OutSystems today added a set of components and resources to its portfolio to make it easier to invoke and configure cloud services by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The Cloud Accelerators for AWS promise to reduce the time and effort developers that employ the company’s namesake low-code platform need to spend on configuring cloud services such as identity verification workflows that compares a photo or selfie with a document such as a driver’s license using the Amazon Rekognition and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) services.
Other Cloud Accelerators for AWS address Video Call Validation using Amazon Kinesis or Chime services; self-service chatbots infused with artificial intelligence (AI) enabled by Amazon Lex and Amazon Comprehend services; virtual personal assistants (VPAs) enable by Amazon Alexa; multilingual chatbots enabled by Amazon Translation Services, Amazon Polly, and Amazon Transcribe services; multilingual Video Interaction enabled by Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Translation Services, and Amazon Transcribe services; and a personalized streaming experience enabled by the Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon S3 service.
The Cloud Accelerators are designed for professional developers that are employing the OutSystems low-code platform to accelerate the development of the application, says Barry Goffe, senior director of platform strategy for OutSystems. The platform isn’t aimed at so-called citizen developers but rather professional developers that need a low-code platform for building enterprise-class applications, he said. “We’re focused on professional developers working within an IT organization,” said Goffe.
There are two distinct classes of low-code tools gaining traction within IT environments. The first is aimed at professional developers that are building complex applications as part of a larger team. A second category of low-code tools is aimed more at citizen developers, also known as power users, that are typically employing their domain knowledge to build an application. The challenge those developers often encounter is they are not application designers, so many of those applications don’t tend to be as widely employed. A lack of appreciation for what’s required from an architecture perspective to enable an application to truly scale can also lead to issues.
There are, however, a growing number of citizen developers working with a line of business that, depending on their level of application development expertise, are employing either a low-code tool or, in some instances, a no-code tool based on a visual programming tool to build an application. While those efforts might reduce the application development backlog that continues to grow in the age of digital business transformation, it also increases the potential number of applications that professionals might one day have to rework.
OutSystems is making a case for increasing the productivity of professional developers to reduce the inclination of a citizen developer to build an application that winds up being beyond their capability to construct, secure and maintain.
Of course, all things being equal professional developers have a bias toward procedural code. Any low-code platform they embrace needs to allow them to drop out of the low-code tool to tackle a more challenging requirement whenever they deem it necessary. The challenge now is determining just how much of an application can be built using low-code before having to make that transition.
