Practical considerations for enterprise low-code

This blog is about the 'Practical Considerations for Enterprise Low-Code' video, presented by Nick Ford and Sheryl Koenigsberg from Mendix. You can watch the video here.

Mendix World 2.0 features a lot of live sessions in which several topics come under review. And for all of us looking for even more information around low-code, Mendix posted over 60 more on-demand videos covering virtually anything that has to do with low-code!

Quality assurance might be a little underexposed, but don’t forget to look at the Smart Digital Factory as well.

This post offers a recap of the Practical considerations for enterprise low-code video, in which Sheryl Koenigsberg (Head of Global Product Marketing, Mendix) interviews Nick Ford (VP Product and Community Marketing, Mendix) about the state of the low-code industry. As we know from Mendix, the video is well produced, and the interview has a clear structure. But in my opinion, there’s significant overlap with the Future of enterprise low-code video. For more information, take a look at Bart Tolen’s blog post: https://www.mansystems.com/blog/future-of-enterprise-low-code, or watch the full video here: https://www.mendixworld.com/session/the-future-of-enterprise-low-code/

The interview starts with why low-code is booming and is currently having a moment. Digital transformation is key here. Organizations must digitize, and nowadays need to accelerate their digital transformation even faster. COVID-19 has been forcing organizations to move their employees from working in offices, manufacturing units, etc. to working from home. This has a huge impact on processes, workflows, automation, and more – leading to a demand for software development in general, and (of course) rapid software development in particular.

In addition to the need for accelerated digital transformation, the unbalanced demand from the business compared with IT delivery capacity paves the way for a sophisticated solution in the form of low-code. This is nothing new, and has been a challenge for years. With the capabilities the Mendix platform brings to the table, close collaboration with business has never been easier. I’ve always been a bit reserved when it comes to empowering citizen developers, but with new features like the DataHub and Workflow, I should probably revise that opinion.

During the remainder of the interview, Nick talks us through a four-layered pyramid, emphasizing that low-code is much broader than just visualizing UI and logic. Low-code is basically about abstraction and automation in every layer of the pyramid. Through this, Mendix is able to fulfill the ever-evolving (enterprise) customer requirements.

A good example of abstraction when it comes to data is the new DataHub, located in the Data Integration layer of the pyramid. The DataHub abstracts and automates data integration in the same way Mendix did with code. A perfect way to automate and extract data services, it’s essentially a data virtualization platform that enables organizations to make their data available through a carefully curated catalog. The catalog allows anybody to search for the data. Once the user has found that data, they can drag and drop it into an application. In my experience, data integration is often the most time-consuming part of a project: not the integration itself, but getting the sources ready to be integrated. Needless to say, I am really looking forward to using the DataHub! 

The Mendix platform has outgrown its capabilities to build simple workflows and departmental applications, and is definitely ready to be the platform for making full-blown enterprise solutions. I recommend you watch the entire video to get a good overview of the various capabilities the Mendix platform has to offer in all the different layers of the pyramid.