Opsera leverages its DevOps platform and integrations and builds AI agents and frameworks to revolutionize the software delivery management process with a unique approach to automating data orchestration.
Opsera is now part of Databricks’ Built on Partner Program and Technology Partner Program.

The partnership enables:
● AI/ML Model Deployments with Security and Compliance Guardrails: Opsera
ensures that model training and deployment using Databricks infrastructure meets
security and quality guardrails and thresholds before deployment. Proper model training
allows customers to optimize Databricks Mosaic AI usage and reduce deployment risks.

● Schema Deployments with Rollback Capabilities: Opsera facilitates controlled
schema deployments in Databricks with built-in rollback features for enhanced flexibility
and confidence. Customers gain better change management and compliance tracking
and reduce unfettered production deployments, leading to increased adoption of
Databricks and enhanced value of automation pipelines.

“The development of advanced LLM models and Enterprise AI solutions continues to fuel an
insatiable demand for data,” said Torsten Volk, Principal Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.
“Partnerships between data management and data orchestration vendors to simplify the
ingestion and ongoing management of these vast flows of data are necessary responses to
these complex and extremely valuable AI efforts.”

Additional benefits of the Opsera and Databricks partnership include:
● Powerful ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) Capabilities: Databricks’ Spark-based
engine enables efficient ETL from various sources into a centralized data lake. This
empowers Opsera to collect and orchestrate vast amounts of data, increasing developer
efficiency and accelerating data processing efficiency.
● Scalable and Flexible Data Intelligence Platform: Databricks’ Delta UniForm and
Unity Catalog provide a scalable, governed, interoperable, and reliable Data Lakehouse
solution, enabling Opsera to orchestrate large volumes of structured and unstructured
data efficiently.
● Advanced Analytics and ML: Databricks Mosaic AI’s integrated machine learning
capabilities allow Opsera to efficiently build and deploy AI/ML models for predictive
analytics, anomaly detection and other advanced use cases.
● Seamless Integration: Databricks integrates seamlessly with Opsera’s existing
technology stack, facilitating smooth data flow and enabling end-to-end visibility of the
DevOps platform.

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“IDC research finds that on average, developers estimate a 35% increase in their productivity
with the use of an AI coding assistant. However, it is challenging to have visibility into adoption
and measure these gains across the organization,” said Katie Norton, Research Manager,
DevSecOps at IDC. “The metrics available in Opsera’s Unified Insights should enable
organizations to demonstrate the ROI of GitHub Copilot adoption, enhancing their ability to track
and quantify productivity improvements.”

For enterprises looking to proactively measure the increase in ROI of their AI Code Assistant
investments and improve productivity across all software delivery tools, teams, and
environments, the new AI Code Assistant Insights in the Opsera Unified DevOps Platform
provides actionable insights on developer-level productivity, pinpoints areas to improve adoption
and includes reporting on the quality and success of AI suggestions.

Users can:
● Unify metrics across the “Code to Cloud” journey, incorporating DevEx KPIs (time
to PR, lead time, cycle time, and performance), source code metrics (commits, PRs,
throughput, quality, and security), and DORA metrics (deployment frequency, change
failure rate, lead time, and MTTR). This comprehensive approach allows you to measure
impact, acceptance rate, and velocity effectively.
● Gain actionable insights into team performance, including throughput, quality, velocity,
security, and stability, as well as developer-level metrics, to pinpoint areas for
improvement and optimize processes.
● Seamlessly integrate with leading AI code assistants like GitHub Copilot and Amazon
Q, offering a unique, holistic “single pane of glass” view of the entire development
lifecycle.

“AI Code Assistants are critical for developer productivity and efficiency, and we are proud to
enable engineering teams to adopt them and realize their benefits faster than ever before and
provide metrics on the positive impact,” said Kumar Chivukula, co-founder and CEO of Opsera.
“With Opsera’s Unified DevOps Platform, we provide persona and team-level insights, pinpoint
bottlenecks and inefficiencies using Opsera Hummingbird AI, and measure security and quality
across tools to help enterprises improve overall developer productivity and experience.”

Unlike other platforms, Opsera integrates with the entire software development lifecycle with
over 100 native integrations and unified data for SDLC, IaC, SaaS applications like Salesforce,
Databricks, and Snowflake, and mobile application development. This helps teams maximize
their investment and provides the most comprehensive

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On top of this, the company has released a new study that demonstrates the need for a single, enterprise-wide SaaS DevOps platform with annual SaaS spending reported as $125 billion in 2021. 

According to the company, this platform brings disparate and siloed data together under a singular focus and alleviates the need to build separate development teams, metadata, configurations, profiles, permissions, and packages and release management tactics for end-to-end visibility spanning the SaaS DevOps ecosystem.

Additionally, Opsera’s multi-SaaS and multi-cloud architecture works to allow enterprises to leverage the platform in order to accelerate SaaS DevOps maturity in several SaaS applications. 

Enterprises are also enabled to leverage Opsera’s no-code platform and reusable microservices to improve the velocity of releases. 

