The Future of Enterprise Low-Code

• Low-Code Development

• Transcript

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  (upbeat music)

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  <v ->Hi, I’m Sheryl Koenigsberg,</v>

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  Director of Global Product Marketing here at Mendix.

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  And I am thrilled to be talking with Gordon Van Huizen today

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  about the future of low-code.

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  Gordon wish we were both in Rotterdam,

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  but we’ll have to settle for Boston.

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  <v ->(laughs) Settle for Boston.</v>

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  Yeah, I wish we were there too.

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  I haven’t been to Rotterdam in gosh!

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  Since February.

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  So I’m Gordon Van Huizen, VP of Platform Strategy,

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  which is why I spend a lot of time in Rotterdam.

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  But great to be hanging out virtually with you

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  this morning Sheryl.

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  <v ->So let’s get started.</v>

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  We have a lot to talk about.

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  You have been in application development

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  for nearly your entire career.

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  And yet we’ve agreed it seems as if low-code

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  is having a moment right now.

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  Why do you think that is?

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  <v ->Well, that’s a great way to put it,</v>

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  having a moment for sure.

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  Well, to begin with,

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  I guess it’s fair to say that low-code has been

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  in the limelight for the last several years.

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  It’s become a very identifiable component of digitalization.

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  And it’s reached the point where low-code

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  is perceived by many to be the future

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  of application development overall.

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  So it was ready for primetime.

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  I think what’s making the focus

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  on low-code even more dramatic right now is digitalization,

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  on the one hand, organizations are pushing forward

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  with digital strategies right and left

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  to ensure that they can compete within the markets

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  that they’re in.

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  But the world that we find ourselves in across the globe,

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  with the pandemic,

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  has only accelerated certain aspects of that,

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  organizations have to find new ways

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  to work with their customers, work with their partners

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  and to collaborate internally.

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  And that requires new forms of digital solutions,

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  which in turn, requires experimentation

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  and getting solutions out

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  into people’s hands really quickly,

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  which are of course the things that low-code

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  is particularly good at.

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  So we’re seeing a really interesting surge

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  in new developers on the platform,

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  and the new apps that are being created.

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  And I think it really stems from that.

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  So it took an existing trend, really,

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  that was happening within business more broadly,

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  and has accelerated some really key aspects of it.

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  <v ->And so you mentioned new solutions,</v>

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  what are some of the changes we’re seeing

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  in how low-code is being used these days?

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  <v ->Well, so if we think about the last few years,</v>

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  there’s been a very interesting progression

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  where low-code and no-code,

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  the simpler form of development platform

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  or a developer tool,

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  were initially perceived as being

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  only for departmental-level use,

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  I build an app for myself,

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  I build an app for my immediate team.

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  And it’s effectively a disposable app in some way,

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  if you wanna think about it that way.

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  And then we saw a shift towards low-code for innovation.

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  If you’re building a new innovative solution

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  that requires some degree of experimentation,

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  and low-code is a great way to go about doing that.

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  But starting two to three years ago,

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  I would say we saw a real evolution

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  of low-code in the enterprise.

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  And by that, I mean, applying a low-code approach,

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  developing a wide variety of enterprise solutions,

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  not just at the departmental level,

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  not just for new innovative solutions,

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  but for rebuilding core systems,

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  legacy modernization or legacy replacement,

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  which was something that I think very few people

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  would have anticipated prior to that point in time.

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  So I think that’s one of the big things that we’ve seen.

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  The other thing that…

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  Yeah, go ahead.

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  <v ->Yeah, I’m wondering,</v>

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  are we seeing people use low-code for things

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  like, I don’t know, the Amazon Alexa,

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  or any other sort of–
  <v ->Well yeah, that’s yeah.</v>

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  That’s actually where I was thinking about going next,

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  which is at the same time,

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  we’re seeing a change in the way

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  that people interact with businesses.

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  And by virtue of that, how they interact with with systems.

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  And where there’s a shift, gosh!

