RAD Platform

Mendix and OutSystems: To Choose Between Two Low-Code Industry Heavyweights

4 April 2024 by Nikhil Bute

Mendix and OutSystems: To Choose Between Two Low-Code Industry Heavyweights

For enterprise application development, deciding between Mendix and OutSystems requires a nuanced comprehension of each platform’s core competencies. Your decisions should be based on assessment of user interface, development experience, scalability, performance, BPM capabilities, integration, deployment, and pricing to choose the right fit platform.

Mendix and OutSystems are two proven powerhouses in the low-code development industry, and professionals on the hunt for enterprise application development often have to consider choosing between these two platforms. With a long list of core strengths to warrant each choice being a viable one, it isn’t easy to choose one over another. While a comprehensive evaluation of specific project and application needs is a great way to move forward, a few essential core factors help you make the right decision too.

Evaluating Core Strengths

Mendix: Mendix primarily relies on the fundamental strengths of flexibility and collaboration to create a platform that works equally well for IT teams backed by professionals as well as the emerging breed of citizen developers. It revolves around crucial components such as user experience (UX), easy iterations, and rapid prototyping.

OutSystems: OutSystems depends on solid integration scenarios, complex workflows, and data-centric applications to offer speed and scalability. It primarily focuses on enterprise-grade applications and delivers performance and customization in critical scenarios.

Key Areas of Comparison

User Interface

Mendix: With visual modeling and a user-centric design, Mendix offers a drag-and-drop interface builder and demarcates the interface from back-end logic with the help of pre-designed widgets. This makes collaborative efforts with business users easy and enables rapid prototyping while offering a strong user experience.

OutSystems: While fundamentally visual, OutSystems also offers the incorporation of traditional coding elements, added flexibility in CSS styles, and finer control over interface elements. These components make it the perfect playground for experienced developers who aim to offer more complex UI requirements with an array of fine-tuned design elements.

Development Experience

Mendix: Essentially user-friendly in comparison, Mendix’s visual approach makes it easy for citizen developers to develop solutions even when they do not know deep coding. The visual models offer business-friendly solutions that can be applied across multiple departments and functions. Mendix quickens the pace of early development and enables higher levels of abstraction from complex coding.

OutSystems: OutSystems offers a slightly steeper learning curve and requires some amount of developer knowledge, making it comparatively difficult for citizen developers to hit the ground running without knowledge of web development concepts to back them up. Since it offers added control for complex scenarios, it is a favorite with more experienced developers and IT pros. With less abstraction from the underlying code, OutSystems works well for expert teams requiring complex customizations.

Scalability

Mendix: Cloud-native architecture makes Mendix apps perfect for the cloud, whether public, private, or hybrid. This allows for seamless scaling up or down of resources across the cloud structure. Since it uses containers for the deployment phase, it also allows for individual elements of an application to be scaled separately. The feature of automated scaling based on demand assists in the adjustment of resources to fulfill scales in demand.

OutSystems: OutSystems leans more towards enterprise-grade scalability, and accordingly offers a design based on architectural upgrades and elements that offer fine-tuned performance. Deployment support spans from cloud and on-premises to hybrid solutions, catering to the entire spectrum of enterprise needs. OutSystems handles demand spikes with ease and addresses bottlenecks effectively, thanks to solid load-balancing abilities that seamlessly distribute traffic across servers.

Performance

Mendix: While rounds of rigorous performance testing remain key, Mendix is an easy choice when your requirements revolve around speedy development cycles and quick and easy deployments. It is perfect for common use cases and is quite capable of managing moderate to large-scale applications in such environments. The platform’s cloud capabilities give it an advantage in cloud-specific use-case scenarios where auto-scaling and ground-up cloud architecture are primary requirements. It is difficult to surpass Mendix’s capabilities when the primary goal is to deliver a decent and workable solution quickly.

