IT talent gap? Try skipping the code

A little code can go a long way these days. In fact, according to a recent forecast by Gartner analysts, the worldwide market for low-code development technologies, which allow workers to automate workflows and build apps without programming expertise, will grow by almost 20% in 2023 compared to 2022..

Low-code technology is slated to be worth $26.9 billion this year, with the largest component of the market being low-code application platforms (LCAP)—a market Gartner estimates will grow from just shy of $8 billion in 2022 to almost $10 billion in 2023. Gartner projected the fastest-growing segment on a percentage basis will be citizen automation and development platforms (CADP), technology that enables workflow automation, creation of web-based forms, data visualization, and linking data across SaaS platforms.

Gartner projects that by 2025, 70% of new applications developed at enterprises will use low-code or no-code technologies, up from less than 25% in 2020. It also projects that the percentage of users for these apps who aren’t members of a traditional IT department will grow to 80% by 2026, up from 60% in 2021.

“In an average company, 41% of all employees can be called a ‘business technologist,’ meaning they in their role are creating an app, a digital form, an integration, an automation, a bot, a data model algorithm,” Jason Wong, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner, told IT Brew.

Other market segments that Gartner projects will see continued growth include business process automation (BPA), multi-experience development platforms (MDXP), robotic process automation (RPA), and integration platform as a service (iPaaS).

According to Wong, departments like sales, revenue, and business ops now often rely on fusion teams that pair business technologists with dedicated technical professionals like software engineers or data scientists. He said the surge in remote work during the pandemic was a key driver of low-code development adoption, as it required new workflows that often didn’t have SaaS solutions readily available for purchase, but could be built with in-house tools like ServiceNow, Salesforce, or Oracle APEX.

At the same time, Wong said, traditional IT departments were facing a talent shortage and had enough on their plate.

“With the advent of cloud and SaaS, that [changed] how IT was run, from more of a command and control model, to now thinking more about collaboration and empowerment,” Wong told IT Brew. “Now, IT’s role is to connect all these business units.”

Low-code development is already in widespread use among developers seeking to streamline the development process and focus their time at work on more challenging tasks. Forrester Research senior analyst John Bratincevic told Computerworld that about one-third of professional developers already use the technology in their day-to-day work.—TM

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