The Low-Code Market In The Enterprise Segment — Gartner Magic Quadrant

In August 2019, Gartner published their respected report and Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms. In this trends blog, we at Sappience, try to give some highlights based on the Magic Quadrant and share our insights.

At the very beginning, you can check this page for additional information on what are Low-Code Platforms, their evolution, and the benefits they bring on the table for businesses. Gartner adds couple more clarifications about the market definition: “no-code” application platforms are part of the Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAP) market; Citizen Developers are often associated with no-code application development.

Before moving forward to the Magic Quadrant, let’s check the Gartner’s market planning assumption. Two are the major strategic assumptions:

1. The first one is that by 2024, three-quarters of large enterprises will be using at least four low-code development tools for both IT application development and citizen development initiatives.
2. And the second is that in 5 years from now, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity.

…and going into the Quadrant:

*Figure 1 — Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms

*This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Microsoft. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

In the report, Gartner reviews 18 vendors of Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAP) with regards to their Strengths and Cautions and getting deep into the following areas for each vendor: Overall viability, Innovation, Marketing execution, Market responsiveness, Product strategy, Market understanding, Business model, Sales execution, Vertical/Industry Strategy, Customer Experience, and several others criteria.

Some of the Sappience Insights:

• It’s not a surprise to see Microsoft, Salesforce, OutSystems, Mendix, and Appian in the Leaders Quadrant. The Niche Players quadrant seems overpacked and the competition there is very interesting. We have a four-horse battle in the Challenger’s segment, but It’s quiet in the Visionaries. It would be interesting who will be the new entries in the next edition of the report. Maybe Google…?
• For the last years, it was considered that Low-Code Platforms and applications build on these platforms are not Enterprise grade solutions. This point is not valid anymore. Considering the efforts of most of the vendors in the areas of high performance and high availability, scalability, security, and disaster recovery, we can position low-code apps on the same level (or even higher) as every other enterprise solution or custom app. Even the existence of the current Magic Quadrant is evidence of the maturity of the low-code platforms in the Enterprise segment.
• The assumptions for the next 5 years are just a confirmation for the growing market. The market demand is huge and the LCAP is one of the major tools that can respond positively to this demand. Speed up of the development processes and involvement of citizen developers into the application lifecycle are the key factors for faster apps deployment. And that’s what the business needs today. Not tomorrow, or next week. Today.
• Microsoft is fast-forwarding through the ranks — for the last couple of years Microsoft put a lot of work to establish its Platform as a competitor on the market, and they not only did this successfully but positioned themselves as Leaders. PowerApps and the rest of the platform stack is maybe the fastest evolving platform on the market today.

You can contact us for additional insights out of the report, or to discuss the Low-Code market and how the LCAP is applicable for your company.

Originally published at https://www.sappience.digital.