Huh?
What is “Low Code” or “No Code”?
Is it useful?
What does it do for me?
According to Wikipedia a “Low Code Development Platform (LCDP) provides a development environment used to create application software, generally through a graphical user interface (as opposed to only writing code, though some coding is possible and may be required).”
This is the first in a three-part series of articles. Parts two and three will be linked here once they are published.
If I think back to how Libertus business began, we offered our skills and knowledge of Open Source Software to the wider business community to demonstrate a number benefits when it came to business applications like CRMs:
- Freedom from vendor lock-in
- Lower cost of ownership
- Flexibility
We started offering implementation, consulting and development services around a number of open source business applications such as Vtiger CRM and (as it was called then) OpenERP. Generally speaking a prospective customer would have a need for a solution that either wasn’t available off-the-shelf due to the unusual nature of an aspect of their business perhaps, or they were open [see what I did there] to the idea of using Free Software as an alternative to proprietary solutions.
In technology terms, the world is quite a different place in the 15 or so years since we started out. Open Source Software did kind of win the argument but it became so mainstream that most people don’t really notice it any more – unless you are part of the community that is. Android, the Web, Mac OS X, and almost all of the “back-end” server infrastructure that makes the Internet work runs on, or is built using, Open Source Software.
Running and maintaining a server that connects to the Internet has become a much more arduous task than it once was primarily due to the constant and automated nature of someone else’s nasty software trying to access and steal your data and/or take control of your servers and use them for nefarious purposes.
In this day and age, and for the smaller businesses at least, self-hosting publicly accessible business apps is not something you want to do unless you really have to. It’s complex, time consuming and not terribly cheap, hence I believe, one of the major reasons for businesses moving to cloud-based Infrastructure-As-A-Service (IAAS) and Software-As-A-Service (SAAS). Basically these solutions translate to: “let someone else worry about all that technical & security stuff and just give me the service I need for a reasonable price.”
This is all great when the cloud application you are paying for gives you exactly what you need for your business. But when you have that somewhat unusual business process, or a strange legacy system that nobody remembers what it does or how it works but is mission critical and still running (it’s that old Delphi program that your mate from the pub wrote for you for a few pints in 1997), then not all SAAS solutions are going to be the panacea you expected.
Vtiger CRM introduced something called VTAP (Vtiger Application Platform) back in June 2021. VTAP is a now a comprehensive set of Low Code/No Code tools built into the CRM that allow the creation of things like new buttons, new layouts, new modules, new APIs, and new third-party integrations.
In the next couple of posts I’ll give some real-life examples of what VTAP can help a business achieve…