The Myth of Low-Code 3: Scalability

The Myth of Low-Code 3: Scalability

Wiza Teguh

The most common fears that discourage organizations from adopting low-code are inflexibility, vendor lock-in, security, scalability, and career impact. In this article, I will talk about each fear that discourage organizations from adopting low-code, and why they should not be feared.

3. Scalability

Scalability simply means the capacity to be changed in size or scale. When it comes to low-code, we can assume that scalability here means the capability of low-code to adapt with improvements, especially regarding to size. Based on a survey by State of Application Development about reasons for not using or considering low-code, up to 13% of responders answered that they are concern of the scalability. It might not be the highest percentage of reasons answered by respondents, but still some of them are concern about this.

Talking about scalability, we should know that there are 2 perspectives of scalability. There are runtime scalability and dev-time scalability.

1. Runtime Scalability

The ability to increase the capacity of deployed low-code applications and to provide fast user experiences, both for large numbers of users and compute-intensive operations.

1. Dev-Time Scalability

The ability to use low-code for multiple use-cases, projects, and developers and to deliver long-term, successful management of large, interconnected portfolios of applications.

            How Scalable is a Low-Code Platform?

            With OutSystems you can meet even the most massive of customer requirements with vertical and horizontal scalability and support for containers and microservices built-in. Customers have proven Outsystems’ low-code scalability. Here are the two examples:

• Leading Insurer Liberty Seguros has been using Outsystems since 2004, has over 29 developers, and has delivered 83 applications. They’ve been able to retire multiple expensive and inflexible COTS (aka commercial off the shelf) applications, made multi-million license and maintenance savings, and claim a four-to-five times delivery speed advantage.
• Vopak, the world’s leading bulk liquid storage company, rewrote its entire ERP system—a project originally slated for three years completed in just 16 months. They now enjoy massively improved agility, having escaped an ERP system that was a sinkhole for consulting spend in the past.

With Outsystems 11, there are six new capabilities related to scalability:

1. Architectural Agility at Scale
2. Monitoring and Troubleshooting at Scale
3. Governance at Scale
4. Operations at Scale
5. Modern User Experiences at Scale
6. Security Without Borders

So, low-code scalability is just a myth, especially when you use Outsystems.