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  Close to 10 years ago now,

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  I began from web-based user interfaces, desktop apps,

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  apps that run on computers to leveraging mobile devices.

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  And initially that kind of parroted what happened

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  on larger displays just on the smaller displays.

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  We’ve moved well beyond that now

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  to highly tailored mobile solutions

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  that really support what people want to do

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  and need to do on mobile devices.

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  And it’s quickly expanding beyond that

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  into new forms of interaction.

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  Conversational user experiences that could happen

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  on a mobile device.

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  It’s just another mode on a mobile device,

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  if you wanna think about it that way,

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  to voice-based interactions.

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  And then we’re also seeing things like,

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  in the concept of digitalizing things, augmented reality,

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  where we overlay user interfaces onto the world,

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  when people wear wearable devices, and that kind of thing.

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  So the way many people think of that now

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  is multi-experience.

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  And how do we build software solutions

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  that support multi-experience,

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  not just those additional channels,

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  if you wanna think of them as channels,

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  but in a way that really satisfies what the user needs

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  and wants at each touchpoint because really,

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  the system they work with is always there.

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  It’s running in the cloud.

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  It’s doing things on their behalf,

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  hopefully on their behalf and there’s a set of times

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  that individuals interact with that system,

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  we call those touch points.

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  So that in and of itself is a really significant endeavor

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  for virtually every organization that needs to do it.

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  And that’s happening at the same time as this other shift

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  around how software is developed and needs

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  to be developed to satisfy enterprise requirements.

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  <v ->So do you think there’ll be a difference</v>

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  between low-code platforms and multi-experience platforms?

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  Or do you think that’ll become the same thing?

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  <v ->Well, I think there are platforms that can satisfy both.</v>

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  And I think that comes with a lot of different requirements,

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  there’s having the right architectural foundation,

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  so that you can create very tailored experiences

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  for each touchpoint.

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  There’s what should that experience be?

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  And that’s where low-code can really,

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  really add a lot of value as well.

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  And then there’s thinking about it really

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  as the user journey and how to map out

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  that user journey and how do you support it?

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  So I think what we’ll see is

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  that some low-code platforms can address all that.

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  And there are other tools

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  that have been used outside of app development

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  that may start to make their way into low-code platforms

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  and multi-experience platforms.

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  <v ->So you said something a couple minutes ago</v>

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  that caught my attention.

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  You talked about taking a low-code approach

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  to different types of technology.

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  And when I think low-code approach,

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  what I immediately see is,

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  either drag-and-drop UI development,

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  or I see drag-and-drop flow modeling of logic.

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  But it sounds like what you’re talking about

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  is more than that.

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  <v ->Yeah. Yeah.</v>

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  I’m glad you picked up on that.

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  Because low-code approach to me

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  and I think to everybody at Mendix means a lot more

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  than just simplifying things and creating visual tools

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  versus text-based tools.

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  The core principles of it that have been part

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  of our ethos and our product strategy since the beginning

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  are abstraction and automation.

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  So the abstraction is

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  what is the best way to surface something so

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  that people can understand it and work with it?

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  And certainly visual modeling is an approach to abstraction.

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  But the automation part of it is incredibly important.

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  Because there’s a lot that needs to be done

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  in the process of building an app,

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  getting an app deployed and managing that app.

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  That is, quite honestly a set of road steps that could

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  and should be automated.

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  So for example, deploying an app to the cloud

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  is a non-trivial thing under the cover,

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  there’s a lot of steps that occur,

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  provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure.

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  If you had to do all that manually,

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  it would take a very, very long time.

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  So and also it would be a lot

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  of not exactly high value work at the end of the day.

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  So it’s that combination of having the right abstractions,

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  with automation that really comes together in what I think

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  of as the low-code approach.

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  Another aspect of it that is starting to be applied.

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  And I think will have a lot of value moving forward

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  is applying artificial intelligence,

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  augmenting what the developer can do,

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  not just automating what they could do,

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  so that they can do things more quickly

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  and move more quickly.