OutSystems: OutSystems offers experienced IT teams a distinct advantage when the requirements revolve around massive amounts of data, complex inventory management, enterprise deployment and scaling, and performance-critical optimizations. Whether it is high transaction volumes, complex business logic, or legacy system integrations, elements such as fine-tuned control, a more customizable approach, highly detailed workflows, massive amounts of conditional calculations, or process cycles with defined service level agreements (SLAs), OutSystems offers more dependability, responsiveness, and engineering.

Business Process Management (BPM) Abilities

Mendix: A visual workflow editor enables process modeling via drag-and-drop elements, thus integrating multiple actionable decision points and data sources. The platform is agile, promotes collaborations, offers swift iterations and adjustments, and acts as a catalyst between the business and IT teams by addressing gaps in design and execution. Mendix is an easy choice in moderately complex business environments requiring quick implementation.

OutSystems: A process orchestration heavyweight, the BPM abilities of OutSystems remain unmatched in environments where granular control, large-scale process automation, comprehensive process monitoring interfaces, improved process audits, and sophisticated exception-handling mechanisms are essential requirements. Although these deliverables come with a steeper learning curve, the added streamlining and extensive event-driven abilities make it a perfect BPM partner.

Integration

Mendix: Committed to user-friendly integration, Mendix primarily relies on pre-built plug-and-play connectors and APIs and puts together a visual interface to streamline quick connections with existing common business systems. A modular approach allows citizen developers to leverage the advantages of optimal integration without the need for deep coding. The platform efficiently and quickly connects with standard systems and gets your data interactions up and running with minimal effort or complications.

OutSystems: With its distinctive and comprehensive fleet of integration tools, OutSystems creates an environment where every minute aspect of integration can be carefully monitored and deployed with niche and bespoke systems, even when they are traditional and offer standardization limitations. Key integration advantages include granular control that allows highly efficient data mapping, sufficient support for a wide range of protocols, added control over performance-critical external systems, and a substantial library of connectors.

Deployment

Mendix: With a cloud-native philosophy as a key driver, Mendix’s deployments are essentially designed for the cloud, specifically in environments that follow the latest DevOps practices. With public, private, hybrid, and Mendix cloud solutions, the platform covers a comprehensive array ranging from public cloud providers like AWS and Azure to Google Cloud and private cloud infrastructures where security and control are crucial to hybrid deployments to cater to more complex enterprise scenarios requiring hybrid solutions.

OutSystems: A sophisticated yet highly capable tool from OutSystems called LifeTime effectively manages all complex-environment deployments, thus making the platform an ideal choice for both cloud and on-premises deployments. While promoting DevOps best practices, OutSystems also offers easy integrations with external Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. The platform is highly adaptable and addresses pre-existing preferences and complex deployment environments via granular control and flexible hybrid models.

Pricing and Licensing

Mendix: The pay-as-you-go approach that Mendix offers proves feasible for businesses indulging in small-scale deployments or variable-use projects, while its wide-ranging pricing tiers (free, standard, and premium) allow for added flexibility. The platform only increases costs when you add apps, complexities, user volumes, support requirements, features, or resources.

OutSystems: The subscription-based pricing model offered by OutSystems is aimed at enterprise-scale development where long-term plans demand predictable investment. Its various editions (basic, standard, and enterprise) support the entire range, from small-scale development to comprehensive enterprise solutions. Development, testing, production environments, anticipated user volumes, and mission-specific support requirements primarily influence pricing.

The Parallel Minds Approach

At Parallel Minds, our extensive development experience with both Mendix and OutSystems has helped us define every core strength associated with the platforms. In addition to applying our own expertise, we also leverage the advantages of regular interactions with developer communities to access and implement the latest learning resources, experiments, and discoveries. While both platforms are highly capable of providing comprehensive and dependable solutions, we rely on our extensive client, industry vertical, and requirement-specific research to choose a platform to offer optimized deployment.