“The increased pace of SaaS and the public cloud replacing on-premises solutions will have a global impact on IT operations,” said Vernon Keenan, senior industry analyst at SalesforceDevops.net and author of the study. “As organizations add more critical SaaS applications to their inventories, the need for a cohesive SaaS management strategy, or SaaS DevOps, will grow dramatically in the next five years. With today’s announcement, Opsera is well positioned to help enterprises to streamline their SaaS DevOps and help improve their agility, velocity, security posture and visibility.”

Based on Keenan’s report, SaaS revenue will continue to grow at a 25% rate annually and will reach $279 billion by 2024. The study also showed that 35 new SaaS companies have entered the market since 2018, demonstrating the part that SaaS application expansion has in this growth. 

To learn more and read the full report, see here.

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GitCustodian also works to automate the remediation process for any uncovered secrets or other sensitive artifacts once vulnerabilities are detected.

“Source code vulnerabilities have the potential to cost organizations hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars a year due to breaches from cyberattackers. This is where Opsera GitCustodian comes in,” said Gilbert Martin, VP of customer success and solutions at Opsera. “It scans and alerts security teams of vulnerable secrets lurking in source code repositories before it’s too late. These teams are now empowered to proactively enforce secure software development lifecycle best practices through orchestrated secrets governance making source code vulnerabilities a thing of the past.”

Key highlights of this release include: 

• Highly accurate and comprehensive secrets security detection in order to uncover a wide array of secrets and other sensitive data in source code 
• The ability to scan existing source code repositories and gain a centralized snapshot of any vulnerable secrets across vision control systems 
• The addition of proactive secrets governance into existing CI/CD workflows to help the user go from detection to remediation to verification with integrated alerting and trouble-ticketing for complete incident lifecycle management 
• The ability to securely store secrets and keys with a built-in vault that works to eliminate the friction of following secrets management best practices 
• Collaboration enablement that notifies impacted teams to take action without changing how or where they work 
• Complete insights and analytics to offer users a full picture of the health and security of the entire lifecycle with actionable insights and compliance reporting.

“The complexity of modern applications brings with it multiple challenges around managing dependencies and configuration information, security tokens, username/passwords and other secrets,” said Jon Collins, VP of research and lead analyst at GigaOM, a technology research company. “It is too much to expect developers to keep on top of all the potential issues, such as inadvertently missing a .gitignore file and publishing confidential information into Git. As well as CI/CD automation, enterprises also need to adopt tools that can scan software code and dependencies proactively, and also prevent the accidental leakage of sensitive data.”

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The combination of the companies is intended to enable enterprises to increase scale, speed-to-market, and customer satisfaction as they advance along their transformation journey.

“We are confident that our partnership with Opsera will give our customers an even greater competitive edge in times of rapid change and transformation,” said Radhakrishnan Rajagopalan, global head of technology services at Mindtree. “No-code DevOps orchestration is a revolutionary approach to software delivery that ensures the strictest speed, quality and security standards until they are met. We look forward to bringing this solution to our customers and also providing Opsera’s customers with our own unique approach and capabilities around digital transformation at scale.”

According to the companies, in order to get the most out of the cloud and digital solutions, organizations need to successfully adopt DevOps practices and tools to maintain velocity, security, and quality of software development.

With this collaboration, Mindtree users gain access to Opsera’s no-code DevOps orchestration platform that provisions engineering teams’ choice of CI/CD tools from a common architectural framework and builds declarative pipelines for several different use cases. 

Additionally, users of Opsera are able to take advantage of Mindtree’s engineering capabilities.

“Partnering with Mindtree helps strengthen our collective approach to help engineering and IT organizations turn DevOps practices into improved business performance,” said Chandra Ranganathan, co-founder and CEO of Opsera. “Mindtree offers some of the most cutting-edge digital transformation capabilities that large organizations need to stay competitive. Its expertise combined with our no-code DevOps orchestration platform will help Mindtree’s customers accelerate their DevOps initiatives. We also look forward to utilizing Mindtree’s digital transformation capabilities to help our customers excel.”

To learn more about this partnership, visit the website.

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Octopus Deploy’s tool to accelerate reliable, repeatable, and traceable deployments across cloud and on-premises paired with Opsera’s no-code orchestration solution reduces the complexities of adding an orchestration layer to deployment processes. Additionally, Opsera eliminates the need to manually write glue code and custom scripts.

With this integration, users gain several benefits, including increased velocity and reduced barrier to entry due to Octopus’ Configuration as Code solution that works to balance the power of Git with the usability of Octopus. 

Additionally, customers possess improved security and compliance due to Octopus’ built-in manual intervention steps, which have been extended by Opsera. With this, software delivery teams gain reporting and tracking via a single source of truth in order to ensure compliance and audit measures are met.

This integration also provides security and secrets management due to Octopus’ built-in support for managing configuration variables and secrets that vary as software releases are prompted through environments. Opsera adds to this through its integration with third-party secrets management solutions such as HashiCorp Vault.

Lastly, this partnership allows for users to gain access to customizable reporting and metrics. Octopus does this by providing dashboards that show you what version of an application is deployed to what environment. With this, users have the ability to see who deployed which release, to what environment, when they did it, and if it was successful. This feature is complemented by Opsera’s 100+ KPIs adhering to the set standards from DORA, DoD, and NIST DevSecOps metrics.