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  Because that burden is taken off,

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  but help them do things

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  that they might not have been able to do before,

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  or to do things that are not that rote, and repeatable.

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  And that’s where AI comes in

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  as a capability for augmenting the developer.

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  So if we take the abstraction, automation,

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  oddly enough, the third one happens to be an A,

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  but artificial intelligence

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  and we put those three things together.

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  That to me is what low-code really needs

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  to do moving forward.

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  But, a key part of what we do though,

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  is try to apply that to virtually everything we can

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  on the behalf of the developer,

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  so that they can move more quickly

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  and be much more expressive about what they do.

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  So they can just declare, I want it to do this.

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  And it will.

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  What that leaves you to

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  is applications become more sophisticated

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  and multi-experience was one example of that

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  is that it takes low-code app development

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  into new domains.

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  <v ->So going back just a minute to AI</v>

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  because I know a lot of people are concerned,

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  AI is gonna take our jobs away,

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  AI is gonna replace people,

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  but you talk about it as augmentation.

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  Can we get into that a little bit?

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  Cause I know that that’s kind of a big topic

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  that people think a lot about.

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  <v ->Yeah, yeah.</v>

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  I think it goes back to the nature of tools

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  in the first place.

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  Why do we make tools?

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  We make tools so that we can do bigger and better things,

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  that we can do things…

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  We can move more quickly.

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  While we’re doing things,

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  we can accomplish them more quickly.

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  And that’s where AI really adds benefit.

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  So I think of AI as being almost entirely

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  about augmentation.

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  Now that augmentation can become very smart

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  and start doing some things for us.

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  But I think that it isn’t just a matter

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  of having a philosophy around it

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  to avoid the takeover by the machines.

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  I think that’s what the machines do.

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  And when we think about augmentation,

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  we can think about applying it to the developer experience,

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  to allow the developer to do more.

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  And then in the applications that get built,

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  AI clearly will play a very significant role moving forward

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  in augmenting what the users of those applications can do.

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  Because at the end of the day,

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  the applications exist to help the user do something

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  in the first place.

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  And the more that we can bring intelligence to bear

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  within those solutions,

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  those solutions become more competent and more helpful.

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  <v ->The way you describe that, Gordon,</v>

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  it’s like there’s a direct line

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  from the creation of the wheel.

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  <v ->Yeah, to me, I see it that way, very much see it that way.</v>

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  Yeah, absolutely, chisels.
  <v ->Creating tool</v>

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  that helps people do more and makes their jobs easier.

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  And there’s just this progression from

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  that cave person who figured that out all the way through

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  to augmented reality.

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  <v ->Yeah, yeah.</v>

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  <v ->So one of the other things really interesting,</v>

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  you mentioned a couple minutes ago was about taking

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  this low-code approach or this abstraction

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  and automation approach and applying it to new domains.

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  So which domains should we go tackle first with this?

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  (laughs)

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  <v ->Well, the reason one tackles new domains isn’t just</v>

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  to expand an offering.

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  When we think of the offering as an app platform,

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  it’s really what does the individual need to do?

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  We refer to them as makers.

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  What does a maker need to do moving forward to make things

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  and there are some aspects of enterprise IT

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  that have been their own domains effectively historically

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  that become part and parcel of making things,

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  building digital solutions.

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  But the first one on the list, I think is data.

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  Data has been a part of applications forever.

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  But in a very limited way.

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  Typically the data with an application belongs to

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  that application, that’s less and less true moving forward

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  of the solutions that we create.

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  So how can we make it easier for developers

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  to discover and leverage data within the solutions

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  that they create?

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  Historically, that’s been thought of as integration,

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  data integration, data management.

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  I believe very, very strongly,

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  that key aspects of that need to be brought directly

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  into the development realm

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  and into the developer experience.

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  And that will only become more important

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  as the types of data and the shapes that it comes in,

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  and the velocity that it comes in at.

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  And the other characteristics it has,

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  data is time-based, for example,

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  or it isn’t in many scenarios,

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  how do we make all of that approachable in a low-code way,

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  how do we apply the notions of abstraction

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  and automation to working with data?

