OutSystems this week revealed it has acquired Ionic, a provider of an open source framework that provides developers with a higher level of abstraction for building and deploying mobile and desktop applications.
OutSystems CTO Patrick Jean said Ionic will accelerate the company’s ongoing efforts to extend the reach of its platform for building low-code applications without developers having to worry about, for example, the screen size of the device an application is deployed on it because the framework automatically right-sizes it. Ionic, in effect, will provide an extension to the platform that OutSystems already uses to automate the building and deployment of low-code applications, he added.
In addition to its namesake user interface (UI) framework for building mobile applications that can run on multiple platforms, the Ionic portfolio also includes a tool for natively deploying web applications, dubbed Capacitor, and a toolchain for building web component-based design systems, dubbed Stencil. Collectively, these tools are used today by more than five million developers.
OutSystems plans to extend the capabilities of these tools to make it simpler to deploy applications on both mobile devices and desktop systems, said Jean. The overall goal is to reduce the cognitive load that developers currently carry when they need to build and deploy applications that run on multiple platforms, he added.
That capability will prove critical as more individuals beyond professional developers become involved in building, deploying and updating applications, noted Jean. In fact, many of those developers are likely to be business people that only develop applications on a part-time basis, he added.
The percentage of applications being built using low-code tools has increased dramatically. Professional developers have embraced these tools and platforms alongside so-called citizen developers that are using them to build applications, as well. As the backlog of applications that needs to be built steadily increases, low-code platforms have played a crucial role in enabling developers to keep pace with the demand for new applications.
Less clear is the impact these low-code applications are having on DevOps workflows. On one hand, there are clearly more applications that need to be deployed than ever. At the same time, many of the DevOps and data modeling processes that once required, for example, a dedicated continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform are being embedded in the platforms provided by the vendors that create low-code tools.
Regardless of how low-code applications are deployed, the one thing that is certain is the pace of digital business transformation is being greatly accelerated by these tools and platforms. DevOps teams will soon need to put guardrails in place that enable developers with a wide range of experience and skillsets to securely deploy and update applications.
On the plus side, DevOps teams should also expect it to become easier to automate the delivery of low-code applications at levels of unprecedented scale. In fact, the issue going forward may not be whether IT can keep up with the needs of the business but whether the business can keep pace with the rate of innovation now being enabled.