“The Opsera and Octopus integration offers the speed and control software delivery teams need to keep pace with modern DevOps,” said Vishnu Vasudevan, head of product at Opsera. “Multi-cloud and multi-environment deployments are challenging but proliferating in the enterprise. Combining the flexibility of tool choice and no-code automation of Opsera with OctopusDeploy’s exceptional deployment automation capabilities means release engineers and developers can deploy across environments faster, better and secure with strict security and compliance measures in place with 360-degree visibility from planning to operations including Value Stream Management.”

To schedule a demo and experience this integration first hand, click here.

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“I think when you get to the level we’re operating at, its very much based on a challenge, a business opportunity, and also part of how people are thinking innovatively about becoming digital first,” Manby said. He went on to explain that, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, major organizations are utilizing low-code and no-code tooling to solve the problem of maintaining the business when people have no interest in going into a physical store anymore. 

According to Manby, regardless of the industry, the use cases for no-code and low-code tooling comes down to a fairly specific problem that needs solving. “We have a ferry company in Germany that we’re working with right now, and they wanted to replace their booking app, but once you start getting into what the business problem they are trying to solve is, you find that it’s not about just buying that ticket, they want to build it into more an engaging experience,” he explained. These particular use cases are being successfully taken on by IT teams and professional developers utilizing low code or no code in order to save time and increase productivity. 

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Paulo Rosado, CEO of OutSystems, explained that the level of sophistication provided by low-code or no-code is mainly determined by the platform or tool itself. He said, “Fundamentally, you can go from a small portal or workflow to building a claims processing system or the brand’s mobile native application at the other end of the spectrum.” 

He went on to explain that today, no-code and low-code tools have become extremely advanced, going beyond just delivering functionality. According to Rosado, these types of tools bring the capability to support non-functional requirements as well, such as high scalability, high security, reliability, and several other key factors that used to require more advanced coding to accomplish. 

“One thing limiting the reach of low-code is that you have to analyze, in advance, whether a low-code platform can meet your current and future requirements,” said Charles Kendrick, CTO of Reify. Kendrick explained that doing this analysis delays the project start, and if the analysis is done wrongly, you may outgrow your low-code platform in the future.

“To extend the reach of low-code, we designed Reify so that it can contribute screens to a larger application, or even to a legacy application.” continued Kendrick. “So, with Reify, the question is no longer ‘Can I build this with a low-code or no-code tool?’ but rather ‘How much of this can I build in Reify?’

“We’ve found that even for large, complex business applications — where a low-code platform would not normally be a feasible choice — as much as 70-80% of the application can be built and maintained in Reify,” he said. “This means you can get the benefits of the low-code approach in every single project, not just the simpler ones.”

Frank Zamani, president and CEO of Caspio, highlighted different aspects of no-code and low-code tools. According to Zamani, when this type of technology was first introduced, many professional developers felt somewhat intimidated by its potential and the ease of use that it offered. On the other side of this, there were developers who vastly underestimated these tools and did not believe that it was truly possible for them to create in-depth applications the right way.

“I would say now, after educating the user base… I think two things have happened, on one hand they are taking these platforms more seriously and seeing that these are good for certain types of use case scenarios, and the other thing is that they’re realizing that these platforms are mostly doing the work that a good developer does not even want to do,” Zamani explained. 

He compared the concept of having highly skilled developers doing the work that can be done with no-code or low-code tools to having a neurosurgeon water plants in a hospital just because they work there. All this to say that there are more pressing and demanding issues that these professional developers should be spending the majority of their time and resources on while no-code and low-code tools can take care of the mundane. 

Chandra Ranganathan, co-founder and CEO of Opsera, pointed out that low-code or no-code technology also makes it easier for organizations to roll out applications in a more holistic way, due to the increased ease of use and decrease in the time commitment. “No-code development platforms can be extended beyond just creation of simple workflows to also accomplish the end-to-end needs of software delivery,” he said. 

According to Ranganathan, these needs include provisioning infrastructure, integrating toolchains, developing workflows and pipelines to build, test, secure, and deploy software, and also get unified and predictive insights. “Architecting and implementing no-code approaches holistically will ensure maximum value in terms of agility, security, and efficiency.”

He went on to discuss the increasing complexity of digital transformation, multi-cloud, and SaaS first ecosystems, and the way that taking a no-code approach could be helpful in adapting because of this all encompassing method that can be easily achieved. 

“The right platform and a properly designed no-code development and orchestration approach can help address multiple use cases across organizations,” he said. “Product delivery across multi-cloud, mobile application deployments, or release automation for SaaS applications, and also provide flexibility for ‘low-code’ extensions or customizations for application specific needs.”

Rosado also spoke about the role that low code plays in mobile development as well as edge computing. He said, “A lot of the applications that we deliver are mobile applications and we also have web applications that need to be operated at the edge that are delivered by low-code… one of our international customers, for instance, is the navy for a particular country and they run the platform in each one of the boats that they operate, and so that’s a case of edge computing.” 

Manby echoed Rosado, saying that there are people using mobile applications created with low-code technology to conduct processes as critical and complicated as inspections of oil rigs. Using an app built with low code, someone can complete the inspection while the person operating the rig can receive live incident recordings from them all in one centralized application. “This kind of inspection and reporting and field services is one of those pervasive things [that can be accomplished with low-code],” he said. 

