Providit and OutSystems: the best is yet to come
A lot has changed since 2015, when we started out as Belgium’s first OutSystems partner. And there’s a lot more about to change next year. Will we see a big breakthrough for low-code in 2020?
Back in 2015, Providit was the first Belgian company to offer OutSystems development and implementation services. We started out with only 3 employees. Today, we are 14, and we are still the only Belgian service provider that is fully and exclusively dedicated to this platform. Although this platform has been around for almost 20 years now, it has always been a slow burner. Over the last couple of years, however, we clearly see how the market is picking up the low-code concept at a rapidly increasing speed. That’s something you can check in Google Analytics, for example, where you can clearly see the rising number of searches on ‘low-code’.
When we first introduced OutSystems on the Belgian market five years ago, people reacted in disbelief. They simply didn’t trust the idea that low-code development allows for enterprise-ready applications with the quality and at the speed it does. And it often took more than just a few business cases to get our point across. Five years on, the concept of low-code development has grown a lot more familiar. As a matter of fact, businesses start reaching out to us as soon as they realize low-code might be the answer to some of their burning questions.
Faster innovation
It doesn’t mean OutSystems already hit the big time. Ten years ago, there was only one OutSystems client in Belgium. Today, there are around 15 companies running OutSystems applications. Except for maybe 2 or 3 clients, all of them discovered the low-code platform over the last 2 years. Most of them are large enterprises on the look-out for faster innovation and more agility, because that’s where the real added-value of low-code surfaces.
In the traditional application development cycle, it may take months to get some first results. But the market, as well as the business requirements for the application, often change a lot faster. At the same time, low-code isn’t just about speed. It’s also about user-friendliness – on all levels. For IT savvy business profiles, it’s a lot easier to be part of a low-code application delivery process, than it is to contribute to the Java or .NET application cycle.
More to come
According to Gartner, low-code application delivery will rise to 65% of all application delivery by 2024. That evolution offers a lot of chances for the Belgian OutSystems market, as it is still in its infancy. Companies usually start experimenting with OutSystems building small applications. Once they realize the opportunities low-code holds in terms of faster development and cheaper maintenance, they also start considering OutSystems for their back-end systems.
At Providit, we expect the growth in demand for OutSystems applications to accelerate in 2020, resulting in new clients, new projects and new hires. The best is definitely yet to come!
