legacy system modernization, delivering new advanced capabilities like embedded CI/CD tools, automation, integrated platform services, and security layer. In late 2022, OutSystems released the OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC), formerly known as Project Neo or OutSystems Neo, a new high-performance low-code development platform with state-of-the-art architecture. ODC cloud-native architecture leverages low-code technology capabilities reducing the complexity of development.
Global enterprises using OutSystems high-performance low-code architecture
So far, across the globe, OutSystems has been chosen by companies from 22 industries, including banking, financial services, insurance, education, government, retail, healthcare, logistics, etc. OutSystems low-code solutions range from building simple mobile front ends to large enterprise migrations and ERP solutions.
Companies are now more focused on accelerating application development, deployment, and management. Hence, they opt for a platform that offers full-stack development for all the use cases and business requirements. Global enterprises that choose the OutSystems platform to develop their enterprise applications are Lapis, Charles River, Engie, PlayRight, Liberty, Van Ameyde, and TAP.
As an award-winning OutSystems partner, Ranosys has assisted several enterprises across industrial verticals in leveraging this powerful low-code platform and developing avant-garde internal and external applications and solutions. Some of these noteworthy clients are: OCB, ComfortDelGro, Scoot Airlines, Adani Ports, Ahli United Bank (Kuwait), Singapore Management University, C. Steinweg Group.
What does OutSystems low-code platform do?
While most businesses know the need for digital transformation, many are restricted by legacy systems, increasing technical debt, and the lack of seamless connectivity between several internal and third-party systems. OutSystems is a low-code application development platform that creates applications faster, minimizing risks, and costs and enhancing your digital footprint. Let’s discuss the many OutSystems capabilities that makes it the perfect solutions for established enterprises and startups alike:
#1. Full-stack development
OutSystems supports full-stack development that encompasses the designing and development of front-end interface, back-end server infrastructure, and database. OutSystems leverages multiple programming languages (such as Java, Python, or PHP), web development frameworks (such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript), database management (such as MySQL, MongoDB, or Oracle), server-side technologies, and cloud infrastructure. As a full-stack development framework, OutSystems empowers developers with a comprehensive set of tools and features to build flexible, mobile-friendly, smart applications that streamline application development process and accelerates time-to-market. Here is how OutSystems full-stack development platform accomplishes it:
- OutSystems low-code approach simplifies front-end development via its visual development environment that allows developers to design and code responsive and engaging front-end user interfaces. It is loaded with several UI components, themes, and templates that streamline front-end development. Moreover, you can easily integrate OutSystems with tools like Figma to easen the development process. Then, its drag-and-drop functionality, custom styles, and client-side logic implementation with JavaScript further accelerates front-end development.
- For backend development, OutSystems allows the creation of RESTful APIs, web services, and server-side logic. Developers can build and expose APIs to integrate external systems or create reusable custom modules to invoke specific functionalities. Moreover, OutSystems also allows data manipulation, validation, and security at the back-end server level.
- You can also build and deploy custom business logics via visual modeling and traditional programming constructs. This automates and orchestrates your unique cross-functional workflows reducing repetitive tasks and inefficiency.
- OutSystems can easily add additional features to your applications, like widgets, facial recognition plugins, pricing engine algorithms, and more, as built-in visual elements.
#2. Make development easier for developers
The ultimate goal of a low-code platform is to increase developer productivity. OutSystems provides an environment that is easier to adapt to building powerful applications without being limited by technology or losing control of code.
- Through OutSystems low-code approach, developers can use a single, integrated development environment that covers the entire application formation: development, quality, assurance, deployment, monitoring, and management using low-code approach, including frontend, backend, database, and integrations.
- OutSystems UI enables you to build interactive UI for mobile or web applications using pre-built templates and off-the-shelf components that work across devices. You can extend the UI to access any device capability like camera, calendar, and navigation, creating simpler plugins.