Ranganathan explained that with low-code or no-code technologies, the process remains the same no matter where you deploy the application to. The no-code approach used for mobile applications should be the same as what the process used for deployment to data centers or cloud based applications looks like. Organizations should be looking to extend their capabilities, standards, architecture, and modules to enable them to deploy low-code applications in multiple different ways.

“To implement an effective no-code approach, organizations have to consider how the solution fits into their existing or planned technology stack, (re)engineer processes to ensure seamless integration and collaboration across the SDLC functions and ensure buy-in and change management with the ultimate users,” Ranganathan said. 

Zamani emphasized that as long as the ultimate goal falls under the umbrella of what a low-code or no-code tool is good at, the deployment method shouldn’t have much of an impact. “If the use case scenario falls into one of these areas that Caspio is good at, then yes, but edge computing itself is a huge universe… It’s also a balance, in terms of how much makes sense to do in a no-code way, and what percentage of it should be done through coding,” he said. 

Manby explained that with the current state of no-code and low-code, there is virtually no limit to what it can do. Applications that used to require multiple development teams and extremely advanced coding can now be completed with much fewer resources while achieving the same quality in the end product. Manby pointed out that particular use cases for low-code vary drastically depending on the industry. “It’s just immense, and it really comes back to solving that specific business problem,” he said. 

However, when organizations are working with smaller tools, it becomes much more difficult to access the full breadth of what is possible. According to Rosado, a key issue with smaller scale no-code or low-code tooling is the aspect of completing change requests. “It’s a challenge that we’ve seen in a lot of situations in the past 30 years with technologies like development productivity tools,” he said. He went on to explain that this is because of the aspect of the buildup of technical debt and the growth of software as it evolves with change requests.

Despite this issue though, investing in no-code or low-code capabilities still proves to be an increasingly smart move. Manby said, “I think that the majority of the larger organizations have started to embrace low code… in a survey that we did with Forrester we found that over 80% of organizations surveyed had low-code as one of their top IT priorities. So I think if they don’t already have something in house which they’re piloting right now, then this certainly is a consideration for the next 18 months or three years to bring in house.”

Rosado also discussed the ways that no code and low code can be especially helpful during the shortage of skilled developers that is currently being seen. “The talent shortage is so huge and the backlogs of things to do doesn’t stop,” he said. 

He went on to explain that no-code and low-code tools help fuel developer productivity, and ensure that more work can be done using less professional developers, which is extremely helpful when there’s not many highly skilled developers to begin with. “It just makes pro developers more scalable and allows them to help more and deliver more with higher impact.”

Zamani also discussed the role of no-code and low-code tools in the midst of this developer shortage. He said that these types of tools can be incredibly helpful, but it all comes down to the extent that customers are willing to adopt them. “This problem is not going away, this shortage of developers, if anything it’s only going to get worse… The need is growing and the supply is not as much so it will be a bigger issue as time goes on.” 

Tools continue to rise in popularity 

John Bratincevic, an analyst at Forrester, said, “[No-code and low-code] are becoming first class options for software development in virtually every enterprise it seems, and in our last developer survey, 30% of professional developers say that they’re using one of those tools themselves.” 

He also discussed the market leaders for no-code and low-code tools, in terms of adoption. He said that the giants right now are most of the larger well known companies that have a good reputation in other areas and come with a good amount of notoriety. “The big companies where low-code is one part of the puzzle… they have a bunch of go-to-market paths and a bunch of entry points… which is kind of a big starting point for enterprises,” he said.

According to Bratincevic, the adoption of no-code and low-code technology spans across nearly every industry, from finance to retail. “There’s definitely a move towards verticalization for some platforms, especially smaller ones as they kind of find their niche. So, a lot of people are starting to focus on under digitized industries… but it’s pretty broad, the tools themselves are broadly applicable,” he explained. 

When actually adopting no-code and low-code tools into an organization, Bratincevic said that the most common issue professional developers struggle with is finding a way to implement it into their toolchains and pipelines without causing any disruption. He said that this becomes highly ambiguous because there are several different avenues to tackle this problem. “How do they manage that? Should it have its own pipeline? Should it use the one they already have? Answering that question and understanding what the best answer is… the market doesn’t know exactly how to deal with it yet,” he said.

Another challenge that developers have to overcome is governance. According to Bratincevic, no-code and low-code tools bring in more developers, whether professional or citizen, and more developers means more people have to be on the same page. This becomes especially challenging when several developers come from differing IT backgrounds. 

He also said that as these problems become more prominent, there is an ecosystem forming around them and their solutions. “The governance, and the culture change, and the framework, and how to integrate… the multifaceted question of how to do this at scale is just beginning to form,” said Bratincevic.

Heightened productivity with built-in security 

Andrew Manby, head of product management at HCL digital solutions, highlighted the aspect of security in low-code tools. He said, “We have a manufacturer in the CPG (consumer packaged goods) space… and in order for them to try and manage their production, they have to figure out where the areas of exposure are and building these new applications using low-code enables them to be more productive and efficient and be safer for that matter.” 

