Automation Governance Becomes Imperative for Developers, Industry Poised to See a Proliferation of AI-Assisted Low-Code

Mendix, the global leader in low-code application development, predicts that smarter software will be built in the forthcoming year with the continued emergence of AI-assisted low-code. Other key predictions by Mendix include: automation governance becomes a vital element of the development process, data solutions increase in value, and more IoT providers will invest in integrated service offerings.

“What we are seeing is businesses rapidly realizing that a more holistic approach is required to develop better and more efficient applications,” said Hans de Visser, vice president of product management at Mendix. “That mindset will move into the mainstream as the benefits of that approach become more pronounced. In these uncertain times enterprises that embrace digital transformation will move ahead of competitors with early experimentation in areas such as AI-assisted low-code, and have the best chance of achieving optimal solutions for their businesses and their customers.”

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In detail, Mendix predicts:

1. Evolution of the IT role 

Software development will shift from being the sole responsibility of one or a few individuals to becoming a responsibility of many. As the IT role transforms into a more enabling role, this means automation governance will be at the top of the agenda for many companies. In order to ensure the highest levels of control are in place and compliance procedures are followed, automation governance should and will be at the forefront of the development process for numerous organizations. Essentially, those online services that analyze the maintainability of applications will prove to be an important asset for IT teams.

2. The breakthrough year for AI-assisted low-code development 

Artificial Intelligence will truly make its mark in the application development sector. Last year saw the first wave of AI-assisted programs complementing low-code, but while it may be considered to still be in its infancy, there is much optimism around the potential of AI and machine learning to not only create smarter applications, but to approach it in a more efficient manner. AI naturally fits in with low-code due to the nature of abstracting from lower-level technology, using patterns to define the application domain, UI, and logic. These cloud-based services hold a magnitude of models in their repository, and anonymized models serve as the ultimate source for neural-network-based machine learning to guide developers when building applications.

3. Most valuable currency in digital economy will be data 

Establishing and optimizing company data along with external data will be fundamental to companies creating the next set of business applications. This is evident from the fact that organizations are gradually becoming more flexible in their software development processes by utilizing microservices architectures and decentralized data management in order to improve their operations’ platform. Increased investment will be directed into new data management solutions, which will create a space for collaboration between the producers and consumers of data. The functionality and adaptability of distributed streaming platforms, for example Kafka, will rise and turn out to be crucial data platforms in organizations in order to exploit analytics for application development.

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4. IoT: digital and physical worlds converge

The Internet of Things will establish itself as a powerful transformative technology. Low-code platforms will be deployed to facilitate the creation of smarter and broader IoT adoption. However, for this to be possible, IT leaders will have to further embrace the convergence of the digital and physical worlds as they face growing pressure to produce IoT solutions that connect both services and products, but also increase value and improve operational efficiency. Mendix expects industrial IoT platforms such as IBM Watson, SAP Leonardo, and Siemens Mindsphere to make the most of this shift, with further investment to ensure they cover the full stack of integrated services. That means connecting the dots between IoT endpoints, IoT software, and IoT app development, so all components are synchronized.

Hans de Visser added, “While some of these technologies can seem daunting to organizations with a limited IT team, the reality is that low-code enables anyone to experiment with AI and DevOps. That means people from outside the immediate IT team can contribute to strategically important digital projects. That is not an impossible dream. It only requires working with a good partner that can help get the IT team and the wider business speaking the same language. Low-code can do that by opening up the application development process through visual modeling.”

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