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Overcoming Objections to Low-Code Development

19 February 2024 by Nikhil Bute

Overcoming Objections to Low-Code Development

Low-code development platforms (LCDPs) bring to an application environment faster and more accessible development. Along with a long list of other advantages, of course. Exploring the immense potential of developer-friendly visual and drag-and-drop tools, they minimize a developer’s hand-coding workload and reduce coding errors and exhaustion.

You’d think all these advantages would be enough to make a low-code development environment a developer’s first choice. Surprisingly, there are quite a few hurdles to jump before a developer begins to trust a low-code environment.

We term it the Developer Reluctance Syndrome – the idiosyncratic tendency of developers to raise apprehensions and concerns regarding low-code development!

Considering how we are an integral part of the domain, we have an insider view of these doubts and our experience enables us to gauge the reasons behind them.

Fortunately, we have the solutions too!

Here’s a systematic breakup of the top five developer apprehensions, the reasons behind these concerns, and the solutions to address them.

Apprehension #1

Performance & Scalability: Navigating new low-code territory without firsthand experience with its performance and abilities.

Reason: It is a myth low-code platforms have been going up against since their early days, the myth that LCDPs may not be as efficient as their hand-coded counterparts. Add to this the concern that abstract bits of low-coding environments may throw a spanner into plans for any optimization that may be required for high-performance applications in a large-scale environment.

Solution: The abilities of low-code platforms to deliver and sustain solutions in large-scale applications have been proven across domains and industries. Case studies of highly successful deployments, along with a peek into their capabilities to strategize proactive performance optimization, offer solid proof. Developers must also be introduced to platforms with cloud platform integration and automated scaling to understand the wide range of solutions an LCDP can provide.

Apprehension #2

Loss of Control & Flexibility: The lack of complete control over the coding environment proves to be a nightmare scenario for developers.

Reason: Spending long hours controlling and customizing every development aspect of an application is how the community has been exploring its skills until the low-code revolution. This loss of fine-grained control is, understandably, a nightmare. Extreme precision and explicit control are the fundamental requirements of traditional coding. Developers find the abstract nature of some aspects of low-code development a departure from the norm. The more experienced a developer, the more pronounced the apprehension towards this lack of customization and control.

Solution: It is important to showcase the abilities of LCDPs to strike a balance between visual development and the easy integration of custom code for unique departures and complex logic requirements. Explaining the identification of case-specific nuances depending on need and differentiating between different use cases is essential. It’s all about comprehending the right use cases for a low-code approach and mixing precision-driven traditional coding manoeuvres into this environment. At the end of the day, it’s more a this+that scenario rather than an either/or situation.

Apprehension #3

Longevity & Lock-ins: Worries over the long-term capabilities and vendor lock-in potential of applications driven by LCDPs.

Reason: Developers are well aware of the time and effort that goes into developing an application, which is why they plan for the long-term and also build into their solutions the ability to take on multiple vendors. In the case of LCDPs, there’s a nagging concern about the longevity factor and whether the platform would sustain in the long term or fade away for lack of support. There’s also the concern of being too dependent on a particular vendor and in turn, losing flexibility and instead, risking high dependency.

Solution: It is important to showcase how reputable vendors are also opting for LCDPs and have large and proven communities adopting this shift. Revealing milestones in updates and support helps too. There should also be an emphasis on displaying the migration flexibility that LCDPs offer so that data migration and open standards remain a priority.

Apprehension #4

Integration & Complexity: A knowledge gap in how the integration abilities of an LCDP will play out with complex external APIs or legacy systems.

Reason: In a real-world environment, LCDPs must develop applications to handle complex integrations and support processes with heavy and unique data flows. These applications must also merge seamlessly with existing systems and processes while connecting to available data sources. And all this must be accomplished efficiently and without glitches. Without understanding the capabilities of modern LCDPs, it is difficult for experienced yet traditional developers to trust a low-code environment.