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  So that’s one domain.

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  The next one that comes to mind is automation.

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  When we think about it, virtually every application.

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  <v ->So we’re not gonna start small with either of these,</v>

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  Gordon
  (laughs)

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  <v ->Yeah, these are super, super easy problems to solve.</v>

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  Yeah, well, automation really is at the core

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  of what we’ve been doing with apps forever.

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  I mean, that’s the purpose of an app is

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  to do something that an individual did before,

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  but or couldn’t get done before.

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  And increasingly, that means more and more digital solutions

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  are inherently process and automation-based in some way.

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  When we think about insurance,

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  what’s one of the big things that’s happening

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  in retail insurance,

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  you try to radically cut down the time

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  that it takes to quote and bind a policy, right?

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  What is that?

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  That’s process improvement,

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  that’s optimizing a process, that’s automating a process,

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  and perhaps even applying some intelligence to it

  [00:15:26.870]
  so that individuals don’t have

  [00:15:28.690]
  to get involved in very much,

  [00:15:30.320]
  that’s what allows you to get a quote done instantly.

  [00:15:33.570]
  There’s a ton of integration behind that.

  [00:15:35.890]
  And there’s a ton of automation behind that.

  [00:15:38.881]
  So therefore, to create digital solutions,

  [00:15:42.370]
  process and process automation has to become part

  [00:15:45.600]
  of the palette of capabilities

  [00:15:47.830]
  that a maker has available to them.

  [00:15:50.420]
  <v ->Okay, and now I’m starting to see that connection</v>

  [00:15:52.640]
  with multi-experience that we were talking about.

  [00:15:55.020]
  Because I may wanna get a quote on my desktop,

  [00:15:59.360]
  but I might just wanna get a quote on my mobile device

  [00:16:03.430]
  or I might want to speak to a voice device to get a sense

  [00:16:07.600]
  of what it might cost.
  <v ->Absolutely.</v>

  [00:16:09.890]
  Absolutely. Absolutely.

  [00:16:12.010]
  Or if I’m ordering a vehicle or even deciding what vehicle

  [00:16:16.580]
  to buy, right, that process begins and then it takes

  [00:16:20.430]
  some length of time for that to complete.

  [00:16:22.360]
  So systems need to keep track of who the person is,

  [00:16:24.790]
  what they’re doing,

  [00:16:25.910]
  and increasingly a variety of processes that come together

  [00:16:30.570]
  to support the their journey.

  [00:16:33.330]
  And I love the way you put that.

  [00:16:36.380]
  They check in on those processes and they interact

  [00:16:39.030]
  with them on their terms whenever they want to

  [00:16:41.170]
  on whatever device they want to.

  [00:16:43.240]
  So yeah, we need to support that.

  [00:16:46.780]
  <v ->Okay, so we talked about data,</v>

  [00:16:48.210]
  we talked about process automation.

  [00:16:50.570]
  Is there anywhere else you think we could get a real bang

  [00:16:54.070]
  for our buck by applying a low-code approach to things?

  [00:16:58.550]
  <v ->Well, the other component that I think needs to come in</v>

  [00:17:01.920]
  and it’s beginning to come in

  [00:17:03.250]
  and we kind of alluded to it earlier in the discussion

  [00:17:06.190]
  is applying intelligence within digital solutions.

  [00:17:13.050]
  AI is an interesting thing.

  [00:17:15.470]
  Because at one end,

  [00:17:18.930]
  there’s a lot that we still can’t do with it, right?

  [00:17:21.130]
  And you have to have a very,

  [00:17:22.640]
  very clear idea of what you need to create.

  [00:17:24.870]
  And then you need data scientists to go off

  [00:17:27.070]
  and build it and all that stuff.

  [00:17:28.380]
  But on the other end, which is available today,

  [00:17:31.040]
  we have cognitive services

  [00:17:32.930]
  and intelligent processing services.