Safety and security are becoming increasingly important factors to consider. However, just because no-code and low-code tools bring a heightened level of ease, doesn’t mean they come with any increased risk of security vulnerabilities.

According to Paulo Rosado, CEO of OutSystems, “If the low-code vendor puts the investment in the underlying platform, then these platforms can be more secure than traditional coding, and the reason for this is that in a lot of use cases, security practices are done at the level of the platform infrastructure.”

He explained that the way for organizations to build security into low-code tools is to take a transpiler and compiler approach and translate it to cloud-native applications. Rosado said, “What we translate usually is fundamentally packed with high security-grade constructs, both in the code and in the infrastructure.” This prevents the developer from having to go back and check that all of the security requirements needed have been fulfilled. 

Chandra Ranganathan, co-founder and CEO of Opsera, also discussed the simplicity of integrating security into a no-code or low-code tool. He explained that the developer can insert security checks into their tooling wherever they think it is necessary, saving time in the long run by accounting for security in the development process. “Seamlessly integrating it into a workflow ensures security and ensures compliance while also improving collaboration and productivity,” he said. 

Manby reinforced this, saying that, if done right, applications created with low-code tools are just as secure — if not more so —  as applications that were developed with more complicated coding. “We fully integrate with those types of best practices and tools,” he said. “So, taking a full stack developer and teaching them how to use low-code, they feel very much at home, it’s not an alien environment, it’s really about productivity… there’s no need to sacrifice [security].”

Frank Zamani, president and CEO of Caspio, said that he believes that no-code and low-code tools have the power to make applications even more secure because the level of compliance is not determined by a specific developer. 

“An application built the traditional way is as good as the developer who wrote it, but inherently, it doesn’t have any built-in security. It’s as good as how well the developer was trained, how much they thought about security, and also how well they slept the night before,” he explained. 

While he also pointed out that there is no such thing as the perfect tool, no-code and low-code tools usually have full teams dedicated to security and compliance. “This team’s only job is to stay up to date on the security issues that can arise and many other things that a single developer would have to think about, and have to code, and have to implement [themselves],” he said. 

Rosado also discussed the feedback loop that OutSystems has achieved due to the open-source nature of their code, and how it has helped to create even stronger security. He said, “The customer can look into everything that’s generated and use their own tools to scan the code. Sometimes we have customers that are so sophisticated that they come to us and say that they have detected a non-compliance.”

After receiving this feedback, it is simple to go back in and make the necessary changes to the code in order to make it security compliant. With this, organizations who were not even aware of the vulnerabilities in their own companies then become compliant as well. 

The post The benefits of low-code/no-code tools for professional developers appeared first on SD Times.

Caspio: Caspio is the only no-code platform that provides a fully integrated cloud database, unlimited app users, unlimited app developers, standards-based extensibility and seamless deployment to any web property — all included as standard features in every plan. Running on AWS and SQL Server, Caspio delivers the enterprise security, performance and compliance capabilities required by IT departments and regulated industries. Try Caspio for free at caspio.com or request a free consultation ($250 value) at caspio.com/sdtimes. 

HCL: HCL Volt MX is an industry-leading low-code platform that helps organizations build apps and create engaging experiences across all digital touchpoints —transforming your business and driving value —fast. With Volt MX, you can create web, native, and wearable apps on any platform —in just a few weeks—and integrate diverse and complex systems, and easily add innovative experiences such as VR and AR to engage users in new ways. Redefine power, speed, and efficiency with Volt MX.

Opsera: Opsera empowers DevOps and Software engineers to deliver software faster, safer and smarter with the first “continuous orchestration platform for DevOps” that maximizes tool choice, no-code automation and actionable intelligence across the entire DevOps life cycle. Opsera’s no-code DevOps orchestration platform provides self-service toolchain provisioning and Integration,  declarative pipelines for SDLC and SaaS use cases,  and unified insights. Opsera significantly increases developer productivity, boosts release velocity and enhances security posture and compliance for software delivery.

OutSystems: OutSystems is a global leader in low-code application development that cuts complexity through automation, unlocks developer innovation through software integration, and creates high-performing and collaborative teams that are building the exact applications their business needs. Many of the world’s top brands use OutSystems to create business-critical apps that customers and employees love, to redesign their workplace processes, and to modernize their businesses. OutSystems customers are using the platform to improve lives and business through software.

Reify: Reify (from Isomorphic Software): Isomorphic Software is the global leader in high-end, web-based business applications. They develop, market, and support the Reify low-code platform, as well as the SmartClient & Smart GWT HTML5/Ajax platform Reify is based on. Their technology gives you all the productivity of a low-code approach, combined with all the power of an enterprise-grade web application platform.

RELATED CONTENT:
The benefits of low-code/no-code tools for professional developers
How these platforms support low-code/no-code initiatives

AgilePoint: AgilePoint NX is a low-code development platform that allows both developers and “citizen programmers” to easily implement and deploy cross-functional/cross-organizational business apps into digital processes across multiple environments and cloud platforms.

Alpha Software Corporation: Alpha Software offers the only unified mobile and web development and deployment platform with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” modes. The platform materially accelerates digital transformation by allowing line of business professionals to work in parallel with IT developers.