Solution: The abilities of LCDPs are well known to those who have explored the immense potential of these platforms. When traditional developers are introduced to the long list that includes deploying connectors to bridge common systems and solid APIs, integration of customized coding solutions in complex environments, and deploying middleware expertise to further stretch its abilities, they will find it easier to understand how LCDPs are a solution worth onboarding.

Apprehension #5

Keeping Pace with Change: Among the most serious concerns, this one addresses the doubt of whether traditional coding skills will depreciate at an alarming pace due to the adoption of LCDPs.

Reason: Hand-coding is a skill that is developed after years of constant learning and invested practice. Experienced traditional coders are in demand because they are proficient at what they do, making them more marketable. So LCDPs are viewed as the monster that is here to eat into the market share traditional developers have so painstakingly built over the years. The fear of becoming obsolete and their skills becoming irrelevant is real.

Solution: It is important to see LCDPs and similar disruptive solutions for what they are – tools to augment your skills, not negate them. When developers understand how low-code platforms take on mundane coding tasks and find quick coding solutions for repetitive processes, they will understand how they now have more time and energy on their hands to divert their attention to more complex and challenging parts of the development process. LCDPs are here to assist, not take over.

Explore the Real Value of LCDPs with Parallel Minds

At Parallel Minds, we understand how difficult it is to adapt to a shift in technology and mindset. There’s the doubt of whether a solution that hasn’t been developed by the developers themselves is indeed worth trusting in terms of deliverability and scaling.

There’s the inexperience with LCDPs, which means most developers do not even know how they work to help the developer community. And finally, there’s the apprehension of LCDPs completely taking over the development domain and eliminating the need for developers.

The only solution to all these problems and the cure to the Developer Reluctance Syndrome is to introduce the development team to all the things that LCDPs can do, and how these low-code solutions can help them create and deploy applications with less exhaustion and increased dependability and scalability.

Developers must understand that with low-code solutions on their side, they can now steer their minds to solve more complex problems and innovate more efficient solution designs.

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Understanding Scalability in Low Code Development

12 February 2024 by Nikhil Bute

Understanding Scalability in Low Code Development

Low-Code Development Platforms (LCDPs) introduce accelerated blueprints for process and business development, minimizing traditional hand-coding and exploring the advantages of visual design tools. Bridging the gap between existing business process structures and the most advantageous components of low-code applications is where scalability proves a game-changer.

Scalability in a Low-Code Development Environment

An LCDP’s ability to manage increased workloads and demands to match the complexity and increased size of an application is a definition that pins down perfectly the concept of scalability. An optimal scalable low-code solution should handle the spurt in users, manage and deliver on large data sets, and maintain performance levels of new features without breaking down or even slowing down.

Definitive Elements of Optimal Scalability

Database Scalability: Your application will pile on more data, making it imperative for your existing database to scale alongside. Handling expansive datasets and the bump in transaction volumes should be a part of the evolution.

Easy Infrastructure Integration: A platform must integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure while bringing in the advantages of horizontal scaling by introducing additional resources and vertical scaling through onboarding more powerful hardware. At no juncture should the state of your existing infrastructure act as a hurdle.

Maintaining Performance Levels: A low-code platform must maintain performance levels when handling heavier data loads while maintaining or even improving quick-response times and optimizing resource mileage.

Dynamic Allocation and Automation: The automatic adjustment and optimal allocation of resources to match demand ensures responsiveness no matter what the current state of a workload.

Maintaining Collaboration and Governance Protocol: Scalability must never compromise existing collaboration and governance protocols. At the same time, it must offer version control, role-specific access, and ready access to collaborative development tools.

Facilitating Code Reuse: Application scalability is easier when code can be reused and a functional low-code development solution should optimally reuse modules, templates, and components.

Responsive Vendor Support and Updates: The right LCDP will offer a highly responsive vendor support system with regular updates to promote the continuity and evolution of all existing and newly introduced applications.

