We all love data and we all love soft­ware appli­ca­tions. They help us do what we do every day. The prob­lem is that we love data, data­bas­es, and soft­ware so much that there aren’t enough soft­ware devel­op­ers on the plan­et to keep up with the demand for extra appli­ca­tion func­tion­al­i­ty, addi­tion­al lay­ers of inte­gra­tion, and brand-new apps built to suit as-yet-unknown use case requirements.

This real­i­ty has dri­ven the devel­op­ment of what the indus­try likes to call low-code and no-code soft­ware plat­forms. This indus­try seg­ment has gained increas­ing trac­tion for a cou­ple of cen­tral reasons:

• The short­age of soft­ware that some orga­ni­za­tions expe­ri­ence in the rapid­ly spi­ral­ing world of web-scale busi­ness means that entire­ly new Line-of-Busi­ness depart­ments some­times spring up overnight if an inno­va­tion goes viral — and new busi­ness needs new apps, fast.
• The rise of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and machine learn­ing allows us to build soft­ware with more auto­mat­ed know-how with­out 100% hands-on human inter­ac­tion. This helps facil­i­tate low-code and no-code development.

So then, before we look at how SAP inte­grates and works with these com­par­a­tive­ly new plat­forms, let’s lay down some need­ed def­i­n­i­tions in plain English.

No-Code Defined

Tak­ing no-code first, these are plat­forms designed for busi­ness­peo­ple. There’s a long-run­ning joke between devel­op­ers and users that pokes fun at the ridicu­lous func­tion­al­i­ty requests that users make, com­pared with the way soft­ware is actu­al­ly built. 

This is where low-code is pitched. In oth­er words, it allows the users them­selves to ​“build” an application.

Now obvi­ous­ly, no-code tools can’t com­plete­ly abstract away all the low­er-lev­el com­plex­i­ties of soft­ware pro­gram­ming lan­guages into a drag-and-drop inter­face and keep all the pow­er of hard cod­ing, but they can help go some of the way. The core con­cept behind no-code is designed to allow users to ask for what they want, and then sit back as the no-code plat­form builds it for them. So, it’s a case of what, not how. 

Although it sounds com­plete­ly non­tech­ni­cal if we say, ​“what, not how,” this approach actu­al­ly stems from declar­a­tive soft­ware pro­gram­ming theory.

Edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gist Tyler McGin­nis explains declar­a­tive pro­gram­ming in con­trast to imper­a­tive pro­gram­ming in real­ly sim­ple terms as: 

• An imper­a­tive approach (how): ​“I see that table locat­ed under the Gone Fishin’ sign is emp­ty. My hus­band and I are going to walk over there and sit down.”
• A declar­a­tive approach (what): ​“Table for two, please.”

Low-Code Defined

So, no-code is all about soft­ware devel­op­ment automa­tion at the most auto­mat­ed lev­el. Low-code by con­trast is meant for trained soft­ware engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sion­als. To be sure, low-code soft­ware pro­gram­ming still requires plen­ty of code, but it also builds in short­cuts and time­savers. Those short­cuts are pre­sent­ed in a library of tools that offer tem­plate-based struc­tures to build code against and pre­de­fined routes to soft­ware integration.

In prac­tice, low-code func­tions might include ​“mini-apps” or com­po­nents of com­plete func­tion­al­i­ty that can be plugged direct­ly into the code being devel­oped. A cal­cu­la­tor or cur­ren­cy con­vert­er func­tion would be an illus­tra­tive (but tech­ni­cal­ly too high lev­el — we’re actu­al­ly talk­ing about deep­er pro­cess­ing jobs) exam­ple. The idea is that there is no need to rein­vent those wheels every time. 

Alter­na­tive­ly, some low-code tools could be short­cut plug-ins to allow inte­gra­tion with entire third-par­ty plat­forms such as IBM Wat­son for AI, Sales­force for CRM, or Tableau for visu­al­iza­tion pow­er, and so on.

SAP Low-Code No-Code

SAP isn’t a low-code or no-code com­pa­ny, because it doesn’t need to be. We can be rea­son­ably sure that SAP will con­tin­ue its data­base, ana­lyt­ics, and busi­ness func­tions road map through­out at least the start of the new decade with­out it tabling a ded­i­cat­ed new low-code no-code inno­va­tion. Instead, SAP works to cham­pi­on its take on the intel­li­gent enter­prise with one of the usu­al sus­pects in the low-code mar­ket­place: Mendix.

The Men­dix Rapid Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment (RAD) plat­form is intend­ed to com­ple­ment SAP solu­tions by pro­vid­ing orga­ni­za­tions with the fastest and eas­i­est way to devel­op appli­ca­tions that dri­ve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, employ­ee engage­ment, and oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy. Accord­ing to Men­dix, “[Our tech­nol­o­gy] is the only low-code devel­op­ment plat­form that native­ly runs on the SAP HANA data plat­form, tak­ing advan­tage of in-mem­o­ry data­base capa­bil­i­ties, advanced ana­lyt­ics, and unlim­it­ed scal­a­bil­i­ty. And for Men­dix, an SAP Solu­tion Exten­sion is the pre­ferred devel­op­ment plat­form for SAP S/4HANA, SAP C/4HANA, SAP ECC, and SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tions to build future-proof applications.”

As a point of clar­i­ty on the low-code mar­ket, Gartner’s 2019 Mag­ic Quad­rant for Enter­prise Low-Code Appli­ca­tion Plat­forms shows Men­dix along­side Sales­force (for Sales­force App Cloud) and Microsoft (for Microsoft Pow­er­Apps), both of which obvi­ous­ly aren’t pure-play low-code spe­cial­ists. Ser­vi­ceNow is also linked in this quad­rant, but again the com­pa­ny is known for a wider plat­form play.

The arguably more pure-play low-code lead­ers are Men­dix (low-code), Appi­an (low-code), Bet­ty Blocks (no-code), Out­Sys­tems (low-code), and Zoho (low-code, but very sim­pli­fied drag-and-drop). They are not on the Gart­ner quad­rant but App­Sheet, Airtable, and Nin­tex also deliv­er no-code solutions.

Hang on, What About SAP Web IDE?

Although we’ve said that SAP isn’t a low-code com­pa­ny, the caveat to that state­ment would be that SAP Web IDE is known as some­thing of a low-code route to cod­ing effi­cien­cy. The tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides short­cut wiz­ards, tem­plates, sam­ples, code, and graph­i­cal edi­tors, as well as code mod­el­er tools.

As SAP itself puts it, ​“SAP Web IDE is a pow­er­ful, exten­si­ble, web-based tool that sim­pli­fies both the devel­op­ment of end-to-end SAP Fiori apps and the full-stack (user inter­face, busi­ness log­ic, and data­base) appli­ca­tion life­cy­cle. You can devel­op, debug, build, test, extend, and deploy role-based, con­sumer-grade apps.”

SAP Web IDE falls under SAP Cloud Plat­form and has been around for at least a cou­ple of years. The company’s Mil­ja Gille­spie ana­lyzes where it sits in the SAP Cloud tech­nol­o­gy offer­ing here.

As we dive fur­ther into 2020, we will inevitably hear more about low-code and no-code as key routes to app-cre­ation effi­cien­cy. We’ll need process con­trols and pol­i­cy guide­lines to ensure that busi­ness users don’t sud­den­ly start ​“rolling out” apps that don’t help an organization’s data DNA to flour­ish, but that goes along with the change-man­age­ment and gov­er­nance required for any self-serve tech­nol­o­gy solution.

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