As leaders in the application development industry, we’re often asked where we fit into a crowded market and how we meet challenges in complex development environments. How can you differentiate between many available platforms?
The Development Market
It’s important to understand the development space in general, and the history of the main players in the market:
- 4GL or Rad tools: These were extremely popular in the late seventies and early eighties, but were a dying breed once the Internet became popular and these tools could not make the switch to browser and mobile interfaces
- Low-code environments: Designed as successors to 4GL and RAD tools, these code-generators work well for smaller applications, but come with maintenance challenges and scalability issues for complex applications. They are fairly locked-down in terms of functionality, customization and lack of freedom in the UX. They tend not to work for ISVs because of this, and because of multi-tenancy / deployment limitations.
- 3GL environments (DIY approach) like Java and .Net: Java is practical only for the massive players with overseas technology centers and hundreds of coders, while .Net is mostly used by very large ISVs and large enterprises.
- Point solutions. This might range from UI components all the way to scripting languages. They are very good at very specific things, but lack in providing an overall solution for a complex business application.
- aPaaS: At the moment there is only one true aPaas player combining low-code and IaaS, force.com, and for good reason. In order to make sure that the stack cannot be taken down by a single customer, much of the functionality must be locked down. While this may not be a problem for smaller in-house apps, it’s not very suitable for large/complex applications.
Choosing the Right Solution
Once you understand the players in the market space, how do you go about choosing the platform that’s right for your company and your project? At Servoy, our view on the players and the right match with customers is as follows:
- For Departmental applications or small applications such as mobile, we recommend a low-code environment or even something like force.com, depending on your growth ambitions. Force.com may not be appropriate for a fast-growing user base due to cost constraints.
- For enterprises and ISVs with complex applications, Servoy’s areas of specialization are Cloud and multi-tenant applications. We give you the stack, HTML5 and RAD tools so you can build your application with a focus on UX, users and industry specific business logic.
- For very large enterprises demanding full control over the entire stack and can afford to do so from a time-to-market and resources point of view, Java or possibly .Net could be a good starting point.
Ensuring Success with Servoy
Servoy’s platform and area of expertise is in modernizing complex applications, in particular those that need to embrace Cloud and SaaS models. After fine-tuning the stack and development processes for 15+ years and over the course of hundreds of applications, we are uniquely positioned to make complex projects successful.
To learn whether the Servoy platform and the Appsurance Program is the right fit for your project, request a free web meeting. We’ll tailor our presentation to address your biggest questions and unique challenges.