Robust Integration Capabilities: Solid integration capabilities along with API support must successfully map every connection between data sources, both existing and new, as well as external and internal systems.

Strict Security Measures: Zero compromise on security can only be achieved through severe security measures and protocols while addressing key security components such as encryption, industry compliance, and access control.

Monitoring and Analytic Tools: The right set of monitoring and analytic tools will enable you to identify key performance bottlenecks and float solutions to address any scalability hurdles.

Platform-Specific Elements

Gaining a deep understanding of existing core elements is crucial to attaining optimum scalability in a low-code environment. This enables your business to leverage the following list of advantages:

Resource Mileage: Scalable low-code development, when done with a thorough understanding of underlying elements, delivers optimal mileage on existing resources while planning ahead and tagging new resources to deliver enhanced levels of efficiency. This increase in mileage results in direct savings for your business.

Cost Control: Cost efficiency is key for a scaling business, and understanding the core elements of scalability enables you to control costs by adjusting resources according to essential requirements. Optimum scalability prevents you from overspending and keeps a check on the crucial financial component.

Adaptability: Well-planned solutions based on realistic findings enable your business to adapt to the various components of the planned evolution. This approach also equips your business with the flexibility to adapt to prevalent market shifts.

Agility: Agility is key, for both rapid evolution as well as a high state of responsiveness for prompt deliverability. With the ability to experiment with the latest technologies and offer new features in return, your business platform can remain agile even in dynamic and competitive markets.

Innovation: Maintaining an edge in innovation while keeping a check on developmental efficiency ensures that your business is empowered by the latest innovations, thus delivering to users a top-of-the-line application that outperforms even industry standards.

Handling Expansion: A seamlessly scalable platform offers optimal support during expansion, handling the increased workload that comes with more users, managing the added data loads, providing features in line with the expansion, and providing comprehensive support for business expansion through a robust and flexible development platform.

Optimizing Performance: A positive user experience is key to successful scalability, and optimal performance at all levels, even as an application is experiencing improvements and enhancements, is key. Consistency and robustness ensure the strength and deliverability of a business application even under pressure.

Business Continuity: Minimizing downtime ensures business continuity and keeps your users from migrating to the competition. Even with unexpected traffic, your systems ensure that every critical application stays online and delivers efficiently on all essential parameters.

Competitive Edge: Every little detail adds up when you aim to beat your competition, and every vulnerability holds the potential to leave you behind. Gaining a deep understanding of existing core elements is crucial to maintaining a constant edge over competitors and evolving as industry leaders.

Finding the Right Scalability Partner to Avoid Pitfalls

The right scalability partner helps you avoid pitfalls and take on a wide range of challenges including:

A loss of control
Limited customization capabilities
Absent or slow-paced performance optimization
Integration hurdles
Lack of customization
Improper training
Gaps in security
Lack of long-term viability

At the same time, the right partner also equips your scalability journey with the potential to identify and take advantage of the opportunities mentioned earlier.

The Parallel Minds Advantage

At Parallel Minds, we review your existing development environment and understand existing core elements. This enables us to identify and address gaps and challenges and allows us to create an optimal scalability blueprint for your business applications.

A detailed review helps us comprehend essential elements, in turn equipping our team with the action points they need to set up a high-performance scalability blueprint. Find in us partners who dig in to help you leverage every advantage associated with scalability in a low-code development environment.

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Low Code Development: A Key Driver to Sustainability in Software

5 February 2024 by Nikhil Bute

Low Code Development: A Key Driver to Sustainability in Software

Low code revolutionizes business by bringing speed, agility, and efficiency to software development processes. But when viewed through a larger lens, it can be seen as a major contributor to a more sustainable software development landscape.

There’s no denying the role, responsibility, and potential contribution of the software industry in functioning with sustainability at the forefront of its plans and operations.

