#90 TAG Review of the Leaders of Gartner's Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms Quadrant 2023

Welcome back to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. It is that time of the year again. We have a new Gartner Quadrant, and very specifically, the new Magic Quadrant for enterprise low-code application platforms. So, and as you all know, Everything digital is evolving with tremendous speed. And yeah, so that, that's sort of pushing IT leaders to shift their gears from traditional high-code development to low-code application platforms, very specifically to develop their line of business applications. So yeah, these, these low-code application platforms, um, absolutely simplifying, um, what developers do today. So all the boring coding chores, how you would call them. Yeah, making that application development quicker, far more aligned with modern technology trends out there, very, very much so the AI-assisted development, which is getting more and more important. Yeah, so with these new platforms, yeah, so there are plenty of benefits. And yeah, we talk a lot about low-code and no-code and all things RPA workflow and automation here on the podcast. So if you haven't listen back. I invite you to listen to previous episodes on some of the low-code topic episodes we have to just go a bit deeper into this topic. So yeah, with this annual Gartner Quadrant, Gartner wants to help IT leaders making an informed decision when selecting technology in general. And in this case here was the Quadrant for low-code application platforms, a very informed decision to pick those platforms. So Yeah, I think to kick it off, I think it would be also very good to do a quick look into the market. So you probably heard it already a lot, sort of the broader local market with plenty of different development technologies included. So it's a bit of an umbrella actually these days. So there's no-code in there and Yeah, so, but it's a very, very big, big umbrella. So it has a really robust growth, and the whole local market sits at $44.5 billion as an estimate by 2026. So, but just in this, this market of low-code application platforms, we will see a really, really big increase. It will, will go up to sort of $18 billion US dollars by 2026. And yeah, that's, that's definitely, definitely massive. And why is that? So of course, it is all driven by the enterprise adoption mainly, as usually was, as usual with these big technologies. So more enterprises and users from IT and business domains are now really embracing low-code technology. And yeah, democratization of application development, shifting away from high-code to shifting to low-code from high-code is huge. And then of course the big one out there is hyperautomation. So with the low-code application platforms, you can enable that hyperautomation. Yeah, and then there's the composable business concept. So, and these application platforms, they are allowing that. And that's why there's so much demand for low-code application platforms. And yeah, this is why we're talking about this one. Very excited to see that quadrant coming up this year. We do this kind of review every, every year. So, um, yeah, uh, I know, um, of course, is also here on the podcast. I've completely forgot to introduce you, I know, um, in the beginning.

So, um, listening to your super long intro there.

Yeah, it was very long, so I didn't, didn't think it was going for that long. But, um, uh, yeah, let's, let's have a look at the sort of key considerations. I think you, you had that on your, on your list today.

Yeah. So when we sort of, and again, this is for a bit of context for our listeners, the key considerations is really for IT leaders. And, you know, there's a couple of sort of areas to ponder on, you know, when you look at sort of development. And specifically, if you look at low-code application platforms that allows you to rapidly develop application and essentially accelerate your application development, you know, you need to look at technology that, you know, so you need to look at sort of your, the use cases that's coming through and, you know, that your business needs, you know, against the offerings that the low-code application platforms provide. And, you know, the aim is really to ensure that there's a very good a fit between your business requirements and the low-code application platform you're choosing. A lot of platforms have got feature parity, but there's some platforms that is obviously, you know, sort of leads in certain areas in terms of innovation. And, you know, that's why this discussion is here and sort of to just go over that. So again, the technology fit, try and marry that with the actual, the business requirement. And, you know, for IT leader, that's a very key thing to remember, you know, when we're considering a low-code application platform. Next one is obviously commercial consideration. So again, you know, you need to look at, you know, your future application needs. You need to look at pricing, licensing. And, you know, this is all just kind of good due diligence to do to make sure that the price point for the low-code application platform, that your licensing is good. You might go to the vendor and ask for enterprise license, and they might give you a discount because you're planning in the future and you might grow into that. So again, the commercial element is very important. The third one is developer talent and skills. So, you know, you need to choose a platform that excites your developer community or your citizen developers, you know, and ultimately want to have productivity, increased productivity, you know, to ensure that you can exploit all the benefits of your low-code application platform. So again, you know, it is always does this application platform fit with the kind of like the broader persona of the people within your business? So again, you know, this quadrant, we have talked about the garden quadrant for enterprise low-code applications before, you know, for the 2022 version of this. You know, and again, this really serves as a bit of a compass for business leaders and IT leaders to navigate the low-code application platform landscape. And it offers a really clear view of what's out in the market. And also, you know, with the kind of considerations that I've just mentioned, it sort of just demystifies that slightly. So yeah, Sascha, do you want to start? Yeah.

