Mendix 9 is here. More than any other release, I can say this is the one that truly embodies Mendix’s passion.
What I love about the world of technology is that the landscape is always changing. I’m elated, for instance, when I see a group of people come together and use software to solve a problem quickly, such as I saw when the City of Rotterdam built an application that makes contact tracing easier for the city. When I heard that Lego was incorporating IoT technology into the bricks themselves, I didn’t know who was happier, me or my children (that’s most likely a tie). And I’m beyond ecstatic when I see software and technology released into the world, immediately helping people do their jobs more safely, easily, and quickly. Everything I love about the world of technology is why I love low-code.
What I find most challenging about the world of technology is that the landscape is always changing. Cloud options, tooling, data, systems, hardware, middleware, software, integrations. Because there are so many helpful tools available to us today, our tech stacks can easily turn into a gap-filled Jenga tower. It’s all we can do to keep it from toppling it over.
We understand this challenge and the issues that stem from it. This is why I’m excited to announce the release of Mendix 9, a truly all-in-one platform that connects those disparate technologies. Mendix 9 wholly embodies Mendix’s passion, which is empowering you, our customers, to do what you do best: Make.
All In One
16 years ago, we designed the Mendix Platform to do one thing: bridge the gap between business and IT, by abstracting code and giving software development a ubiquitous language across business and IT.
According to Gartner, in their “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms,” enterprises are showing a “high level of interest in low-code for both application development and other application-related uses, such as integration and AI services.” As systems proliferate, and technologies and the channels through which they’re experienced grow more complex, software development changes.
Mendix 9 brings our low-code philosophy of abstraction and automation from application development to other areas like data integration and business processes.
This is all-in-one low-code, designed to increase productivity, decrease time-to-market, and keep you solving business problems with software.
Let’s explore each spoke of this all-in-one wheel.
Data Data Everywhere…
… And not a drop to drink. With every system that you adopt or build, with every process constructed, every customer onboarded, there are new points of data to be stored, classified, understood, and utilized. This is a data integration problem, one that rears its beastly head when your applications need that data.
With Data Hub, gone are the days of complex, repetitive integrations. This metadata repository abstracts those integrations via drag-and-drop. Developers with a broad range of programming abilities can easily access the data they need when they need it from either Studio or Studio Pro. It also makes data governance easy, too. Data Hub enables you to curate your data, but also set up parameters about which data can be used, when, and by whom.
Making just got a lot easier.
Business Process Automation Just Got Smarter
A perfect example of where you find yourself managing and integrating many data points is business processes. Many applications enterprises build are process-oriented, designed to increase efficiencies in a range of use cases. But it’s a process in and of itself building these workflows. This is only going to grow. Forrester estimates in their Digital Process Automation Survey that 70% of organizations still rely on paper-based activities for critical business processes. How will you tackle the inevitable surge in business-process application requests? How will you digitize and automate these complex processes in a simple and iterative way?
Mendix 9 lets you enable your organization to build powerful workflow applications without custom development or integration work.
Now your citizen and professional developers can concentrate on solving the business problem.
Head in the Cloud
Data integration made easy. Business process automation simplified. But what about configuring and deploying applications? With Mendix 9, we’re giving you a frictionless deployment process where you can build and deliver portable, scalable, and resilient applications without the expertise of a specialist.
It’s your cloud of choice, too. Deploy your applications to Mendix Cloud, Private Cloud, and SAP Cloud just with–you guessed it–a single click.
What I’m very excited about here is the fine-grained security controls that you have to ensure the right people can deploy apps to the right cloud. Configuration is one-and-done through automated scripts, eliminating repetitive operational tasks. It’s all the security, built in for you so you don’t have to think about it.
Maintaining Control, Remaining Mobile, Staying Productive
Within Studio Pro and Studio, you’ll find updates that we consider essential for you to build more applications faster.
Getting a new technology in your organization can be exciting. It is for me. But like any new tool, it’s important to know how to use it properly so that you can be efficient as well as safe. As low-code adoption continues to rise, and use cases expand in the enterprise, it’s imperative that – like with any other technology – guardrails are established to ensure developers of all types are building solutions right the first time, and they’re building them in ways that are efficient, compliant, and secure.
With Mendix 9, we’re pleased to offer Control Center, which gives you insights, overview and control for all activities in the Mendix Platform. With Control Center, you get efficiency—it’s now easier to form teams around an application and plan maintenance. You also get assurance that the appropriate people are building the solutions. This one-two punch of efficiency and assurance is how you begin scaling up with low-code and leveraging the entire organization to solve problems.
We continue to advance our mobile and multiexperience offerings. You’ll find that you can build beautiful user experiences with Atlas 3 across native mobile, hybrid, or progressive web applications. Collaborate even more with our Git support and visual merging. Such changes allow you to continuously improve on the quality of your applications, without slowing down. For more proof of that, look no further than the improvements we’ve made to MxAssist with the MxAssist Performance Bot. In Studio, you’ll find live consistency checks that alert developers to problems immediately.
::Takes breath::
Wow. That was a lot. There’s so much more. And everything we’ve done and will continue to do is to enable you to be productive, be efficient, stay secure, and keep making. But the only way you’re going to be able to take it all in is by checking it out for yourself.
Download Mendix 9 now and experience it with the same joy and passion that my team and I had in building it.