The technology world is no stranger to the hype; each new innovation is hailed as a revolution, and everyone wants to be an early adopter of the next big thing. Even so, the buzz around the potential of no-code (and low-code) solutions is quite relevant, and it’s worth paying attention to.

Background

Since then, the low-code movement began during the 1970s and built a slow and gradual evolution. As technology has advanced, no-code solutions have become the norm in most software and application segments, with no-code solutions for app development becoming ever-more prominent in contemporary business organizations across industries.

Nevertheless, the landscape for no-code solutions remains complex, with a fragmented array of platforms and submarkets muddying the waters of decision for business makers. Submarkets are targeting large enterprises, others for medium-sized and small businesses. The appeal lies mainly in their scalability and performance and easy integration with existing business applications – but they can come at a premium. So let’s look at some of the promises of the no-code hype and whether the reality bears these out.

Promises and Reality

At the heart of the promise of no-code solutions is the idea that they will make software development easy, as simple as creating a presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint. This will allow the average business user to develop and move projects forward without additional time and money costs for an engineering team. Low-code platforms offer a similar ideal – unlike no-code platforms, they require some coding skill to be present but promise an accelerated software development cycle by allowing developers to work with pre-written code components.

Anything that can save businesses time and money is bound for growth, and the forecasts for low and no-code solutions are impressive. According to Gartner, 65% of application development will be standard code by 2024. Forbes, meanwhile, is even more optimistic: ‘The mixture of low-code and conventional innovation is projected to be adopted by 75% of businesses. By 2030, the global low-code development platform market will produce $187 billion in revenue. It will account for more than 65% of application development activity by 2024.’ 

Meanwhile, Devops.com identifies five key industries which are either adopting or stand to win big from no-code development: Retail, Insurance, Banking, Healthcare, and Manufacturing.

Taking the promises of the no-code movement in mind, these numbers are no surprise. However, some considerations make the reality a little less utopian.

First of all, while no-code solutions speed up application development, these applications can be limited in their functionality and complexity, meaning that developers will have to drop out of the no or low-code environment at a certain threshold of complexity more complex functions externally. Therefore, when choosing a no-code solution, it’s always essential to evaluate how it handles complex requirements relevant to your business needs.

Similarly, while no-code can deliver faster time-to-market, this has to be balanced by how a no-code application performs in prototyping, integration, and maintenance stages. Also, if you have an application that requires more intricate functions and therefore have to drop out of no-code occasionally, development time will inevitably begin to spin upwards.

Regarding the promise of seamless integration, Lansa explains the limitations of this offering well: ‘For many low-code solutions, integration is done via web services only. Many existing systems may not have web services interfaces, so integration becomes more difficult and potentially expensive as additional development effort outside the low-code platform may be required.

So there are some critical factors for business leaders to consider before adopting a no-code solution. As ever, it’s vital to do your research. Now, let’s look at the powerful possibilities of no-code solutions.

Powerful Possibilities

In addition to the benefits above, no-code solutions offer several decisive advantages. First, there are fewer bugs to contend with as standardized tools, which means a reduced need for testing and less risk that something might go wrong. This, of course, saves time and money in the testing part of the development cycle and ongoing application maintenance post-release.

Furthermore, no-code also offers more significant opportunities for automation within an enterprise, such as Robotic Process Automation, reducing the need for manual task completion and accelerating various processes while increasing the accuracy of output – all of which are crucial in maintaining a competitive edge and driving up overall organizational efficiency.

Challenges

Any opportunity comes with its challenges, and no code is no different. Dependency is perhaps the first to mention; by deploying a third-party designed no-code solution – especially if you’re doing so because you lack development talent in your organization – you are increasing your dependency on the vendor of that solution.

At the same time, your independence as an organization to tinker with or improve the solution is limited. You can’t customize packaged no-code solutions, and if you want to add extra features or functionalities, you’re going to need to offer extensive training to your in-house staff if they don’t already have it. If they do, you’re still going to lose time and money, as stated above.

These are not necessarily reasons to give no-code the cold shoulder. As discussed in this article above, the benefits are seen. However, you need to ensure that you have leaders within your organization whom users of the solution can learn from, with a comprehensive strategy for its implementation and development over time. These leaders can guide both the solution choice and help build the in-house skills you’ll need to add features and functions to any apps built with no-code solutions. In turn, this will help you gain a greater degree of independence in the ongoing maintenance of your product. Over the long term, it will enable your development teams to hit the ground running when they are required to lean in for capabilities not covered by no/low-code platforms.

In terms of optimal areas for no-code implementation, using the technology to support application innovation and integration looks to be a primary driver, in addition, to use no-code process automation to remove the need for employees to complete routine, rules-based tasks – all of these functions can be sped up and made more efficient by no code technology, delivering an ROI against the cost of the technology in the first place. 

Global investment levels in no-code solutions

Investment levels in No-code vendors have doubled in the past year, as seen in the graph below:

While the no-code industry is still consolidating, it is doing so quickly, and investors’ confidence bodes well for early entrants and vendors in the market.

Gartner, for example, forecasts that the worldwide low-code development technologies market is projected to total $13.8 billion in 2021, an increase of 22.6% from 2020, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.

Despite ongoing cost optimization efforts, the surge in remote development during the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to boost low code adoption. The graph below shows the levels of investment in low-code by different global regions:

Key market adoption areas include: 

Not surprisingly, the adoption rates have a projected sharp uptick:

The market is set to rise for low-code and no-code solutions, and companies that can successfully implement their usage across development projects have much to look forward to. Notably, the AI solution domain is expected to have a sharp increase in the adoption rate of NC/LC technologies that can fulfill the exponentially growing need for AI implementations in a trustworthy and consistent fashion across industries.