So yeah, without further ado, we're jumping now actually into the leaders of the Magic Quadrant. So there are obviously lots of different categories in the Magic Quadrant. Gartner has the leaders, the niche players, the challengers, and the contenders. And yeah, but there are plenty vendors, of course. But now for this episode, we're just looking at the leaders because that's the most looked at quadrant. So yeah, the first one I like to pick is Appian. So Appian is clearly recognized as one of the leaders and has been in the Magic Quadrant for many, many years as a leader. Yeah, so they combined now, or they built a unified automation platform. So basically by bringing in lots of other technologies over the last years and now also incorporating AI technologies, which makes it really, really easy for citizen developers to get applications done. Yeah, Appian is a global player. It's very strong in North America and Europe, but of course, also now expanding into the APEC region. And it is mainly, as most customers are actually in the enterprise markets, insurance, finance. Yeah, so that's a bit about Appian. And what is the strengths of the Appian platform? Yeah, I mentioned that before, it's a unified automation platform combining RPA, workflow, end-to-end process orchestration, automation, intelligent document processing, process mining. So yeah, plenty of stuff in that platform. So yeah, and a really, really big plus is that scalability capability of Appian. And because of the big enterprise usage and the government usage across the globe, it has plenty of security certifications. Very important for cloud provider, of course, because mainly everything is in the cloud. Yeah, but it is a steep learning curve, which is, it's a bit strange, isn't it? Because you Everyone says it's low-code, it's easy to get on, get started, but it has really that steep learning curve and high license costs. Now Appian considers themselves as a premium provider here in the Magic Quadrant for many, many years in a row. So they have really high license costs, but they have a really, really strong investment going into the product. So yeah, plenty of new things to be expected. Going forward. Shall we do just one after the other, or do you like to jump into the Mendix one?

I'll do the Mendix. Mendix is the next one. So Mendix is no stranger to the Magic Quadrant. They are effectively the actual leader in terms of the leadership quadrant, but also the ability to execute. Of course, Mendix is a subsidiary of Siemens. You know, they, they offer a wide range of, of tools with inside the Mendix platform that, you know, that, that, that appeals to, to, to various developer personas. You know, they've got a broad library of, of assets you could use, very big presence in Europe. It's a Dutch company, so massive, massive presence there. But they're also sort of expanding their operations in Latin America and APAC obviously got a presence in, in North America. Quickly sort of touch on the strength and the cautions. Strengths, it's, it's very mature platform. It's been around for, for a very long time. Obviously it's under the Siemens umbrella. There's a lot of innovation, a lot of investment goes into the platform. They've got a feature which is called AI Copilot Development. That's pretty nifty. It helps you to, to develop your, solutions even faster. They've also got a feature which allows you to create augmented and virtual reality-enabled user experiences, very strong integration and API capabilities, you know, sort of data storage capabilities, native cloud. So it is sort of the full stack in terms of, you know, low-code platforms. Cautions again to call out, there has been cautions put forward on pricing, slightly higher pricing, you know, in terms of the partner delivery network and some concerns there about capacity of partners. Although, you know, we are a Mendix partner and, you know, we're always open for business and to help you with your Mendix projects. You know, I think that also it's quite a technical product, and you can see that the people behind it is quite technical at heart. So it's a lot of marketing messages might miss business leaders out there because of the fact, you know, might talk about microflows, nanoflows, things like this, which is really beautiful. But I think if you're a business leader, then, you know, sort of, yeah, they don't care too much. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, cool. So the next big one is Microsoft very much was their Power Apps Power Apps and Power Automate capabilities. So they have been very, very, very strong over the last couple of years in the quadrant here. Of course, Microsoft is huge, is global with the Power Apps, very, very successful with citizen developers, and it has really a broad range of— and all combining that really with citizen development, with with the proper high-code development. So it has that professional developers in mind as well at the same time. So yeah, that's really the strength of Microsoft as well, having this integrated in really, really big products like Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365. So yeah, that makes integration so much easier. Yeah, so, and of course it has a huge as well when you think about Microsoft and the partner network has a huge developer amount in the, in the community around Power Automate. So yeah, very, very powerful. And yeah, when it comes to sort of the cautions, yeah, Microsoft has grown a lot over the years and came up with like very complex licensing in general. So it definitely applies here as well. Yeah, Microsoft is not cheap either. So, so was, was that complex licensing and was, was the cloud offerings and everything what they have. It is, yeah, it's also on the higher costs. Yeah, and it has very restricted API support for some of the applications. So that's maybe a bit of a disadvantage to others. Yeah, but very, very strong leader in this quadrant.

