Does your list of New Year’s resolutions look a lot like last year’s… and the year before that… and the year before that?
No doubt you worked hard to turn those resolutions into reality in 2022. But chances are, the ever-accelerating demands of the business, and evermore complex ecosystems, made it seem like you were just treading water.
Make 2023 different. You can turn a single resolution—to adopt a codeless-as-a-service (CaaS) approach to development—into a domino that knocks down many of the most intractable challenges on your list.
Repeat after us: “In 2023, we resolve to…”
1. Stop generating new code. Period.
We all know traditional development can’t keep up with the rising demand for apps. Low-code and no-code platforms have helped, but not enough. Developers still end up writing lots of manual coding to make up for their shortcomings. And these platforms generate lots of code themselves—code that you will have to manage in the future.
CaaS is fundamentally different. In fact, it’s a category that hasn’t existed before. Founded on an entirely codeless architecture, CaaS requires zero coding, and generates no code itself.
CasS is made possible by Unqork’s “codeless definition,” in which 100% of all functionalities are stored in a single, open-standard, fully readable JSON file. From Goldman Sachs and Chubb to the City of New York, organizations are already developing software with zero new code.
Unqork CEO& Founder Gary Hoberman introducing Codeless as a Service at Unqork Create 2022
2. Stop falling further into tech debt
As McKinsey reports, tech debt, ”the off-balance-sheet accumulation of all the technology work a company needs to do in the future” has increased relentlessly. In addition to spreading IT teams even further just keeping the lights on and lowering developer morale, tech debt has a huge financial cost with some estimates pegging $3.61 worth of tech debt for every line of code (LoC) that will have to be paid over the software’s lifetime.
CaaS nips tech debt in the bud. Developers never have to write new code, so no new code to manage in the future. Just as important, you also rid yourself of all the code that low-code/no-code platforms generate. Yes, these platforms automate that generation—but you are still saddled with new code to manage going forward.
Ready for the next down-turn?
3. Get my IT and business teams on the same page (literally)
Often, the business does not understand the downstream consequences of their requests,” writes Lars C. Tandrup, Principal at Ernst & Young. “When technology teams push back, the business teams incorrectly see them as blockers rather than partners. “Infighting is sure to follow,” he adds.
Because CaaS makes development 100% visual, Tandrup says CaaS gets IT and business partners on the same page—literally. “A codeless visual interface is so intuitive that business users can follow along as developers do their work,” writes Tandrup.
3X faster development cycles? Yes, please.
4. Deliver high-fidelity prototypes in days or hours (or even minutes?)
When you remove the need for code, developers can concentrate 100% of their time and creativity on logic. And that means you can turn an ask into a proof of concept with unprecedented speed.
That means you can get a working model in front of stakeholders, not just a non-functioning wireframe, with unprecedented speed. And that means IT and the business can work together to refine and optimize the final product.
“With codeless, your idea can be a proof of concept in a matter of minutes,” says Christopher Pangrace, Senior Technical Lead at Vault Insurance, of prototyping with Unqork’s CaaS platform. “That’s huge.”
Easy drag-and-drop configuration with Unqork's 100%-visual configuration
5. Finally clear out that dev queue
A recent report found that at enterprises with more than 500 employees, 65% of tech teams have 10 or more applications sitting in their pipeline. Another 15% have more than 100 applications in their backlog.
As we’ve seen, CaaS helps you slash tech debt, align IT and the business, and accelerate every phase of software development, from proofs of concept (PoCs) to rapid iterations of existing apps. And when you tackle these challenges, you suddenly have the bandwidth to clear out items that are languishing in your queue.
6. Level up my customers’ digital experiences
A recent McKinsey study correlating shareholder value with its customer experience benchmarking found that, in the 2010s, digital CX leaders delivered 55% higher shareholder returns than customer experience laggards. But when your resources are going to tech debt and managing backlogs, your team has the time and mental space to focus on the task of creating Amazon-style experiences.
However, when you can free up developers and enable them to work shoulder-to-shoulder with businesspeople, they can really begin to explore the art of the possible when it comes to creating fine-grained, personalized customer experiences.
“Not only does codeless accelerate development, but also the speed at which the business itself can grasp and act on innovative ideas. That unleashes organizations to truly explore the art of the possible,” write Harvinder Bhatia and Raj Konduru, both partners at KPMG.
The 7 codeless features that developers would never give up
7. Stop being limited to a single cloud provider
A true CaaS platform also has to be a cloud-agnostic platform. For example, Unqork’s CasS is built on an entirely “codeless definition,” in which 100% of all functionalities are stored in a single, open-standard, fully readable JSON file.
That is a fancy way of saying, you can build the logic of your applications without writing code, but the elements can point to any system, regardless of which cloud environment a particular resource lives in. “When an application is defined in Unqork’s codeless definition, literally any component around it can change without any changes to the application itself,” says Gary Hoberman, Founder & CEO, Unqork.
8. Innovate my tech stack (without all the scary rip-and-replacing)
It may take a second for even IT leaders to get their minds around how much flexibility and agility CaaS can deliver. But when you decouple app development from underlying systems, thanks to the codeless definition, you don’t have to make any changes to underlying systems.
Instead, you just repoint your existing application to a new or different resource by codelessly creating APIs, gateways, and reusable microservices within an entirely visual API builder. And then you can authenticate integrations to a central platform administration UI once, without writing a single line of code.
The features of codeless development that say make the biggest difference day-to-day
9. Embrace hot new tech before the competition
As hot new technologies come online, the ability to ingest them in ways that truly drive value will differentiate leaders from laggards. And CaaS clears the way to do just that.
In the same way, you never have to rip and replace any existing systems, CaaS keeps your organization ready to consume new technologies—from the latest-and-greatest third-party services to robust AI and blockchain solutions—far more quickly than traditional development environments.
10. Actually generate value from all the data I already have
“Data represents all the value that exists in the enterprise,” Richard Tarling, Managing Director & Technology Fellow, Core Engineering at Goldman Sachs, said in his recent presentation at Unqork Create 2022. But to realize that value, organizations face two yawning chasms.
Yet in traditional development environments, data is siloed and cannot move seamlessly from one system to the next. Second, data modelers are too far removed from the process of designing the software that runs the models they create.
CaaS helps close both gaps significantly, making it far easier to integrate data sources. It also enables data modelers to work side-by-side with developers—or quickly learn to visually configure software themselves.
It also opens up a path to what Tarling calls stateless data. In his vision, you will be able to “decouple data from the applications that you build and deliver data as a platform in its own rights, so that the functions that apply to the data are themselves stateless functions where the data remains at rest and we don't move it around,” says Tarling.