  [00:17:34.680]
  That’s all very clear,

  [00:17:36.440]
  very repeatable problems using natural language processing,

  [00:17:40.630]
  that gets applied in digital solutions in a lot

  [00:17:43.710]
  of different ways.

  [00:17:46.220]
  Even Intelligent OCR, is a component of that.

  [00:17:49.850]
  So, being able to bring cognitive services directly

  [00:17:54.750]
  into the solutions that are being created,

  [00:17:58.080]
  again as a natural extension of the pallet

  [00:18:00.280]
  that the developer has available to them to work from,

  [00:18:03.630]
  or the toolkit that they have.

  [00:18:06.030]
  I think that’s the third leg of the stool really,

  [00:18:09.830]
  that if we look at data and how to bring in data

  [00:18:13.420]
  and work with data and manage data,

  [00:18:15.840]
  we bring in the process and automation component.

  [00:18:18.610]
  And then we bring in AI to use a broad term

  [00:18:21.850]
  for how to bring intelligence into the equation.

  [00:18:24.000]
  I think that’s the triangle of frames,

  [00:18:26.710]
  need to have moving forward.

  [00:18:28.700]
  <v ->Okay, so you mentioned the developer,</v>

  [00:18:30.940]
  and I think we should talk about him or her a little bit

  [00:18:34.740]
  because this feels like a lot of new technology for them

  [00:18:38.310]
  to absorb and a lot of additional types of output

  [00:18:44.890]
  and expectation around what a developer skill set is.

  [00:18:51.120]
  Is that gonna be just impossibly hard for them to absorb?

  [00:18:56.390]
  <v ->Well, clearly the intention of abstraction</v>

  [00:19:00.050]
  and automation is to remove

  [00:19:03.620]
  from the developers experience the details they don’t need

  [00:19:05.730]
  to worry about.

  [00:19:06.770]
  But as you point out really, really nicely there,

  [00:19:09.950]
  there are new dimensions

  [00:19:11.070]
  that the developer needs to consider.

  [00:19:13.700]
  We can make it easier for them,

  [00:19:14.950]
  but they need to consider those dimensions.

  [00:19:17.160]
  And it’s also the intersection of these things

  [00:19:20.510]
  that creates digital solutions.

  [00:19:22.850]
  So what we’re beginning to see is a scenario

  [00:19:27.820]
  where developers don’t build things from scratch

  [00:19:31.230]
  from very kind of low-level technical capabilities anymore,

  [00:19:35.680]
  where they begin to build more

  [00:19:37.780]
  and more sophisticated solutions out

  [00:19:40.070]
  of bigger building blocks

  [00:19:42.370]
  and more sophisticated building blocks.

  [00:19:45.310]
  And at Mendix,

  [00:19:47.430]
  the way we think about that is a concept

  [00:19:50.620]
  that we think of as an app service.

  [00:19:53.080]
  And an app service isn’t just a widget or a component.

  [00:19:59.480]
  It may certainly contain those.

  [00:20:01.880]
  But it contains a set of widgets, components,

  [00:20:06.020]
  connections to cloud hosted services

  [00:20:08.790]
  that when brought together solve a specific problem.

  [00:20:12.940]
  It could be a fairly fine-grained problem

  [00:20:16.480]
  like natural language processing.

  [00:20:20.010]
  But what makes such a service more valuable

  [00:20:23.720]
  is when it is contextualized with respect to say,

  [00:20:28.100]
  a domain or a use case,

  [00:20:30.350]
  what makes it really valuable is when you put a number

  [00:20:32.860]
  of these things together into what you could think of

  [00:20:35.580]
  as a subassembly,

  [00:20:37.400]
  or even a completely templatized solution,

  [00:20:41.860]
  which would allow the developer to then

  [00:20:45.210]
  basically snap together solutions

  [00:20:47.830]
  that are very sophisticated and then customize

  [00:20:51.330]
  and tailor the aspects of it that they need

  [00:20:53.610]
  to customize or tailor for their personal situation.

