Takeaways from the ONE conference
In September we had the opportunity to join the OutSystems ONE Developer Conference in Lisbon. Set at the magnificent Centro Cultural de Belem, over 1600 developers and partners joined to hear about the direction of the product and the innovations from the professional services team. Here are my top takeaways from that event.
1. ODC is here.
For the last few years we’ve looked at the progress first of “Project Neo” and then the release of the “OutSystems Developer Cloud”, referred to as ODC. From all of the demos of new functionality, and the growth in user base, it’s clear that new deals should start with ODC and fall back to O11 if needed, rather than looking for a reason to go to ODC. If you weren’t aware, the biggest change is that the deployment of code, now in Kubernetes containers, which drives a true microservices architecture, with a view to composable architecture. And that’s now the standard starting point, which is quite exciting.
2. AI is part of the conversation.
We sometimes need to be reminded that some of the features that we take for granted as developers have been placed in the platform due to the ongoing investment in R&D — stuff like the architecture dashboard, now called the AI Mentor Studio — where code is scanned in real-time for consistency, and then overnight for known anti-patterns — relies on machine learning and data mining techniques. Suggested next actions in flows, auto-complete parameter assignment, and natural language query generation are all there now, but we sometimes forget to mention them. This was a useful reminder of all that’s already there, helpful when people ask “What are OutSystems doing with AI?”
3. Generative AI is now fully on the table
The new “Project Morpheus” GenAI app was demonstrated to the audience, showing how the product can suggest and take prompts to create entire apps or app features and insert them into a code base. Even more impressive is the hand-off to the developer to inspect, modify, and extend in the regular development environment, and then for the AI tool to come back in and build on the developer’s changes. This kind of two-way AI support will be a real differentiator in the months and years to come, versus other code generation tools — I truly believe that visual low-code has a massive advantage over any text-based coding language in the time taken for a professional developer to understand what the AI builds.
4. Invest in DevOps for scalability
Inevitably as we get started with a new customer, the focus is on getting the project done. Deploying code is quickly done manually, and testing is easy to handle with traditional approaches. But once there are a couple of teams in place, and a few projects all reusing the same core components, then investing in the tools to manage that starts to make more sense. We saw demos of automated code deployment, checks against AI Mentor Studio for a quality threshold, triggering and assuring automated test runs, and then either alerting or further deployment to a UAT environment. We also saw extensions to monitoring on the server and client side, and connections to risk management platforms. Our customers are mostly now reaching the point where this kind of capability is becoming a strong candidate for investment of time and effort.
5. The community is huge
As mentioned, there were 1600+ developers here, in roles from early developers to senior architects, and the sense of excitement, togetherness, and purpose was vibrant. With similar events in Denver and Bengaluru, it’s incredible how this little software company from Portugal has become a truly global community, all with the belief that we can build better software, faster than ever, without compromising on performance or security.
Conclusion
So — fantastic conference, very exciting to see the new product direction, especially around Morpheus — and great to hear from other developers and OutSystems Professional Services teams about some of the tips, tricks, and best practices that go into making a world-class service around a world-class platform.
My one gripe — hopefully next time they re-combine the business and tech streams as they had in 2019 — a sprinkling of customer success stories would have kept the focus on the value created. After all, it’s the business outcomes that drive technology investment, so we need to make sure we keep our eyes on the prize.
Otherwise, it was great to connect with our developers in Portugal, some of our excellent partners and connections that have only been possible remotely in the past, and especially good to see so many of the OutSystems team that we’ve been working with over the last few years. Roll on 2024!
About the author
Andy Borthwick is a Solution Architect here at Version 1.
