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Application development automation has been a key factor driving the technological revolution in the 21st century. With the increase in resource costs and shorter development cycle timelines, organizations have been switching to Low code platforms now than ever before. Low code-No code applications have been present in some form or the other for over 2 decades now.

A study by Gartner 2023 predicted the Low code development technologies market to grow by 20%, a total of $26.9 billion. A similar growth has been predicted for 2024, and by 2030, the expected value will be around USD 148.5 billion. In this article, we look into 5 reasons the industry is shifting to low-code platforms from traditional software design methods. The two main driving forces behind the shift towards low-code application development platforms have been faster time to market and cost reduction.

Timeline: A simple application development using a traditional Software development life cycle takes approx 3-6 months from concept to deployment. This only alleviates as we move to industrial-grade software applications. On the other hand, low-code application development platforms offer rapid application development. With simple drag-and-drop tools, application development timelines have severely mitigated to 20% of the traditional SDLC timeline. 

Digital Collaboration: LCNC platforms offer the added advantage of enabling Stakeholders, executives, and developers to work together through Business process management (BPM). The presence of key stakeholders throughout the development cycle helps provide continuous feedback, making agile sprints shorter and rollouts of features and services faster.

Cost:  Resource cost is still the major cost associated with Software development. These costs have increased in manifolds since the last decade and Organizations have struggled to keep the cost under the budget. LCNC platforms improve cost saving through lesser resource requirements, shorter development cycles, easier maintenance, and scalability.

Reusable Components: Low-code platforms are also becoming popular due to the availability of pre-made templates as well as the easy migration of applications from one instance to another. Most of the LCNC platforms offer frontend options to export the complete application and install it on another instance without the technical know-how. This degree of flexibility provides the advantage of time and cost savings.

Challenges:

Although Low code platforms are currently widely used by organizations, they face an uphill task of improving customer satisfaction. 

• The lack of customizable options and limited integration with other applications has been the pullback factors. 
• Businesses aren’t open to the idea of implementing/building an application themselves as several organizations lack a proper IT infrastructure to support in-house development. This lack of interest puts the onus back on the IT company to support the business in development and maintenance.
• Security still remains one of the biggest concerns from the customer’s point of view. In the era of critical security requirements for IT applications, the need for more flexibility in enhancing the security of applications built from LCNC prohibits the use of these platforms for security-critical applications.
• The learning curve associated with Low-code platforms is often steep with the difficulty of finding resources with specific skill sets for an organization. This hinders the mass use of these platforms in various industries. 

As long as Low code platform vendors can mitigate the risks and limitations of the platforms shortly, it’ll be imperative to support the narrative of how much these platforms will replace the conventional Software development methodologies.