Vasupradha Ramachandran
The business vertical is not the same as it was a few years ago. The same goes for technology development as well. The rapid development of technologies has helped businesses in creating more advanced applications and solutions to meet the market demands. At present, the business sectors have been working under constant pressure to meet the demands of their customers in this fast-paced society. Especially, when the end customers are another business vendor, time plays a very crucial role. Hence the development companies have to develop the best out of the very little time that they are provided with.
As this scenario kept becoming more common, enterprises have started to look for better and efficient ways to develop software applications. Blocks of code being the foundation of software applications, enterprises developed low-code platforms that can make the process of coding easier and less time-consuming.
High-productivity application Platform as a Service (HpaPaaS) can be considered as the next generation of low-code platforms. The term HpaPaaS was coined by Gartner in the list of emerging technologies roadmap to describe the rapid demand for applications development platforms. The HpaPaaS differs from low-code platforms in terms of delivery mechanism, deployment methods and operational behavior. Low-code platforms and HpaPaaS have similar characteristics, considering from a neutral perspective, they can be interchangeably used.
Capabilities of HpaPaaS
This next-generation enterprise productivity platform offers more than just flexibility and is way past just digitization. The few important capabilities of HpaPaaS are as follows.
Platform-as-a-service – HpaPaaS platforms can be used on a subscription basis with multi-tenancy and resource-sharing features.
Mobile and multi-channel support – HpaPaaS platforms enable deployments across various OS platforms with the same code. There is no need to write OS-specific codes.
Data and process modeling – HpaPaaS platforms have inbuilt capabilities to manage data modules, documents and business processes. Hence these platforms can be used as a native business application.
Citizen development – The platform must enable business developers to seamlessly build enterprise applications. HpaPaaS platforms must also support drag-and-drop features and model-driven development to further simplify the development process.
SDLC automation – HpaPaaS being a productivity platform to build software applications, replaces the traditional ways of software development by providing automation tools for every stage of software development life cycle – Design, development, testing, integration, deployment, etc.
Collaboration – Since the development process involves the collaboration between different teams, HpaPaaS platforms must be capable of offering a collaborative environment and leveraging prebuilt applications, marketplaces and communities.
Current adoption rate and market trends
The global application platform is expected to reach $11.6 billion by 2023 which was valued at $8.48 billion in 2017 with a CAGR of 5.4% between 2018 and 2023.
The HpaPaaS platforms are mainly adopted for application development purposes. The regions that contribute majorly towards the adoption of application development platforms are North America, Europe, Middle East Asia and Africa and Latin America.
In terms of organization sizes, large enterprises and SMEs are expected to adopt this technology at a much faster rate than startups. The deployment methods of these platforms are mostly on-premise or aPaaS (application Platform as a service).
Source: marketsandmarkets
Challenges in adopting HpaPaaS
The adoption of HpaPaaS platforms can be highly beneficial to companies. With powerful tools, the chances of developing efficient applications are pretty high. But without proper expertise, policies, guidelines and principles, the adoption of HpaPaaS platforms can be very challenging.
Additionally, the platform might exhibit unexpected errors when it encounters almost similar solutions, poor quality applications, unclear location of relevant data and the absence of access control. Also, for companies with inadequate infrastructure, it is almost impossible to adopt HpaPaaS platforms.
Major companies that develop HpaPaas platforms
AgilePoint Inc,
Agilepoint offers AgilePoint NX, a low-code development platform. This high-productivity application Platform as a service solution offers standalone, stateless and XML-driven process engines that can be scaled rapidly with limited hardware requirements.
The integrated development and management environment provides a dashboard with custom, real-time reports. AgilePoint NX solution can be deployed across various platforms, clouds and environments, which makes it more efficient.
OutSystems
Outsystems provide productivity solutions to enhance business operations. OutSystems platform public cloud is powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) to ensure rapid scalability. The platform offers high productivity and high control over the block of codes that are added further.
OutSystems platform integrates seamlessly with the existing enterprise systems, database and other custom applications regardless of the deployment environment – cloud or on-premise. This platform also ensures the security of the generated code.
Quickbase
Quickbase is an enterprise productivity platform that enhances the capabilities of businesses to develop innovative applications. Quickbase enables collaboration between teams and orchestrates integration and workflow processes. This platform also offers real-time insights into operations and processes.
Quickbase can be utilized by industries across various verticals as it is compliant with all regulatory requirements. The platform also offers a developer sandbox to seamlessly manage the application lifecycle.
How to learn about HpaPaaS platforms?
Being one of the rapidly growing enterprise platforms, every individual who wants to work in the technology industry must have a basic understanding of how this platform works. Understanding how low-platforms work, can lay a basic foundation in understanding the working methods of HpaPaaS platforms. These tools are majorly focused on the developer community. Having a strong understanding of programming languages like Python, Java, C#, etc, are very important.
Additionally, to build effective applications using HpaPaaS platforms, the developer has to know the basic computer concepts like memory management, space allocation and the fundamentals of data structures and algorithms. Students who are interested in software development can make use of online courses from reputed platforms like Udemy, Coursera, Khan Academy, etc to learn these concepts. Software development, apart from the developer role, offers various other career opportunities such as project manager, technical lead, solutions architect, UX/UI designer and software tester.
The high-productivity application platform as a service solution can offer businesses the luxury of time while also maintaining the quality of the application. With the right guidelines, policy and governance, this technology can potentially take over the software development field. But, there is no single technology that can surpass human capabilities when it comes to analytical thinking. With such complex technologies, there will be great opportunities for bright minds among several business verticals.
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