Perfect. So the next one I want to touch on, Sacha, is OutSystems. So these guys have also been around for quite a while, primarily operational in Europe and North America. And, you know, like I say, also a leader in this sort of the quadrant. Their product offers really, really advanced low-code capabilities. And, you know, it is essentially sort of a more, I think, more of a developer-centric platform. They are gaining traction, you know, within the APAC region. So, you know, it is, it is a growing market for them. If I just touch on the strengths and the cautions, obviously the strengths we expect, it's quite a mature platform. Also, you can imagine that competing with Mendex, they're going to bring in AI augmented development tools, which they have. They also got enterprise agile planning. So that's all to do with project development lifecycle. And, you know, their new kind of newest feature is sort of a cloud-native feature, which sort of is, you know, brings together sort of their containerized architecture. So I think that kind of again brings them in line with the sort of Cloud Foundry capabilities that Mendix got to offer. On the cautions, again, licensing costs, that is consideration there. And, you know, people have been making note of the fact that, you know, the deployment model does require sort of high degree of changing of skills. And also there's a bit of a void in the lack of vertical industry capabilities. For OutSystems. But again, you know, it's still in the leader space of the quadrant, slightly behind Mendix. Again, good choice, but, you know, just something to look out for in this kind of caution areas.

Awesome. So the next one not to be missed is ServiceNow, also getting more and more popular. Obviously very strong over lots of years, but just in the recent years got even stronger. So yeah, it's an expanding footprint. Print beyond the core ITSM offers they had. So that's what I started with. So now expanding into other use cases. Yeah, and it's investing in GenAI advancements. Yeah, it was good partnerships. And yeah, ServiceNow, like the other leaders, pretty much they're all very global and available. So So now they, this is also one of their strengths, especially in APEC. So they had a rapid expansion there recently and now, yeah, pushing a lot on the investments and in the ERP solutions. And yeah, so it's attracting more and more premium customers and yeah, that makes it even more attractive for other bigger customers going forward. Yeah, but If you're very keen on BPMN 2.0, yeah, there's not much support there, so be careful. Or maybe other standards like the DMN standards, so if that's really interesting. It's a bit nerdy, isn't it, Arno? But of course, if you're looking very much into those kind of areas specifically, they're not really good at that. Complex pricing, that seems to be a trend with all of them really. And some restrictions when it comes to making the user interfaces more customized. So that's ServiceNow.

So the last one we want to touch on today is Salesforce. Of course, I think everybody out there knows the name Salesforce. They have been recognized still as a leader. They operate their own data center, so they're quite large on the infrastructure side. They also use some AWS servers, I believe. And they really focus on sort of customer-related business operations, sales operations, that sort of thing. You know, they have a very, very large sort of platform vendor size and a comprehensive ecosystem. You know, and this includes iPaaS, business intelligence, and messaging. You know, if I look at their strengths, of course, you know, it's— they've got very extensive industry strategy, got a very, very large platform ecosystem. And, you know, there's big investments in their development relationships. So, you know, very, very, very large sort of community as well around it. And some of the precautions, there is a sort of perceived platform complexity, you know, where people think, well, Salesforce is going to be really hard. You know, there's also a lack of priority for, you know, some of the native sort of low-code platform features we see in some of the other platforms, you know, and, you know, the cost to kind of bring in these additional features can be quite high. So again, you know, these are just some of the leaders of the quadrant. There's plenty of other vendors as well, which is also very good vendors. And it is worthwhile looking at these. So, Sascha, I believe you're going to put a link to the full report in the show notes.