- OutSystems helps you visually connect databases to any existing data source. Open-source connectors or integration wizards connect with software packages, current apps, or existing databases, making developmental changes easy.
- OutSystems allows their applications to use reactive web AI, IoT, robotic process automation (RPA), and microservices. Also, the apps can integrate effortlessly with existing systems with custom code. The reusable components, modules, and connectors speed up application delivery.
#3. Easy integration with external systems
OutSystems low-code solutions have in-built capabilities and automation that eliminates time-consuming efforts to integrate databases, systems, and software.
- OutSystems allows for seamless integration with SOAP web services, REST APIs, and SAP systems, Salesforce CRM, and more to allow for a 360-degree view of business functions.
- OutSystems API integrations are managed centrally at runtime, and no code is required.
- All OutSystems low-code platform integrations are instrumented, automatically generating error logs and performance metrics.
- OutSystems manages the permissions for reusing, changing, and deploying applications and components. With the low-code approach of OutSystems, complex integrations are implemented with plug-and-play elements for existing systems.
- OutSystems make it easy to build scalable backend services with certified SAP, OData, and ABAP connectivity to deliver the low delay needed to support the most demanding consumer applications, making all your data available on the web or mobile.
#4. Accelerated app development
OutSystems high-performing low-code development clubs automation and powerful visual Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Let’s look at some of the features of OutSystems that help accelerate app development.
- With AI, OutSystems offers options for automatically completing logic and workflows, speeding development and ensuring quality code.
- OutSystems has ready-to-use templates and patterns, making rapid application development easier. It allows the creation of responsive screens for mobile and web applications that deliver a smooth omnichannel experience.
#5. Highly secure and stable applications
OutSystems provides full control of secure hosting generating standards-based, non-proprietary code, high-quality digital solutions for businesses.
- OutSystems allows you to perform quality analysis through the application development lifecycle using AI.
- OutSystems enables you to check for bugs and architecture errors, analyze the impact of changes, and monitor performance in real-time.
- OutSystems can reduce technical debt by increasing the development speed, and preventing the errors of critical merge and debugging.
- The high-performance low-code platform of OutSystems does not compromise with quality and through visual debugging can pause execution at breakpoints and run logic step-by-step to find errors. Moreover, merging the differences caused by developers working on the same module is automated.
- OutSystems has in-built quality testing tools and analytics to measure the user experience and identify bottlenecks.
#6. Artificial intelligence
The power of artificial intelligence in low-code OutSystems platform, enhances the applications by automating repetitive tasks and adding intelligence.
- OutSystems embrace AI to reduce friction, long lead times, errors, and technical debt.
- OutSystems guides, automates, and validates application portfolios delivering high-quality applications.
- The AI-fusion automatically generates a pattern or pre-built components adapted.
- The OutSystems platform analyzes code and detects debugging problems using AI.
- OutSystems low-code platform, AI-driven architecture allows you to build applications with the structured architecture and seamless user experience to analyze the business value and impact for the organization.
#7. Performance and monitoring
Proper application monitoring allows you to visually track the performance, trends and growth of your business, and low-code platform OutSystems built-in functions helps in effective monitoring:
- OutSystems low-code development platform offers monitoring of every application through dashboards that ensures there are no performance bottlenecks with design-time validation.
- OutSystems optimizes code performance at all application layers, ensuring optimal functionality for the intended application.
- OutSystems, with its built-in applications, makes monitoring performance easier.
#8. Cloud-native architecture
OutSystems architecture design empowers building mission-critical applications efficiently that run both on-premises or in multiple clouds. OutSystems includes tools in its architecture like:
- Embedded CI/CD tool allows you to manage every app development phase, from deployment to monitoring.
- OutSystems provides integrated services like security, reliability, scalability, and dependency checks. So when you change one component, our AI capabilities ensure those changes don’t break the backend implementation.
- The integration layer of OutSystems allows you to integrate applications with any third-party database, a system of record, or even SaaS.
How does OutSystems help different industries?
