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ManageEngine’s Rajesh Ganesan highlights how low-code and no-code tools can help tech teams combat challenges such as talent shortages, shadow IT and technical debt.
We are overcoming but still challenged by the global pandemic and faced with the possibility of a difficult global financial environment for the foreseeable future.
If digital transformation was considered good for organisations pre-pandemic, it has since been cemented as a top priority. This is clearly indicated by the investments organisations are channelling into digital transformation projects. Streamlining business processes and operations has taken centre stage, placing a substantial amount of pressure on IT teams.
IT teams reaching a breaking point
As the load on IT teams continues to increase, so does the need for more IT professionals. But the talent pool is shallow. This personnel shortage combined with high numbers of projects leads to a couple of concerns, including the rise of shadow IT and mounting technical debt.
Project pileup in organisations leads to the prioritisation of business-critical projects, which often results in the use of shadow IT. That is, employees will subscribe to and use software solutions without approval from their IT teams.
From a business perspective, this poses a threat to data and information security practices. Therefore, IT security teams typically strive to avoid shadow IT.
Organisations also usually look for easy fixes to meet their technical requirements and this leads to investments in technology that cannot adapt or scale to ever-evolving business requirements, also known as technical debt.
How can low-code and no-code platforms help?
Low-code/no-code (LCNC) platforms, which utilise modular interfaces and workflow builders, are game changers for IT teams in these difficult situations. Here are some of the ways LCNC platforms help IT teams achieve their objectives:
1. Developer productivity boost
LCNC platforms give IT teams the power to churn out more solutions with the help of their highly abstracted, drag-and-drop builders used to build UIs, create workflows and set up analytic dashboards in a jiffy.
They do this without IT teams having to invest too much time in learning these tools, since most of these platforms provide the option to work with traditional programming or English-like languages, if the need for extreme customisations arises.
LCNC platforms also mean IT teams don’t have to hunt extensively for new talent because of the high-productivity and easy-to-learn nature of these platforms.
2. Democratisation of IT
The simplicity of LCNC platforms provides another avenue for organisations to achieve digital transformation.
Businesses can enable non-technical users to create simple apps for use within their own departments, freeing the IT team to focus on building and maintaining their more complex, core business applications.
The built-in governance features of these platforms also provide better control over the technology solutions used inside the organisation.
3. Upgrading legacy systems
This is a major pain point that many clients are actively trying to solve in their organisations.
Instead of scrapping a costly software system and starting from scratch, LCNC platforms use APIs and connectors to augment legacy systems, helping these systems integrate with upgraded or new systems.
With LCNC platforms, system upgrades and integrations no longer take months or years to implement.
Unique, quick and secure: The LCNC advantage
With digital transformation projects at the top of IT teams’ to-do list, LCNC platforms will play a vital role in how organisations build solutions.
These platforms empower IT teams to develop and deploy solutions that are flexible and suited to the bespoke needs of their organisation, whether it’s a standalone solution or a supplement for an existing system. Compared to traditional methods, low-code or no-code platforms enable the development of solutions in a fraction of the time.
LCNC caters to various application development needs, including those of professional developers and non-technical business users, without being hampered by security and scalability issues. This makes its adoption a no-brainer for organisations of any size.
Rajesh Ganesan is the president of product management at IT management software company ManageEngine. He has more than 20 years’ experience developing software products in various domains including telecommunications, network management and IT security.
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