Rodrigo Castello, VP Middle East & Africa at OutSystems, explains how the company’s low-code platform enables organizations of all sizes to build software that makes a difference.
Please introduce OutSystems and its services to our readers
OutSystems is a market-leading modern application platform. The OutSystems platform enables organizations of all sizes to build the software that makes the difference – whether it’s for transforming customer experiences, delivering workplace innovation, automating processes, or modernizing core systems. OutSystems makes this possible by combining extraordinarily fast, visual, model-driven development with a modern platform built around AI, cloud, DevOps, and security.
Using the OutSystems software development platform, businesses of all sizes can develop, deploy, and manage critical apps at speed—enabling them to respond to market opportunities and continuously deliver value through software-driven innovation. These applications run the gamut from highly scalable and secure cloud or on-premises applications, websites that serve millions of consumers, back-office solutions powering massive factories, mobile banking applications for Android and Apple devices, and even IoT solutions that save peoples’ lives. In addition, OutSystems helps break the myth that high quality, efficient apps can only be created by the biggest tech giants that have hundreds of world-class developers on payroll.
How have the requirements of enterprise web and mobile apps grown in the MEA region?
Businesses across the globe have been forced to transform to maintain business continuity during this difficult period of time. The Middle East is catching up fast through the acceleration of the adoption of cloud computing. According to Michael Page’s 2021 Middle East Salary Guide and Insights, software developers represent the most highly in demand position within the digital world in the region. The IT industry in the region is blooming. However, the Middle East still suffers from a skill shortage in the technology field, creating a gap between the demand and supply of human resources. Many businesses’ IT infrastructures don’t lend themselves to rapid reconfiguration or extension and thus stand in the way of solving disruptive issues brought on by the pandemic. Investing in IT and adopting agile technologies is more critical than ever.
The pressures brought on by the pandemic have accelerated the need for digitization, however the region has been preparing for this move for a while, as planned in UAE’s 2021 and Saudi’s 2030 Vision amongst others. The growing demands for highly tailored products and services are driving organizations to rapidly extend and adapt their existing systems in ways they were never built to do. At OutSystems, we recognize this challenge within the region and aim to streamline the jobs of developers and educate rising talents. Twenty years ago, our team identified that customers needed a more efficient way of developing applications through a visual, model-driven approach to coding while maintaining the expressiveness and capability of traditional development which we have fused in our modern application platform to provide a faster and more adaptable software development process.
List few challenges OutSystems faced while implementing its No-code or low-code platform? How did you work around it?
A significant challenge for OutSystems has been the misconception that it is a primarily low-code platform, insinuating that it replaces the need for software developers. Basic no-code or low-code tools are not enough for the full range of needs in today’s enterprise as it takes a more complete and modern approach that incorporates the full application lifecycle and supports multi-functional teams. Essentially, traditional low-code is like putting a band-aid on a wound instead of stitching it as it only allows for a very narrow set of solutions that are limited in scope and are not adaptable. From its low-code roots 20 years ago, OutSystems evolved its platform to enable multi-disciplinary team collaboration, including sophisticated AI-powered automation across the platform, delivering enterprise-grade security and performance, and offering the ability to accelerate the entire application lifecycle.
At OutSystems, we do not believe in abolishing traditional coding as we recognize the need for the further liberty it allows. To keep encouraging the growth of the software development talent pool, we have implemented various training programs ranging from beginner to advanced levels and partnerships with multiple universities across the region to educate up-and-coming developers.
With digitization gaining pace over the last year, how would you rate OutSystems’ performance?
The Middle East has not only embraced the digitization process; it is now leading the way with the implementation of digital solutions across multiple verticals. Over the last year, we have measured OutSystems performance based on the success of its customers. Throughout the pandemic, our customers have adapted and overcome the challenges of remote work by deploying amazing applications built with OutSystems. OutSystems has been named a leader in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrants for Multiexperience Development Platforms (MXDP) and Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAP) and the 2021 Forrester Wave for Low-Code Development Platforms for Professional Developers.
Our current active developer community encompasses more than 435,000 members. We also have350 partners and active customers in 87 countries. On an organizational level, we have 1500 employees and are actively hiring as we continue to grow alongside the digital transformation worldwide.
Which market segment, in particular, has fueled your growth?
