Prior to the pandemic-besieged year of 2020, there was a lot of talk in the enterprise software world around modernization, automation, and the digital transformation discipline as means of becoming better able to meet rapidly evolving and expanding business needs.

Why was it all talk beforehand? You could most likely attribute it to the fact that a majority (roughly 70%) of digital transformation initiatives failed or didn’t meet expectations. That kind of failure rate would scare anyone off. That inability to digitalize forced the hand of many employees in organizations to create their own solutions, causing a rampant proliferation of Shadow/Rogue IT.

Where there was talk before, the world shut down and we suddenly took notice and action.

The future of work is changing, and low-code is at the forefront of this shift. Software development has suddenly shifted from solely being in IT to now also being in the hands of the business. Low-code development platforms should provide IT the tools to develop faster and deliver on business-critical solutions, but it should also give the business the means to correctly and safely build solutions that meet their needs. The future of work is at the crossroads of business and IT collaboration on solution development. The business needs to be treated as a first-class citizen in the development process.

When evaluating a low-code platform, look for a platform that can help you carry your organization into the future of work. In their latest, Forrester Wave: Low-code Development Platforms for Professional Developers, Q2 2021, Forrester stresses the importance of finding a low-code platform that addresses data and process automation, provides tools that play to a range of developer skillsets and has the infrastructure, architecture, and processes to support the future of work.

Mendix’s Mission

Mendix is on a mission to accelerate, abstract, and automate as much of software development and delivery as possible. Since 2005, we’ve championed low-code modeling as the foundation of solving today’s enterprise software delivery challenges and we are proud to be leading the charge in increasing the sophistication of the digital solutions delivered by low-code development teams, evolving from simple workgroup automation tools to multi-experience customer engagement platforms to mission-critical core systems.

Mendix provides a unique–and leading–approach to ensuring the successful execution of digital transformation initiatives and prepares you for whatever the future may bring. The Mendix Platform has two skill-based IDEs baked into it and comes with collaboration features that enable seamless teamwork between IT and the business with the appropriate guard rails. But app development and deployment don’t satisfy all the needs of an enterprise trying to digitally transform.

Enterprises need to break down data and app silos, digitize processes and reduce the technical debt that the app proliferation movement has created. Mendix foresaw these friction points/ roadblocks to modernization and was the first to extend low-code principles to areas such as data integration, native mobile development, multi-cloud deployment flexibility, and AI-assisted development. On top of that, the platform is equipped with a low-code process automation DSL (OOTB) that allows you to firmly embed processes into the solutions the business is using.

All the while, Mendix’s containerized approach ensures that all Mendix apps built are cloud-native by default and thereby minimizing the need for cloud specialists to get involved in the development process. Having all this taken care of allows you to build experience-rich applications whether it be via Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) or Native Mobile applications with Mendix, you get the best of breed on a single low-code platform.

In the last few years especially, we have seen a massive shift in where and how the future of work gets done in the enterprise, and low-code/no-code solutions are not only enabling IT to build faster, but they are also effective tools to provide to the business as a way of democratizing development. When you read the aforementioned Forrester Wave: Low-code Development Platforms for Professional Developers, Q2 2021 report, you will notice that Mendix not only had the highest Current Offering scores but also had a top Current Strategy ranking of 4.5 out of 5 due in large part to our platform architecture but also our continued demonstrated ability to foresee where the future of work is happening and how to best extend the platform to ensure you have the tools you need for continued success. The future is getting clearer, and it’s closer than you think.