  [00:20:57.800]
  So that I think is fundamentally required moving forward

  [00:21:01.650]
  to give people larger and larger things

  [00:21:03.860]
  that they can leverage that are more sophisticated,

  [00:21:06.260]
  that bring various pieces together to solve a problem,

  [00:21:09.590]
  but do it in a componentized way,

  [00:21:11.960]
  so that they can then do whatever they want with that.

  [00:21:15.420]
  So for example,

  [00:21:16.253]
  if they want to add a new form of interaction channel,

  [00:21:20.130]
  or alter the process,

  [00:21:21.990]
  or nest it in the larger process, make it their own,

  [00:21:25.620]
  they can do all those things.

  [00:21:26.880]
  So app services, I think were our real key

  [00:21:31.410]
  to creating a low-code platform that enables people

  [00:21:35.430]
  to build these much more sophisticated solutions

  [00:21:39.210]
  that have these new dimensions that we’re talking about.

  [00:21:42.500]
  <v ->Okay, so I think a more concrete example might help here.</v>

  [00:21:45.430]
  I think maybe we’ve gone too far, I mean abstraction side,

  [00:21:48.230]
  if you will?

  [00:21:49.990]
  So what would be an example of an app service

  [00:21:53.560]
  that we might offer developers the ability to use?

  [00:21:57.770]
  <v ->Well, if we look at the more kinda fine-grained ones</v>

  [00:22:01.140]
  that you can start with things like 3D visualization.

  [00:22:05.930]
  That’s a technology that’s used a lot in engineering

  [00:22:09.000]
  and manufacturing scenarios.

  [00:22:10.330]
  So you can imagine that Siemens has a lot

  [00:22:12.330]
  of great technology in that area, of course.

  [00:22:15.210]
  But it’s also really important in a lot of other scenarios.

  [00:22:18.920]
  AR and VR, obviously, are fundamentally 3D-based.

  [00:22:22.690]
  So providing app services that allow people

  [00:22:26.410]
  to use 3D visualization,

  [00:22:29.070]
  and build 3D user interfaces,

  [00:22:32.070]
  would be a great example of a sophisticated component

  [00:22:37.340]
  that would be available as an app service.

  [00:22:40.730]
  Same thing would be true of say,

  [00:22:43.300]
  I brought up natural language processing, right,

  [00:22:45.300]
  so those will be there.

  [00:22:46.420]
  But if we just stopped at that level,

  [00:22:49.130]
  that wouldn’t be that different than if we were

  [00:22:51.250]
  to put abstraction and automation on top of services

  [00:22:53.780]
  that are available just in the world.

  [00:22:56.490]
  What’s interesting is when you put them together,

  [00:22:58.230]
  as you pointed out to solve a particular problem.

  [00:23:00.780]
  So if we think about document processing,

  [00:23:03.720]
  every organization has hundreds,

  [00:23:06.590]
  if not thousands of processes

  [00:23:09.360]
  that effectively document processing processes.

  [00:23:12.790]
  And they invariably involve exactly the same thing.

  [00:23:16.880]
  So you need to be able to analyze a document

  [00:23:20.240]
  in some way create, figure out what its structure is,

  [00:23:22.900]
  apply some natural language processing

  [00:23:25.370]
  to actually extract the content,

  [00:23:27.150]
  based upon that content,

  [00:23:28.330]
  make an evaluation of what to do next,

  [00:23:30.220]
  where should I go in the process?

  [00:23:31.470]
  Does it need to be reviewed by a human, things like that.

  [00:23:35.750]
  So there’s an intelligent decision-making aspect of this,

  [00:23:38.840]
  which again, gets back into process.

  [00:23:41.950]
  One could imagine app services that solve that problem

  [00:23:45.630]
  in a generalized way,

  [00:23:47.360]
  and then allow for customization as necessary at each

  [00:23:50.380]
  of those stages or in each of those dimensions.

  [00:23:53.080]
  So for example, natural language processing

  [00:23:56.250]
  has much lower error rates when it is very domain-specific.

