Over the last few years, companies have placed a special focus on software development. Despite the Agile approaches to software development – such as Kanban or Scrum – developer teams face the challenge of realizing external customer requirements — e.g. stakeholder demands — as efficiently and quickly as possible.

The direct value of the business is as decisive as the Agile realization of the planned digital project.

More and more companies use low-code platforms to implement project requirements more quickly and to incorporate client feedback into the Agile software development straight away.

According to Forrester, the increase in low-code platforms will continue to grow. The market for low-code platforms will, therefore, grow to USD 15.5 billion by 2020.

In this article, we will explain why open source low-code platforms are becoming more attractive to companies in 2018 and what kinds of challenges and advantages IT departments and developer teams might face.

What Is Low-Code?

The terminology of low-code platforms is still relatively new. It wasn’t until 2014 when the term for this special type of software development was introduced by Forrester Research.

“Low-code development platforms (LCDPs) allow the creation of application software through graphical user interfaces and configuration instead of traditional procedural computer programming.” Source: Wikipedia

Open Source low-code platforms – such as VisionX – allow developers to quickly create applications while using significantly less source code than the current methods for software development.

The creation of the user interface, the data model, and the business logic is done with visual design tools. If required, the business logic can also be supplemented with hand-written code. Deployment of the applications into a public or private cloud environment is done with the click of a button.

The distinguishing features of low-code development platforms are low initial investments for setup, training, and deployment. Instead of using classic licensing models, they are licensed via subscription models (with monthly subscriptions).

Low-code platforms, therefore, offer an accelerated development and provisioning time of applications (such as mobile apps or ERP systems). This enables developers to significantly lower the costs of planning a software project as well as creating and providing the applications.

VisionX as Your Open-Source, Low-Code Tool

VisionX is one of the few open source low-code platforms that lets you visually develop your entire application, easily integrate with existing systems, and add your own custom code when needed.

New applications and screens can be created in minutes. The data model is created automatically with the work screen and the application is installed at the touch of a button.

“With VisionX you can visually develop custom software stunningly fast, while collaborating with your IT team in real-time.” –Roland Hörmann, CEO at SIB Visions

Create Applications, Run 100% on Open Source

While low-code platforms are a great new way of building enterprise applications, the process of introducing a low-code platform in your organization must be well-planned.

Open-source low-code solutions come with plenty of benefits and advantages over closed systems, which I'd like to highlight below.

One example of an open-source low-code platform is VisionX. Created by the Austrian company SIB Visions, VisionX allows teams to create software which runs 100% on open-source.

Every application created with VisionX only uses Java open source frameworks and libraries under the Apache 2.0 license (or compatible).

Low-Code Platforms as a Trend for 2018

The popularity of low-code platforms will continue to grow in 2018, mostly due to the need for inter-divisional software development and the ongoing digital transformation.

Using an open-source low-code platform gives you and your team a competitive edge as it allows you to create applications that fully run on open-source frameworks.

No vendor lock-in, full code access, and 100% customization features, allow you to stay vendor independent while creating world-of-class enterprise applications.