The entire lifecycle of software development holds keys to reducing environmental impact through sustainability. From the planning and design stages to the entire deployment journey, and then, even the decommissioning phase, there are plenty of solutions that can be put to work to increase the sustainability quotient.

The advent of Low-Code Development Platforms (LCDPs), considering how they’re more adjusted to the challenges of the times, has greatly enhanced the industry’s potential to build software development cycles hinged on sustainability.

First, let’s understand the aspects that lead to sustainable software development.

Key Requirements of Sustainable Software Development

While there are several small yet consequential requirements to help achieve sustainability in software development, here are the most impactful ones.

Energy Efficiency: Reducing power and energy consumption while developing applications so that their development, as well as intended deployment and use (both server and user-side), leads to sustainability.

Optimizing Resources: Ensuring that every computing resource in the development cycle in terms of servers, data centers, or the cloud, is used efficiently.

Increasing Hardware Life: Developing software solutions that do not require frequent upgrades to user hardware, thus minimizing the spending of resources on new hardware and subsequently, reducing the impact on the environment.

Solid Commitment to Sustainability: The formal adoption and monitoring of sustainability principles so that all coding practices strictly adhere to these principles with practical repercussions for any resource wastage occurring due to the negligence of these principles.

Promoting Ethical and Social Impact: Recognizing the role of the software development industry in promoting environment-friendly practices, thus promoting by example ethical and social impact.

The Connection Between Low-Code and Sustainability

Optimal Resource Alignment: Features such as auto-scaling enable LCDPs to create an optimal plan for the utilization of resources. This way, the provision of resources such as servers in a cloud-friendly LDCP environment does not require to be planned or allocated in advance. With on-the-go scaling, developers can now plan resources to match an application’s existing needs only, leading to optimal resource management at all times.

Equipping the Environment-Conscious with Sustainable Tools: The community of citizen developers and entrepreneurial users is always on the hunt for the next tool to enhance their contributions and reduce damage to the environment. LCDPs, since they offer lower barriers to entry, are the first to deliver cost-effective yet highly impactful solutions.

Process Digitization Initiatives: Traditional coding and paper trails have always gone together, with forms, applications, and manual workflows forming this mix. This not only led to resource wastage but also resulted in reduced process speed and associated inefficiencies. Low-code environments are all about digitized processes, thus adding efficiency while saving valuable environmental resources.

The Optimal Development Blueprint and Waste Reduction: The use of visual tools, automated solutions, and re-deployable components in low-code development environments lowers development time. This directly contributes to a reduction in costs and resources used for coding, testing, and iterating.

Energy Saving with Rapid Improvements: In traditional coding processes, identifying the gaps in an inefficient idea and optimizing it for use resulted in spending high amounts of energy and resources. LCDPs offer the advantage of rapid prototyping, enabling development teams to put their ideas through the testing and improvement phases swiftly. Shorter feedback loops mean less energy spent en route.

Resource-Friendly Yet Highly Efficient Code: The “low” in low code is quite the turn-off, considering how the first impression (to those unaware) is that such development platforms can only generate low-performing applications. The reality is quite the opposite. Efficient LDCPs can produce highly optimized code for common use cases, and even for unique scenarios, can create flexible and highly customized code. Add proactive performance monitoring to the mix and LCDPs can lead to a highly efficient development environment alongside optimal resource management.

Knowledge-Sharing to Promote Sustainability: Existing component libraries are a great way to encourage the reuse of code and the sharing of solutions that have already been worked upon. This means development teams no longer have to spend their resources on problems that have already been resolved. This helps teams steer clear of spending resources, thanks to ready solutions at hand that have been promoted through the knowledge-sharing abilities of LCDPs.

Easy Maintenance for Long-Term Savings: Major overhauls and rewrites or comprehensive replacements are now a thing of the past. Visual representation and cautious coding mechanisms make LCDP-devised applications easier to maintain. This entire approach results in easy maintenance and energy and resource savings in the long haul.

Consciously Avoid Resource Wastage