  [00:23:59.660]
  I’m handling POs, in this industry, for example,

  [00:24:03.090]
  allows POs to be processed more effectively.

  [00:24:06.100]
  So that could happen.

  [00:24:07.900]
  But I would also anticipate that moving forward,

  [00:24:11.260]
  there’ll be highly specialized versions of something

  [00:24:14.450]
  that’s as common as document processing into something

  [00:24:18.080]
  that’s very appropriate for specific industries.

  [00:24:22.330]
  <v ->So that brings a kind of obvious question to bear,</v>

  [00:24:26.870]
  which is, that sounds like a very big engineering investment

  [00:24:32.800]
  for Mendix to make, to build all of this stuff,

  [00:24:35.780]
  and have all of this domain expertise,

  [00:24:38.520]
  so how are we thinking about that?

  [00:24:41.500]
  <v ->Yeah, well, that’s a really good point.</v>

  [00:24:43.950]
  And certainly,

  [00:24:46.950]
  no platform vendor

  [00:24:49.780]
  is ever going to have all

  [00:24:51.550]
  of the domain expertise that’s necessary.

  [00:24:55.070]
  On the technology front,

  [00:24:56.450]
  there are specialist providers of horizontally

  [00:25:00.400]
  applicable technology.

  [00:25:02.750]
  And sometimes those are used more in some industries

  [00:25:06.220]
  than others, for example, geolocation, and geo-tagging

  [00:25:11.940]
  and those types of things tend to be used

  [00:25:13.624]
  in certain industries, right.

  [00:25:15.370]
  But it wouldn’t make any sense for Mendix,

  [00:25:18.270]
  or any platform vendor to invest in creating all of those.

  [00:25:23.470]
  And then, there are people and organizations

  [00:25:26.850]
  that have a lot of domain expertise.

  [00:25:28.740]
  They understand this particular form of manufacturing.

  [00:25:32.150]
  They understand specialty insurance,

  [00:25:34.100]
  they understand what they understand.

  [00:25:35.880]
  And they might have some really intriguing ideas

  [00:25:38.130]
  for how they could more broadly solve problems

  [00:25:40.930]
  within those domains.

  [00:25:42.570]
  So what we envision

  [00:25:45.400]
  is an ecosystem

  [00:25:47.720]
  where there’s the platform,

  [00:25:51.090]
  and the capabilities and app services that we provide.

  [00:25:55.550]
  There are contributors to that marketplace

  [00:25:59.630]
  that provide specialized technology in areas.

  [00:26:04.680]
  I gave you the example of geolocation and geo-tagging.

  [00:26:07.580]
  It’s also content management systems and things like that,

  [00:26:10.550]
  that would be part of it.

  [00:26:11.860]
  And then there are the individuals that do bring in

  [00:26:14.570]
  that domain expertise to build higher level solutions

  [00:26:17.730]
  that have value and how these capabilities

  [00:26:19.930]
  are brought together

  [00:26:20.763]
  to solve a specific problem in a domain.

  [00:26:23.510]
  And so what we are creating is a marketplace

  [00:26:27.350]
  to facilitate that,

  [00:26:29.110]
  to create that ecosystem with a variety of participants

  [00:26:34.090]
  that are necessary for creating these building blocks.

  [00:26:37.280]
  So that enterprises and organizations regardless

  [00:26:40.320]
  of what industry they’re in,

  [00:26:42.140]
  can find the capabilities that they need

  [00:26:45.010]
  to build their digital solutions.

  [00:26:48.200]
  <v ->And do we see sort</v>

  [00:26:50.470]
  of an inception thing going on here where,

  [00:26:54.140]
  a solution provider might find a piece of a solution

  [00:26:57.480]
  in the marketplace, put it into their solution

  [00:26:59.920]
  and then reoffer it in the marketplace?

  [00:27:02.040]
  So as–
  <v ->Oh, absolutely, absolutely.</v>

  [00:27:05.532]
  I believe that will naturally happen.

