The uncertainties of the pandemic and decades-old roadblocks in the software development process have driven significant changes in the approaches I see today’s organizations taking when building the applications that fuel their business.
These new approaches to development are gaining in popularity because while the pressure on IT to deliver value to the business has never been higher, the success of developers is increasingly hindered by the productivity limitations of traditional development. Only a small, elite group of tech companies (think Silicon Valley) are finding success with traditional development approaches, and for everyone else it just isn’t fast enough, efficient enough or flexible enough for them to be able to consistently get their jobs done.
Our team identified these core challenges and started working on ways to solve them more than 20 years ago, and a visual, model-driven approach to coding was a natural place to start to get teams building high-quality applications faster. We discovered early on that as the solutions customers were building became more complex, that a visual approach to development by itself wasn’t enough.
Customers didn’t just need better, more efficient development tools, they needed an entire platform that improves the full application lifecycle in the same way that a visual approach improves the development experience. Customers with serious development needs were looking for real development, but under a different set of rules. So we have invested in taking that visual foundation, and building a set of capabilities around it that make it very different from anything else in the market. For instance, modern platforms can realize tremendous productivity gains for all the different functions in an IT organization by applying AI and automation to help at every step of the way. These technologies can simplify redundant tasks and even offer suggestions for design improvements that improve performance prior to reaching any possible limitation.
By combining the speed and efficiency of visual development, with the capability of traditional development, organizations of any size are capable of tackling the most complex applications – so they can innovate, compete or just do a better job of running their organizations and servicing their customer’s needs.
At the end of the day, it’s not how you accomplish something, it’s whether or not you deliver the result. Modern applications platforms just do a better job of helping organizations solve their most complex software challenges and deliver results fast. It’s those advantages that are helping companies build the software that makes a difference to their business.
Paulo Rosado founded OutSystems in 2001 with a vision to help customers innovate faster and fundamentally change how enterprise software is developed. Staying true to that vision, Paulo has led OutSystems to become a global leader and pioneer in the modern application development market and one of the fastest-growing B2B tech companies in the world. Before he started OutSystems, Paulo co-founded Intervento, an e-business software infrastructure company that was successfully sold in 1999. He also worked for Oracle Corp, where he held multiple positions in R&D and product management. Paulo has participated in multiple executive education programs and holds a Master’s in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Computer Engineering degree from Universidade Nova, Lisbon.
