OutSystems: the future of low-code in good hands

Low-code is the present and future of application development. Don’t take our word for it, take Gartner’s: according to the firm’s 2019 Magic Quadrants, by 2024, 65% of app development activity will be done on low-code platforms. For a leader in the field such as OutSystems, this poses an obvious challenge: coping with the growing demand for professionals using the platform.

But first things first. What are the reasons behind low-code’s success? It is happening due to the fact that this software development approach brings speed and agility to the delivery of software applications. Through it, professionals use visual modeling in a graphical interface to assemble and configure applications which, in turn, means they are able to skip all the infrastructure-related steps and focus on the unique features they intend to deliver. Moreover, the applications developed can be made ready for deployment on different platforms, seamlessly and with minimal effort — hence the OutSystems’ 2020 nomination as a leader on Multiexperience Development Platforms by Gartner.

In that sense, low-code development provides what the market is looking for: speed, agility, ease of implementation, and collaboration between technical and non-technical professionals. Ultimately, the ever sought-after permanent alignment between business and IT. And, according to Gartner, Forrester, TrustRadius, among others, OutSystems is leading the way on this shift.

With the growth of the market demand, the OutSystems team wanted to make sure they answered a pressing matter that crosses most of the software development landscape: the growing need of developers on its platform. As Ricardo Araújo, OutSystems’ community director, states, they realized this about two years ago, when they started looking at the landscape to identify what could be the possible barriers for the company’s growth. To allow for an organic growth, the learning process would have to happen outside the company, in schools and universities, where new technologies and languages ​​are taught both to new generations of engineers and to professionals in requalification processes.

To address the challenge, OutSystems launched three programs:

• The OutSystems Education Program, aimed at universities, through which they can create a customized curriculum using the OutSystems technology and methodology;
• UpSkill, a national initiative that intends to requalify human resources from other fields of work, providing core IT skills, that OutSystems associated with;
• And the free OutSystems Low-Code School, to attract people that are already in technology but want to upgrade their skills in this field.

The now global initiative started in Portugal less than a year ago and it already counts with multiple national partners and key STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) universities — Nova FCT, University of Minho, and ISCTE are just three examples in our country. Furthermore, the program is also helping technology-lagging regions, for example in Terceira, one of the Azores islands, to promote skilled labor with the introduction and development of a low-code community. Large companies with local needs are benefiting from the availability of talent in those regions.

But the initiative aimed at universities quickly expanded overseas and, today, students from institutions such as the California State University — Northridge, the University of Georgia, Penn State, and the University of Tampa already enjoy the opportunity to be lectured on the new programming paradigm.

Scalability is, of course, a key factor. In these initiatives, OutSystems is an enabler, not an instructor, providing content and materials, and making the platform accessible to both students and professors — but it is the teaching institutions who drive the curricula, a testament to the growth in demand for professionals that are proficient at this type of technology.

As of today, OutSystems is being taught in 67 universities across 19 countries under its Education Program, which is done either through the curricular plan or via workshops. Overall, the program already counts with more than 4,000 students enrolled in these classes, nearly 120 teachers on-boarded, and 882 certification vouchers provided. By the end of the year, the team intends to be present in 95 universities worldwide — a number that is bound to increase in the coming years, to cope with the growing global demand for OutSystems’ platform.