Should You Use Your Low-Code Platform As Your Integration Hub?

Low-code application development is becoming more prevalent in all areas of business. Low-code is defined as an approach to software development that requires little to no manual coding to create complex business processes and enterprise applications. Users with no expert knowledge of coding or software development can use intuitive low-code development platforms to develop powerful enterprise applications. Many companies around the world have incorporated low-code platforms into their development stacks, hence giving them a significant competitive advantage.

An integration hub is a tool that enables businesses to interact and connect with multiple enterprise applications regardless of their location, whether they are in different cloud environments or on-premise and without needing to write repetitive lines of manual code. Data integration can combine data from various external data sources and make it much more valuable to your business. Furthermore, it enables your employees to collaborate more effectively and provide more value to the customer.

A recent study conducted by Gartner forecasted that low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of all application development by the year 2024. Therefore, low-code presents a valuable opportunity for both enterprise application development as well as data integration.

How Low-Code Can Facilitate Integration:

1. Reduced Development Time

Since low-code application development enables more enterprise applications to be built in less time, businesses can achieve much more than ever before. Time is no longer an impediment to long-term digital innovation with low-code development.

Recent studies have shown that low-code development has the potential to reduce development times by up to 90%. One of the most important advantages of low-code is its speed. Enterprise-grade applications with holistic and consolidated access to historical organizational data can be created in just a few minutes with low-code technology, which is much faster than traditional manual coding. API-centric low-code platforms can enable your business to integrate numerous data sources, hence making data retrieval processes much faster than ever before.

Low-code technology also removes the underlying complexities and time-consuming nature of deploying new business-grade applications, thus enabling organizational teams to work more quickly and productively for instant effect.

Furthermore, teams across your organization do not have to wait for software developers to deliver the alternatives or updates that they require. Low-code platforms can enable citizen developers to manage enterprise application development for the procedures that are most important to them, hence resulting in improved team performance, collaboration, and productivity. This also allows businesses to save time and scarce organizational resources by completing tasks more quickly and efficiently.

2. Reduced Barriers to Entry

Low-code development lowers the entry barrier, costs, and time to enterprise application deployment. The constant interference of skilled software developers is no longer required for full development; low-code solutions can enable citizen developers with little to no traditional coding experience to develop powerful enterprise applications using visual development tools.

Active integration requires lowering the barriers to entry when it comes to implementing infrastructure automation. Recent studies have revealed that 70% of new applications will be developed using low-code platforms by the year 2025.

Furthermore, citizen development initiatives can help users establish consistent, constructive automation and integration across various digital systems, services, and applications. This optimizes value across the entire software platform in a single consolidated location.

3. Automated Operational Processes

Low-code application development can enable your business to automate business processes, add new required and preferred features to organizational platforms and integrate multiple enterprise software.

Low-code development platforms can speed up development by automating tasks and end-to-end processes. Workflows can be started based on business events, templates can also be used to rapidly create new processes, and variables and flow control make data management across platforms easier. Meanwhile, prebuilt integrations and API access enable the automation of nearly any digital business process. API access can also enable your business to integrate numerous databases to create detailed and centralized data repositories. This will not only eliminate manual integration processes but will also improve cross-departmental communication.

4. Improved Agility

Business agility enables businesses to adapt and respond to changes and new opportunities by implementing new digital solutions to business problems. Low-code solutions can enable businesses to pivot to new digital transformation initiatives brought about by sudden market changes and evolving consumer expectations. Your company can deliver enterprise applications across more digital platforms, hence allowing your customers to interact with your company however they see fit. Low-code platforms can also allow you to take advantage of various agility-related technology such as microservices and containers.

By integrating data across multiple systems, low-code technology enables companies to deal with the challenges of siloed IT systems. They also allow out-of-the-box reporting and analytics, integrated versioning systems and one-click publishing.

Low-code technology has the potential to redefine business agility thanks to its simple approach to enterprise application development. Therefore, as low-code technology continues to evolve exponentially, businesses should plan for low-code application development and implementation to meet their needs.

5. Efficient Collaboration

Low-code platforms, due to their visual nature, can automate various application development efforts and optimize cross-departmental collaboration. Since several elements of low-code applications can be predicated on off-the-shelf components, developers can simply use them instead of losing time debating alternative solutions. Low-code is also an excellent choice for codeveloped, outsourced projects in which teams from various companies must collaborate to create enterprise applications. A recent study conducted by Gartner has revealed that there will be 4 times more citizen developers than professional software developers by the year 2025.

A communicative and highly productive application development environment can be created by combining citizen developers with domain knowledge and technical users with a deep understanding of digital systems. Ensuring collaboration by having all levels of developers use the same tools and processes at the same time can promote efficiency and can smooth the integration of application development.

Furthermore, with improved integration and API-centric application development, your business will be able to significantly improve access to crucial historical organizational data and insights. This can help improve cross-departmental communication and collaboration in the long run.

Planet Crust – Leverage The Power Of Low-Code For Integration:

Low-code development platforms can help your business increase data integration between various data systems. Low-code solutions can help your business reduce development times, reduce barriers to entry, automate various operational processes, increase agility and foster opportunities for cross-departmental collaboration.

Corteza, created by Planet Crust, is an open-source low-code platform that comes equipped with REST API and an integration gateway that enables users to access data from any record-based data source.

Try a trial now so that your business can take advantage of the various benefits of low-code technology for integration.