Absolutely. We put the link to the full report in there so you can read up on the challenges and niche players because they all definitely worthy a look at. So it's not necessarily that they are not useful as a platform, but yeah, consider— well, Gartner has certain criteria and evaluation criteria to rate these vendors. And of course, for different use cases, for your budgets, for your situation, for whatever you really need, there's a vendor out there, that's for sure. And it also makes sense to not just Yeah, look, look at just Gartner, what Gartner says. Gartner, of course, is just a big one, but there is also— Forrester is also a big one, and there's IDG and a couple of other analysts. And I think we are looking at all the different reports which come out throughout the year at different times. Yeah, when you look at them, you would get a really— you get a really balanced view, I would say. And then you can make a very informed decision. So just because it's Gartner, it doesn't need to be— it's right for you, it's right definitely, but not necessarily right for you.

So, yeah, I do agree. If I can just add something there, Sascha, as well. So obviously we talked about other vendors being on the report. The report can actually, you know, when you look at it and you look at the strengths and the cautions, you know, and you might look at it and be like, well, you know, this sounds like something I don't want to touch, all of these weaknesses. But I think this report tried to be quite objective, partial, just to make sure that if you do go out and you find a low-code application development platform, you know, it is the best suited for your business. You know, we might look at some of the precautions or the perceived weaknesses. And, you know, it is something that they do need to include in the report. But to make it very clear, by using a low-code application development platform, the benefit you gain with Insight, your business is absolutely immense. The nature of rapid application development using these platforms actually gives you a really, really good advantage. So I would say that when reading a report like this, just keep that into consideration because obviously all of that needs to be contrasted against traditional high-code development. We all know that, you know, there's a lot of reports out there that local development, you know, can be up to 70% quicker. So even with some of these sort of cautions and even, you know, some of the people that's not in the leader quadrant, you might have challenges or even the niche players, people that's visionaries. The core of these local platforms will all be very similar. You know, it's all to do with creating business applications very quickly for business people solving problems very quickly at a very low cost. If you are interested in specific, so for instance, you need somebody, a vendor that's got industry-specific experience like Appian, for example, like very strong financial services, you know, that might persuade you to actually go with Appian. But if that's not something that is a requirement for your business or consideration as an IT leader, you know, you might actually look at Oracle or Zoho or, you know, other sort of platforms that's not even in the quadrant, you know. So, so, so again, just it's worth just sort of painting that, that broader picture here. Of course, when making this decision, it's, it's not the go-to. And if there's a weakness, you know, it, it doesn't mean that the platform is actually bad. I think the overarching message is when you use these platforms, inherently it provides you with a really, really big advantage when it comes to sort of creating these business applications in a rapid fashion.

Huge, yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I think if you now think of, okay, how can I experience something like this or how can I get my hands on two platforms like this? Of course, there are lots of trials of these platforms. So, so for example, on Mendix, you go to the website, on Appian, you go to the website and sign up for, for like a developer edition or like a trial, so you can get started with that. And there's lots of academy stuff around that. But if you want more sort of guidelines on maybe experiencing these platforms, yeah, check out our community, theautomationguys.net. They are there, there you find lots of content to make more sense of low-code and how to get started. And yeah, we have a sandbox as well where you can experience some of the low-code technologies. And yeah, so that's available. So check that out at theautomationguys.net. So looking forward to see you there in the community. And yeah, otherwise we have plenty of content on this podcast here. So listen back to some of our episodes to give you more of the in-depth view. Feel free to reach out to us, give us feedback. If you like that episode, give us 5 stars on Spotify or iTunes or wherever you listen to that podcast. And yeah, if you have questions, reach out to us via the social channels or on the community. We will be back with another episode very soon. And until then, let's automate it.