  [00:27:07.870]
  And we’ve witnessed similar things happening

  [00:27:10.900]
  in other industries, for sure, right.

  [00:27:12.790]
  I mean, that’s exactly how the auto industry works.

  [00:27:15.870]
  So absolutely the same thing could happen

  [00:27:18.860]
  in the low-code space.

  [00:27:20.930]
  And the great thing is that everybody

  [00:27:22.940]
  that participates gets value out of that.

  [00:27:25.270]
  They get compensated for what they contribute.

  [00:27:27.390]
  And they also obtain value by creating something

  [00:27:30.600]
  that has more value on top of that.

  [00:27:32.960]
  So yeah, I like that infectious notion.

  [00:27:36.910]
  Yeah, I believe so.

  [00:27:38.600]
  <v ->Okay, so we’ve covered a lot in a short amount of time.</v>

  [00:27:43.800]
  And I’m excited about all of this technology.

  [00:27:47.490]
  I’m sure our viewers are also,

  [00:27:51.140]
  how soon can we have all of this?

  [00:27:53.050]
  What’s the time horizon on the sorts

  [00:27:55.820]
  of things we’ve been talking about today?

  [00:27:58.050]
  <v ->Well, the core of what we’re talking about today</v>

  [00:28:00.980]
  is already there of course.

  [00:28:02.910]
  The foundational elements have been part of our platform

  [00:28:06.560]
  and our platform strategy for quite some time,

  [00:28:09.580]
  and we’ve been delivering against that.

  [00:28:12.600]
  So much of what we’re talking about in some way,

  [00:28:15.060]
  shape or form is available now or very, very shortly.

  [00:28:20.440]
  Some of the things that we’re talking about,

  [00:28:22.890]
  the technologies involved

  [00:28:24.600]
  are at different levels of maturity.

  [00:28:27.656]
  As we talked about, at least at a high level a bit ago,

  [00:28:30.620]
  you can build some very comprehensive solutions today,

  [00:28:33.550]
  leveraging existing AI capabilities.

  [00:28:37.350]
  You may or may not call them AI,

  [00:28:39.920]
  they’re definitely AI though at their core,

  [00:28:42.000]
  so cognitive services, for example,

  [00:28:44.800]
  but it’s gonna be quite some length of time before anybody

  [00:28:49.140]
  that wants to,

  [00:28:49.973]
  somebody that doesn’t have a data science background,

  [00:28:52.580]
  can create their own machine intelligence, right.

  [00:28:56.600]
  So, you leverage what’s available versus creating your own.

  [00:29:02.260]
  One could imagine a future in which many more people

  [00:29:06.370]
  can basically create their own machine learning systems

  [00:29:09.950]
  and train them.

  [00:29:11.860]
  How close are we to that?

  [00:29:13.180]
  Three years, five years, maybe longer?

  [00:29:16.980]
  Will AI play a role in even creating those solutions?

  [00:29:20.130]
  Will AI help the maker make them?

  [00:29:22.880]
  Absolutely, there’s no question about that.

  [00:29:25.260]
  And I would anticipate that the low-code approach

  [00:29:29.720]
  that combination abstraction and automation

  [00:29:32.400]
  is at the core of it as well.

  [00:29:35.670]
  So some of this plays out over many, many years.

  [00:29:40.120]
  But I think the beginnings of

  [00:29:41.750]
  it are absolutely there today.

  [00:29:44.530]
  <v ->That’s exciting.</v>

  [00:29:45.690]
  Well, Gordon, as usual,

  [00:29:47.160]
  great catching up with you on what is coming in the future

  [00:29:50.550]
  and how we’re thinking about it.

  [00:29:52.030]
  Always a pleasure.

  [00:29:53.710]
  Next year, we’ll do it in Rotterdam.

  [00:29:56.033]
  <v ->(laughs) I certainly hope so.</v>

  [00:29:57.900]
  Great chatting Sheryl.

  [00:29:58.840]
  As always.

  [00:30:00.324]
  (upbeat music)