As the cloud wars heat up, key players such as Azure, AWS, and GCP are betting big on low-code services to increase their overall market share.
The low-code market is projected to grow from USD 13.2 bn in 2020 to USD 45.5 bn by 2025. Leading analysts predict that by 2024, more than 50% of application development will be powered by low-code platforms.
Clearly, low-code will be a game-changer in how companies do their digital transformation and the tech industry, especially cloud service providers, are watching its progress keenly.
We have previously covered the opportunities for service providers in low-code in this whitepaper.
This article will provide an overview of the state of the low-code market as of early 2021.
Why low-code?
Low-code platforms rely on drag and drop interfaces to build applications. The background is kept hidden and abstracted behind powerful APIs.
Using such low-code platforms, semi- or even non-technical teams within enterprises can build powerful applications that can automate workflows and even create consumer-facing applications.
This sort of democratized development power among enterprise teams has opened up a whole new domain for cloud service providers to target.
Why are cloud players interested in low-code?
Low-code provides a unique opportunity for cloud providers to improve their user-stickiness.
Azure, AWS and GCP recognize that clients easily move their IaaS and PaaS offerings to another cloud. In fact, they try to actively ‘poach‘ each others‘ clients by offering custom solutions and cost savings.
The remedy, then, is to offer services that won‘t work on another provider‘s platform. And this is why they are betting big on low-code and no-code services.
Azure Machine Learning, for example, enables teams to perform complicated ML modeling using virtually no code. While enterprises can shift to new cloud providers at any time, they are far unlikely to do so if they‘ve built up their business apps using Microsoft‘s services since interoperability will be a stumbling block.
And this trend is common to GCP and AWS as well.
GCP‘s AppSheet can build mobile and desktop apps in record speed using a companies‘ existing data.
Oracle’s popular APEX low-code application development platform was made available as a standalone OCI service recently. As with all low-code platforms, this service allows developers to develop data-driven business apps up to 38x faster.
This trend is indeed worrying to other service providers in the low-code/no-code market. So, what can they do to survive?
Capitalizing on the low-code revolution
If leading no-code/low-code service providers are to survive the onslaught, they need to invest creatively into their API management, automation & integration. In other words, they need to add more features into their application marketplace that will empower citizen developers to create better business solutions.
Integration with other third-party solutions should also be a main priority to remain sustainable.
However, with the demand for low-code solutions rising in domains such as finance, healthcare & even media, service providers have a short-lived chance to capture these opportunities.
Draup for Sales provides sales teams with real–time insights on changing industry signals, thus empowering them to make informed decisions.
With the Draup Sales Intelligence platform, sales professionals can perform ecosystem analysis for a given location across any given technology paradigm. The insights curated from over 4000+ sources provide you with actionable insights on service providers‘ offerings in the low-code market.
Draup for Sales also tracks the latest strategic and tactical movements across the low-code/no-code landscape and the cross-section of verticals affected by it. By monitoring key business intentions and digital themes across 30+ industries, our proprietary sales intelligence platform enables you to seize potential use cases and evaluate strategic partnerships with a 360-view.
