As businesses embrace digital transformation, they are presented with a myriad of opportunities to innovate and increase productivity. The rise of low-code no-code platforms offers organizations an alternative approach to speed-up software development at lower costs while reducing Time-To-Market. These platforms help create enterprise-grade apps with minimal programming effort as opposed to the traditional software development process, which tends to be slower and more costly.
ServiceNow’s App Engine is one of the most effective low-code applications, which is why ServiceNow has been named the Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms.
How ServiceNow App Engine Works
More than 65 percent of all app development by 2024 will be on a low-code platform.
As a low-code/no-code application development platform, the Now Platform App Engine offers several benefits to enterprises:
Increased Speed, Productivity, and Agility
“Do not reinvent the wheel” applies perfectly to the low-code no-code approach. With Now Platform App Engine, developers don't need to start coding from scratch and can instead use pre-built components to speed up the development process and build desktop and mobile applications as well as digitize and automate workflows.
The underlying concept behind a lot of apps remains the same. Reusing these functionalities through a visual interface and “drag and drop” feature is a much better approach than coding the functionalities all over again. The App Engine enables developers to create state-of-the-art solutions by adding analytics and AI/ML capabilities into apps effortlessly. This accelerates the application development process, Time-to-Market, Time-to-Delivery, and scales up productivity while bringing down project development and management costs substantially.
App Engine offers several cutting-edge features in its cloud-native format:
- The Common Service Data Model provides an excellent framework for modeling data on the Now Platform.
- Ready-to-use services such as the Service Portal, virtual assistant, Service Catalog, Workspaces, and Knowledge Management can be used by developers to create and provide users with feature-rich and highly personalized applications.
- App Engine’s Flow Designer is a no-code process automation tool that can be used by developers to create end-to-end workflows. Furthermore, creating complex workflows involving different departments and workflows across the enterprise is easy with Process Automation Designer.
- ServiceNow IntegrationHub provides thousands of spokes or connectivity support to applications, infrastructure, and platforms that can be used for custom integration with little to no code.
- The Delegated Development feature provides a collaborative environment for the development of applications across departments by developers of various skill levels without requiring IT to relinquish its control and governance of the platform.
Scalability and Security
Tasks such as automated testing, CI and CD support, source control, and best governance practices are already provided in the App Engine to provide enough scope to scale application development automatically. With the ServiceNow cloud platform, businesses can deploy apps across the enterprise with ease.
Even for larger enterprises, having a robust security infrastructure is costly. Other aspects that are hard to manage are governance, regulatory, and compliance activities. The ServiceNow SecOps and GRC modules provide an easy way to incorporate advanced features effortlessly.
Empower Citizen Developers
One of the biggest advantages of low-code no-code application development is the democratization of the application development process, allowing non-technical people or citizen developers to leverage the Now Platform App Engine and create applications with minimal or no coding effort. In every organization, some members have an excellent understanding of the business and requirements of the team but do not venture into application development for their lack of sufficient programming skills. These citizen developers can use a low-code no-code platform to create innovative solutions.
According to a survey by McKinsey, organizations empowering citizen developers score 33 percent higher on innovation than companies sticking to the traditional software development method.
Conclusion
Companies are using no-code, low-code platforms to create digital workflow apps. With Now App Engine, these digital solutions can be created faster and cheaper while conforming to enterprise standards when it comes to security and scalability. However, there are still many times when a low-code platform would not suffice, and a traditional software development model must be followed.