Altova’s MobileTogether provides developers with the tools needed to build complex mobile applications quickly and easily. With MobileTogether, developers can create apps without having to manually write code, without needing to sacrifice quality. It uses a combination of drag-and-drop components and easy-to-understand functional programming, making it easy for developers to use it to build sophisticated mobile apps.

Appian: Appian’s platform allows teams to quickly build unified views of business information from across existing systems, and lets them create optimized processes that manage and interact with their data. Abandon the need for code with drag-and-drop, declarative, visual development for all aspects of app dev – UX design, process design, rules design, and more.

Boomi: Boomi is a provider of cloud integration and workflow automation software that lets organizations connect everything and engage everywhere across any channel, device or platform using Boomi’s industry leading low-code iPaaS platform. The Boomi unified platform includes Boomi Flow, low-code workflow automation with cloud native integration for building and deploying simple and sophisticated workflows to efficiently drive business.

K2: K2 offers an established platform that excels across mobile, workflow, and data. K2’s core strength is support for building complex apps that incorporate mobile, workflow, and data. The company provides a data-modeling environment that allows developers to create virtual data views that bring multiple systems of record together into a single view. This allows developers to create an abstract view of the data.

Kintone: Teams can run, test and iterate on processes, and efficiently manage tasks with Kintone’s no-code workflow automation tool. The platform features branched workflows and trigger-based notifications with built-in collaboration at every step of the way. Teams can navigate databases quickly and easily, diving into their data with easy-to-use and quick-to-configure views, filters and reports. Developers can also take application customization and workflow automation to the next level with Kintone’s open APIs and Javascript.

Mendix: Mendix is a low-code, high-productivity platform that enables enterprises to transform how they innovate and compete with applications. Building apps on Mendix is easy, fast and intuitive with the use of visual models, enabling a wide continuum of people, from developers to business analysts, to build robust applications without the need for code. With model-driven development, business leaders and IT have a shared language to build applications rapidly.

Microsoft: Microsoft enables users to create custom business apps with its PowerApps solution. PowerApps features a drag-and-drop, citizen developer-focused solution designed to build apps with the Microsoft Common Data Service. PowerApps can be used with Microsoft Flow, the company’s automated workflow solution, for data integration. Build apps fast with a point-and-click approach to app design. Easily connect your app to data and use Excel-like expressions to easily add logic. Publish your app to the web, iOS, Android, and Windows 10.

Nintex: Nintex helps enterprises automate, orchestrate, and optimize business processes. With the company’s intelligent process automation (IPA) solutions, IT pros and line of business employees rely on the Nintex Platform to turn their manual or paper-based processes into efficient automated workflows and to create digital forms, mobile apps, and more.

Oracle: Oracle Autonomous Visual Builder Cloud accelerates development and hosting of engaging web and mobile applications with an intuitive browser-based visual development on the same enterprise-grade cloud platform powering Oracle SaaS Applications. Create business objects, add process automation, integrate external systems and, when needed, leverage standard Javascript to create amazing apps faster.

Pegasystems: The Pega low-code application development platform allows business and IT to collaborate in real-time, using visual models to capture business requirements, quickly iterate and scale apps while ensuring nothing gets lost in translation. Pega automatically generates the application and its documentation audit trail, all leading to a 75 percent reduction in development costs.

Salesforce: The Lightning Platform anchors this low-code customer base, and includes tools like Heroku and Salesforce DX as well as partnerships (with continuous delivery tool vendors) that address coders. Salesforce’s mobile low-code platform helps customers extend customer data managed by the vendor’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM apps while blending and aggregating it with data from other systems of record.

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Charles Kendrick, CTO, Reify and Isomorphic Software 

Reify of course offers all the usual services: consulting, support, training, etc. But what’s different about Reify is its Hybrid Development model. You can use Reify to build any part of an application, and in multiple places within a single larger application, and you can even extend an existing application with Reify-created screens.

This is possible because Reify projects represent a self-contained set of screens and data access points that can be used anywhere. We never assume that a Reify project owns the whole screen. A complex application might consist of a hand-coded start screen that leads to a mix of Reify-created screens and hand-coded screens. Or, a Reify project might be used for a pop-up wizard, or for the contents of certain tabs but not others. This gives our users much more flexibility, and the ability to leverage low code in many more scenarios.

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We have seen many of our ‘competitors’ focus on hosting the web applications their customers build. We do this, but don’t see that as a differentiator. We are focused on accelerating the design, development and maintenance process. We want our customers to be successful, and support that by offering unlimited end-users, as opposed to penalizing them by charging per-end-user fees.  

Typical low-code platforms allow you to build most of your application visually, then offer a limited set of “extension points” that may or may not meet your remaining needs. Often that results in you getting stuck. Your developers basically have to startagain from scratch – outside of the low code tool – to develop the capabilities you need. Reify is different. At any time, you can simply continue development using the full SmartClient/SmartGWT platform as opposed to being limited by a small set of extension points. With Reify, there’s no way to get stuck, so you can start every project with Reify, and get the benefits of a low-code approach for even your most complex applications.