OutSystems extends its capabilities of providing solutions to almost all industries and creating a frictionless experience for customers across all touchpoints. Some of the major industries are discussed below:
#1. Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI)
The BFSI industry landscape is changing dramatically, driven by shifting consumer behavior, an increased focus on customer experience, and reliance on technological driven solutions. But the industry faces pressure on various terms like close regulations, speculative credit underwriting, operational liabilities, and disruptive technologies. The BFSI ecosystem needs to sustain and secure its business interests and make processes efficient. BFSI can leverage OutSystems for digital banking applications to gain a competitive advantage and streamline end-to-end development. Let’s see how OutSystems helps the BFSI industry:
- Seamless customer onboarding process: OutSystems banking low-code solutions allow you to migrate from a paper-based process to a full digital enterprise-grade solution with proper controls and audit capabilities. It streamlines and automates third-party compliance and regulatory procedures.
- Regulatory compliance automation: BFSI can respond to regulatory change by deploying new software much faster than traditional development methods, and hence low-code empowers to build customer-facing applications securely, ensuring safe transactions.
- Personalized experiences: BFSI is expected to deliver personalized experiences for the end user, which requires legacy modernization. OutSystems cloud-native architecture, performance and monitoring capabilities, reusable components, and adaptable integration to analytics results in intuitive and responsive low-code applications.
- Secure and scalable apps: OutSystems has automated processes that balance security and speed for compliances. With OutSystems in BFSI, firms can automatically address internal operational mandates, KYC (Know Your Customer) applications, fraud detections, due diligence checks, and loan disclosure management.
- Accommodate loans and insurance: OutSystems insurance low-code solutions allows you to integrate complex systems for digital mortgage and lending platforms. With OutSystems, you can build core applications to facilitate loans and insurance by extending the system for broker support and creating leads with quoting applications. You can deliver uniquely branded, robust claims for web and mobile applications through strong portals or apps.
#2. Government
The disruption in the government sector is caused by gaps in workflows, with digital transformation becoming important to keep up with the pace of changing policies and regulations the public sector face and the reliance on commercial-off-the-shelf apps. Quick responses and effective new digital platforms will enable the public sector to accommodate changes going forward. To support public sector enterprises OutSystems low-code platform came forward with its capabilities to build modern applications and customer-facing systems.
- Improves customer engagement: OutSystems deliver highly intuitive and efficient public sector experiences using best-in-class UI/UX frameworks, templates, and patterns. OutSystems easily deliver new capabilities on demand without relying on paperwork and automating these processes, preventing errors and avoiding bottlenecks.
- Real-time processes made easy: OutSystems allows government sector mobile applications and self-service portals to minimize errors and delays in government transactions. They make citizens submit applications, papers, or documents online in real-time.
- Quickly updates content: OutSystems quickly updates the content for updating policies and regulations, customizing and automating processes, tax collection, and administration.
- Increase collaboration: OutSystems lets you easily share data across municipalities, improve quality, and reduce costs, ensuring consistently applied valuations.
- Reduce transaction frictions: OutSystems, with its cloud-based ERP for state and local government, enables workflow personalization and reduces transaction frictions with modern infrastructure.
#3. Healthcare
In the past few years, the healthcare industry has evolved their services like never before and requires scalable and user-friendly software. So, instead of relying on monolithic systems, healthcare providers started opting for low-code development to improve their services. Regarding low-code development in the healthcare industry, OutSystems incorporates emerging technologies in healthcare and offers cost-effective, efficient, and profitable solutions.
- Improves customer experience: OutSystems builds applications that allow patients to record their history, take video consultations, schedule appointments, know about healthcare providers, etc. The low-code solutions for healthcare with OutSystems use automation that consolidates information enabling patients to share their medical history easily and making processes more transparent. This improves the patient experience as well as the healthcare provider’s experience enhancing agility and powerful OutSystems API integration.