OutSystems is currently present across more than 22 industries. Some of our most prominent customers are in banking, manufacturing, healthcare, and even government. The challenges we solve for our customers are present worldwide regardless of the business’ size or industry. To say that a singular market segment has fueled the platform’s growth would be inaccurate as our application platform was developed with the sole purpose of being able to cater to any organization’s needs, no matter the field they belong to. Companies like Toyota, Logitech, Schneider Electric, Santander, Ricoh, Exxon, ING, GM Financial, and Vodafone, use OutSystems to build better and faster enterprise-grade applications. By combining the speed and efficiency of visual development, with the capability of traditional development, organizations of any size can tackle the most complex applications – so they can innovate, compete or just do a better job of running their organizations and servicing their customers’ needs.
How do you position your AI-based automation solutions in comparison to your competitors?
As a platform, we have a more holistic approach to AI than our competitors. We consider AI from a couple of very different perspectives. First, we see AI as a tool to improve both pro developers and novices’ productivity, increasing the speed and quality of application builds. For example, we use AI to analyze an entire portfolio of apps, compare with millions of patterns to identify potential issues with architecture, performance, and security. The platform is then able to recommend solutions and, in many cases, automate the steps required to remediate them. This is uniquely possible because of the architecture of our platform.
Our customers are looking to harness the power of AI within the applications they build. This is the second major area where we are investing. Out-of-the-box OutSystems provides sophisticated AI components that can be used through easy drag-and-drop elements to provide applications with AI functionalities that delivering an amazing customer experience. AI components can help automate and guide the customer journey through various workflows. As part of our commitment to help customers easily build state of the art applications, we are constantly delivering new ways to accelerate innovation. For example, we just announced new Cloud Accelerators for AWS to help customers looking to innovate on top of the AWS cloud ecosystem.
Can you elaborate the role of channels in the growth of OutSystems in the MEA region?
At OutSystems, we believe that our channel is vital to the success of our customers. We invest significantly in our partners across the region to enable sales, pre-sales and solution delivery and joint go-to-market activities. We believe in being reciprocatively transparent with our partners in terms of our methodologies, tools, and processes to create a collaborative and united front with the success of our clients as the ultimate goal. Enterprise IT is a complex field as building custom solutions is not an easy task, which is why success can only be achieved through the collaboration of the entire supply chain. Channels, therefore, have a critical role in the growth of OutSystems in the Middle East and Africa region, as we run an inclusive partner first operation within the region.
With ‘perimeter less’ organizations now being the new norm, how secure are the solutions offered by OutSystems?
OutSystems understands the data protection and cybersecurity concern which is becoming a key problem within the Middle East, as it has ranked as the region most prone to cyber-attacks worldwide. This is why OutSystems automatically applies over 200 risk and security controls that cover application protection, continuity and availability, data protection, infrastructure protection alongside policies and procedures across web and mobile apps. Our managed cloud service has several certifications and attestations to prove our focus on security and a dedicated security response team. For an organization that needs to outsource security monitoring or detection and response, OutSystems also provides OutSystems Sentry, which is the development platform alongside reinforced additional security, risk management, and monitoring for a SOC2 Type II compliant low-code cloud platform. Our platform helps organizations increase the security of their apps, and it is for this reason we have customers building mission-critical solutions with OutSystems.
What’s the next innovative milestone can we expect OutSystems to breech?
While the OutSystems platform is already capable of solving a broad range of customer solutions – everything from application modernization and workplace innovation to business process automation and customer experience transformation – we will continue to improve. Our focus will be to enhance capabilities that deliver development efficiency, enable team collaboration, strengthen IT governance and make applications adaptable enough to keep pace with the imperatives of the business. Furthermore, OutSystems will continue to add state-of-the-art features which are made easily accessible through its visual, model-driven approach such as AI-enabled chatbots, connections to the latest SaaS offerings like Snowflake, or one-click creation of PWAs. Our goal is to keep improving and continuously increase productivity in delivering applications, the speed to change them, their security, and performance. The OutSystems team sets high goals to keep up with our ambition.
What are your growth plans, and where do you see the company in the next 12 months?
Our vision has been stable since 2001, as our priority has always been our customers. This is why to improve as a company and a platform, our growth plan is based on our customers’ consistent feedback, which allows us to listen to their problems and address them directly. In 12 months, we will make the same efforts we are making now, except we will be better and faster as we continuously aim to change and improve our services.