Andrew Manby, Head of Product Management, HCL Digital Solutions

Businesses everywhere need to deliver exceptional ways to engage customers, partners, and employees —and transform systems and automate business-critical processes —into easy-to-use mobile apps and multi-channel experiences. Low code offers the opportunity to be more responsive and innovate and scale rapidly. Whether a company has one developer or teams of developers, low code powers developer productivity in several ways:

• Build once deploy everywhere: Save time and resources by avoiding creating specific codes for different platforms
• Integrations without limits: Seamlessly unlock existing data and bring together back-end systems, apps, and processes
• Innovative interactions: Easily leverage “next gen” tech such as VR, AR,and chat into your apps

All of which enables businesses to:

• Build robust solutions in weeks instead of months
• Achieve faster innovation and lower TCO
• Focus on the next higher-value digital and operational opportunity

With HCL Volt MX, customers saw the following benefits:

• ROI in a year
• Responded to the pandemic by building a health and safety app in 55 hours
• Created localized apps in 30+ countries while achieving 50% savings in app dev costs
• Spun up 15 apps in less than a year to improve operations and manage assets

Frank Zamani, Founder and CEO of Caspio 

Caspio was founded on the simple idea of empowering anyone to build powerful, secure and highly scalable web applications without writing a single line of code or procuring any IT infrastructure.

Now, more than two decades later, the number of low-code developers is growing three times faster than the population of traditional developers worldwide.

The requirement for companies to build applications at speed and scale has never been more essential. The global pandemic served as a clear turning point, exposing critical vulnerabilities virtually overnight.

Caspio’s no-code platform democratizes the application development process by empowering more people to build the applications need to do their job better and faster – while freeing professional developers to focus on mission-critical IT projects.

Caspio is the only no-code platform that provides a fully integrated cloud database, unlimited app users, unlimited app developers, standards-based extensibility and seamless deployment to any web property — all included as standard features in every plan. 

• Unlimited Users: No limits on application users or internal app developers 
• Enterprise-Ready: Scalable cloud infrastructure running on AWS and SQL Server 
• Deploy Anywhere: Embed applications seamlessly on any web property 
• Industry-Leading Security: Meet strict security and regulatory compliance requirements 
• Robust Integration Options: Customize, expand and integrate based on your exact needs 
• Standards-Based: Extend apps using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL and REST API 
• Abundant Support: Customers receive 24/7 support, training, consultations and onboarding

Try Caspio for free at caspio.com or request a free consultation ($250 value) at caspio.com/sdtimes.

Chandra Ranganathan, co-founder and CEO of Opsera 

At Opsera we share a vision for the future of software delivery. Our vision is  to democratize DevOps and empower software and DevOps engineers to deliver software faster, safer and smarter –  by providing them with a continuous orchestration platform that maximizes tool choice, no-code automation and intelligence across the entire DevOps life cycle. 

Opsera’s no-code DevOps orchestration platform for Enterprises provides both Product and IT engineering and DevOps teams with the following game-changing capabilities to:

• Instantly provision and integrate their choice of CI/CD tools, in their choice of cloud
• Build scalable no-code pipelines in minutes (for SDLC, Infrastructure automation and SaaS applications releases), with in-built security, quality and approval gates
• Get unified insights with actionable intelligence, real time logs and blueprints that help optimize troubleshooting, audit and compliance

Opsera brings significant value to its customers and users who report the following key benefits:

• An order of magnitude  time and cost savings over “build it yourself”, freeing developers to focus on core products 
• Better governance of their CI/CD tools and pipelines, and much enhanced security and quality posture of their software delivery
• Greater flexibility compared to “blackbox”  solutions, and much better visibility and  efficiencies across their DevOps ecosystem.

Opsera has received several Industry awards and is also recognized and included in multiple leading analyst market guides.  Opsera believes DevOps has transformed from an aspiration to a practical science, and no-code DevOps orchestration is the future to help organizations accelerate DevOps maturity and reach peak innovation velocity.

Paulo Rosado, CEO of OutSystems 

OutSystems provides a visual, model-driven development and delivery platform to create enterprise-grade web, mobile, and cloud applications. For professional developers, this means removing some of the more tedious work of traditional development, including difficulties adapting and changing to new technologies and ongoing maintenance activities. With OutSystems, much of the setup and integration required on the backend is automated to ensure security and scale, while mitigating issues like legacy code and integrations. OutSystems handles the critical but undifferentiated tasks of development, by constantly updating with the latest cloud technologies, leveraging containers and Kubernetes to make sure development teams deliver world-class application architectures and moving fast to meet changing business needs with low risk. This is especially important as developers are expected to keep pace with unrelenting pressure for better and faster software and more scalable and secure apps. With all of this alongside integrated tools optimized for the entire app lifecycle, OutSystems frees up developer time to focus on creativity, innovation, and doing what they do best — building differentiated apps that solve challenges, capture market opportunities, and modernize their businesses.

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Laureen Knudsen, chief transformation officer at Broadcom

ValueOps from Broadcom is the leading Value Stream Management Platform that allows large organizations to deploy and execute a “true” value stream management strategy. Only Broadcom offers an integrated solution with the depth and breadth of capabilities needed to optimize the rapid delivery of customer value, with the scale and customization required by the world’s most complex enterprises.

