5.2 Current Market Leaders
Microsoft:
A new entrant to hpaPaaS/Low-Code development platforms, Microsoft has reached the top three (3) vendors with PowerApps – a drag and drop, citizen developer focused platform to build Apps; provides access to Microsoft Common Data Services; incorporates Microsoft Flow for simple App integration; and provides integration with Microsoft Azure for more complex external business workflows and event-based workflows.
Mendix:
Introduced in 2005, Mendix Low-Code Web Developer and Atlas UI framework offers professional developers and to a lesser degree, citizen developers a model-driven visual development environment for data-driven, event-driven and process-oriented Apps. In addition, an integral 3GL Integrated Development Environment (IDE) enables extending the Low-Code visual development tools. Deployed on AWS, Mendix supports open source Cloud Foundry and Docker images. Appian. Delivering its cloud platform since 2007, Appian’s Low-Code platform enables developers to create data-centric and process-centric Apps using its strong Business Process Modeling (BPM), Case Management Content Management capabilities. Appian has taken a unified platform approach which enables Apps developed on the Appian platform to be deployed without change on a variety of devices on-premises and as PaaS services.
ServiceNow:
The Now Platform, offered since 2013, is a stand-alone Low-Code hpaPaaS solution which comprises all platform services used on ServiceNow’s SaaS IT Service Management solutions with an emphasis on workflow and integration.
5.2.1 ©Gartner Magic Quadrant
Gartner defines Low-Code Application Development Platforms as high-productivity application Platform as a service (hpaPaaS) solutions for declarative, model-driven applications design, development and simplified software deployments. Gartner selected 18 vendors for inclusion in their hpaPaaS assessment. Garner’s vendor inclusion criteria stated, “Only vendors providing “enterprise” hpaPaaS – as a public cloud service - are considered in this ©Gartner Magic Quadrant for July 2019” (see Figure 7).
Figure 7. Low-Code Application Development Platform Leaders are in the upper right quadrant.
5.2.2 Forrester WaveTM
For Forrester Research’s Low-Code development platform assessment, we drew the current Low-Code market leaders (see Figure 8) from the Forrester WaveTM Low-Code Development Platforms For 1st Quarter 2019 and Forrester WaveTM Software for Digital Process Automation 2nd Quarter 2019. According to Forrester Research, their inclusion criteria for Low-Code cleared 13 vendors and for digital process automation 10 vendors were cleared for the assessments. Forrester Research moved Vendors that were previously categorized in 2018 Low-Code assessment (included Appian, AgilePoint, Bizagi, K2, and PNMSoft) to the Forrester WaveTM Software for Digital Process Automation assessment. The vendor inclusion criteria paraphrased from the Forrester WaveTM Low-Code Development Platforms are as follows:
Offers a comprehensive declarative development approach:
According to Forrester, declarative tools allow Low-Code developers to define data, logic, flows, forms, and other application artifacts for Low-Code use cases without writing code. Forrester’s assessment emphasizes model-driven development and visual configuration of Apps in application deployment projects.
Designs its product/services to serve the needs and preferences of Low-Code developers:
Forrester favored vendors in their assessment that targeted professional developers building enterprise scale digital experiences as their primary customers and addressed other participants (i.e. citizen developers) in Low-Code development as secondary users.
Provides a low-cost-of-entry commercial model:
Forrester selected Low-Code development platforms that do not have a high cost barrier for adoption and do not require formal paid training courses to build business apps.
Supports building many business use cases:
Forrester selected vendors that take on a wide range of use cases, including web and mobile apps, transactional database apps, automated business processes, event-processing apps, and business reporting and analytical applications.
Primarily targets large enterprises:
Forrester selected vendors who server enterprise scale customers having revenues in excess of $1 billion in multiple geographic regions.
Figure 8. Forrester WaveTM Low-Code Development Platforms For 1st Quarter 2019.
According to PCMag, one area in which all these tools are weak is change management. Feature enhancements are sorely needed around the ability to stage a release to a subset of users plus the ability to roll back a release in case of an error or release failure. Mendix and OutSystems have one-click deployment and rollback, but there are still some issues that they need to work out in syncing data model changes to the UI/UX.