- Efficient medication treatment: OutSystems allows for building a powerful integrated application that supports caregivers in managing medications for their patients. OutSystems features like easy integration, an open platform with no vendor lock-in, and agile development enable it to create future-proof applications saving cost and time.
- Personalized experience even in case of emergency: OutSystems for the healthcare industry provides enterprise-grade scalability and security, keeps a strong track record, and speeds up development in the healthcare sector. The healthcare industry needs immediate attention in some cases and OutSystems helps prioritize cases and alerts staff, without burdening them with too much data.
#4. Transportation and logistics
With the rise of digital transformation, the way the transportation and logistics industry delivers services has changed. The industry’s primary focus is to streamline supply chain management, improve collaboration between teams, and timely delivery of products to consumers. But in 2023, the transportation and logistics industry faces many disruptions, such as siloed data, shipping delays, geo-political uncertainties, etc. With OutSystems low-code development for the transportation and logistics industry, you can replace legacy systems, develop order management systems and improve transparency end-to-end.
- Legacy modernization: OutSystems low-code solutions allow you to develop modern applications that improve complex business processes like warehousing and distribution of products to consumers. OutSystems supply chain management systems, you can cut down the development time, ensuring responsiveness and resilience of apps.
- Effective collaboration: OutSystems breakdown data silos by ensuring proper communication across the supply chain. Integrated tracking systems unified with ERPs make collaboration easier, also centralized information across warehouses facilitates better decision-making in organizations.
- Improve operational efficiency: The supply chain is flexible, with real-time tracking of payments, products, raw materials, etc., all under one roof. OutSystems integrates systems seamlessly, improving customer satisfaction, backend performance, governance, and cyber security threats.
Why choose OutSystems for your organization?
OutSystems is a compelling choice for enterprises who wish to accomplish their digital transformation goals and develop powerful and efficient solutions for their software development needs. OutSystems’ low-code platform offers several benefits that outpaces it from traditional development approaches, a strong reason why several global leading enterprises leverage the platform to achieve innovation and success. Some major OutSystems benefits that organizations experience are:
#1. Develop mission-critical leveraging OutSystems’ agile methodology
OutSystems focuses on using a high-performance low-code approach that enables you to build business-critical applications with serious productivity, reducing and eliminating current technical debt. This approach lets enterprises focus on other requirements of design, customer engagement, customer support, and services.
#2. Develops enterprise-grade apps
OutSystems allows you to develop enterprise-grade applications to cater to your unique requirements. The pre-built components helps create differentiated customer experience, transform legacy applications, simplifies and accelerates business processes, and builds innovative applications fast and at scale.
#3. Simplified development for omnichannel experiences
OutSystems simplifies application development by infusing AI and unlocking the complexity of developing applications with its state of architecture. The changing and ever-evolving business requirements are faster to build with a low-code platform, and OutSystems lets you build applications within weeks through one-click deployment, while taking advantage of continuous and automatic updates to all applications.
#4. Need for secure applications
Enterprises has understood the importance of secure applications and protecting users data from external threats. OutSystems has built-in security features that support the complete development lifecycle of an application and help in DevOps processes, laying the foundation for a secure SDLC. OutSystems offers AppShield and Sentry to add a layer of potential security risks, avoiding regulatory fines, reducing manual coding work, and protecting against data leaks.
#5. Offers custom solutions
Applications developing with OutSystems have enough room to implement custom workflows and solutions for smooth, personalized, and omnichannel experiences. OutSystems allows you to innovate your business with multi-experience development ensuring consistency. The latest cloud technology provides unrivaled flexibility and a unique development experience to maximize productivity. With everything managed centrally, the entire application development lifecycle, deploying, managing, monitoring, and running, is at lightning speed.
Leverage low-code capabilities of OutSystems with Ranosys
As an award-winning OutSystems Partner, Ranosys and our team of low-code experts ensure that your business inculcates best practices while developing leading-edge web, mobile and intranet applications. Connect with our certified experts to know how OutSystems can turn your innovative ideas into delightful app experiences.