Unlike other tools and technology that purport to deliver VSM functionality, only Broadcom provides these two key capabilities that are essential for successful execution:

•       The ability for all value stream participants and stakeholders to plan, align, monitor, track, deliver, and optimize work consistently by its most valuable metric – customer value delivered – while still providing the specialized tools and capabilities needed by each individual role or discipline.
•       The ability to extend value streams across the enterprise, beyond their traditional home in IT, DevOps and agile management, encompassing the entire value life cycle from concept to cash.

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Lance Knight, COO at ConnectALL

Have you ever wondered why the vision you have for your business never comes to fruition? If you haven’t, then your executive leadership has. 

At ConnectALL we have noticed that executives are growing increasingly frustrated that the plans they have for their organizations are constantly over budget and plagued with delays. 

Over the years, we have noticed a common theme: Unpredictability.

There are three primary reasons why this is crushing your business today:

1. Lack of visibility into processes makes planning impossible
2. Lack of relevant measurements hinders their ability to understand their processes
3. Lack of automated delivery processes prevent consistency and repeatability

Companies are still struggling to be more predictable. However, we believe value stream management is perfectly positioned to help. We believe that there are three critical pillars to value stream management:

1. See your value stream – Visualize the people, processes, and technology
2. Measure your value stream – Capture the most impactful metrics in real time
3. Automate your value stream – Connect all of your tools to optimize software delivery

Our platform enables humans to see, measure, and automate their software delivery value streams. That said, no tool can manage your value stream for you. Value stream management is still a human endeavor. 

Get started today: https://www.connectall.com/ 

Dominik Rose, VP Product, Value Stream Management at LeanIX 

LeanIX Value Stream Management (VSM) helps enterprises build reliable digital products faster by streamlining operations for engineering managers, DevOps teams and product IT. Leveraging the company’s Continuous Transformation Platform – the de facto standard for managing technology landscapes – LeanIX VSM connects code to business outcomes by establishing end-to-end visibility into software delivery performance. It provides insights to make data-driven decisions to increase productivity through knowledge-sharing and improved collaboration, while eliminating waste based on flow metrics, and measuring business outcomes and streamlining governance.

LeanIX VSM helps engineering leaders, DevOps teams and Product IT speak a common language to address the complexity of different toolsets, cross-functional processes and new ways of working. Software teams can measure real value to the business while reconciling the needs of engineering teams and IT leadership. LeanIX VSM connects knowledge and flow processes to improve the reliability of software, allocate resources more effectively, and make decisions more confidently across the organization.

LeanIX VSM includes integrations that expand its extensive cataloging services to connect source data from disconnected teams, tools and environments. Within one holistic solution, LeanIX VSM provides dashboards and reports so teams can quickly surface bottlenecks that exist in engineering pipelines and public cloud and cloud-native instances (AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, etc.).

Chandra Ranganathan, co-founder and CEO at Opsera

Opsera empowers software and DevOps engineers to deliver software faster, safer and smarter with the first “no-code DevOps orchestration platform” that enables Value Stream Management (VSM) for enterprises.

Opsera orchestrates tools, pipelines and insights by maximizing choice and no-code automation. Through a self-service catalog and tool registry, engineering and DevOps teams can instantly provision and integrate their choice of CI/CD and DevOps tools in their choice of cloud. They can also build scalable no-code pipelines in minutes (for SDLC/software delivery, infrastructure automation and SaaS applications releases), with built-in security, quality and approval gates. Unified and actionable insights are provided with more than 100 KPIs, end-to-end auditing and observability of every tool and task to make troubleshooting, value stream analysis, and compliance a breeze.

Opsera’s capabilities provide significant business value through increased agility and security, as well as reduction of time, cost and risk. Rather than “build it yourself,” developers are freed up to focus on and ship core products faster. Opsera enhances the security, quality and compliance posture of software delivery with a shift-left approach, and increases efficiencies through end-to-end visibility.  Last but not least, Opsera provides greater flexibility compared to “black box” solutions and enables better governance over the CI/CD and DevOps ecosystem.

Prashant Darisi, VP and GM for CEM for Business Solutions at Everbridge

Our Digital Operations Platform is purpose-built to help organizations of any size to support their Value Stream Management initiatives. As a concept, Value Stream Management has existed for many years, but as DevOps transformations are beginning to mature, we have begun to see its importance as part of the software development lifecycle. The key benefits of Value Stream Management are in delivering greater business value, quicker time-to-delivery and the removal of waste and toil from delivery practices.  

Organizations should be focused on thoughtful automation and process simplification that empowers teams to focus their attention on optimizing current solutions and delivering innovative products at scale. Without full visibility of the entire value stream, teams will struggle to identify critical improvement opportunities and solutions.

Our Digital Operations Platform can help organizations:

• Rapidly assess digital service disruptions
• Act quickly on service disruptions before they impact customer experience
• Analyze problems and processes with 360-degree post-mortems
• Continuously improve processes and services
• Gain situational awareness through contextual notifications for fast MTTR

With xMatters, an Everbridge Company you can align technical and business goals while enabling your organization to anticipate and address service issues quickly and confidently. See for yourself by trying xMatters free.

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