Towards a (re) new (d) IT landscape. The strength of OutSystems

Three scenarios

We see three scenarios in organizations when it comes to the IT landscape. Organizations that have been around for a long time often have to deal with an outdated landscape that means they are no longer so agile. They want to take the next step, but are hampered by legacy systems. They find it difficult to integrate new applications with other - older - systems in their IT landscape. The second scenario is when a company wants to phase out and replace certain components within their existing environment. Finally, of course, there are also start-ups that are starting with a blank slate, or a company is launching an entirely new project that is separate from existing systems, a so-called greenfield situation, such as Next Energy.

Flexibility

Such a greenfield project seems to be the ideal situation. However, it is not always possible to create the ideal application right away. It is an iterative process. When you work with conventional IT solutions, every change causes considerable delays and you actually want to get the perfect result as quickly as possible from the very beginning. Of course, we want that too, but the advantage of OutSystems' low-code platform is that it is extremely flexible. Crucial to allow progressive insight into the road to your Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

Rapid initial development and continuous evolution

OutSystems offers the ability to achieve results quickly, whether it's integrating with other platforms, quickly setting up a specific portal or screen, or developing an entire process supported by a user interface. What stands out when you work with OutSystems is that the platform is not only designed for rapid initial development, but also for continuous and rapid development. The platform is modular and has extensive lifecycle management functionalities. This gives you a quick insight into the impact of changes on various aspects such as databases, integrations, logic and screen views.

Modularity

Another key feature of OutSystems is its modularity. This means that you can completely isolate various functionalities and still allow them to work together smoothly. This allows you to modify isolated modular components without affecting your entire IT landscape. Thanks to this modularity, you can also gradually transform an existing landscape. You can start with OutSystems for a specific component and possibly switch to other systems later, without major disruptions. For example, you can let an application work together with a temporary OutSystems module, while another party is developing the final application. One OutSystems application does not need to know if the other application was also built with OutSystems. This allows you to gradually phase out parts of your existing landscape, which is a lot more effective than trying to replace everything at once. With this approach, you can work step by step towards a new environment. In fact, you can even set up your final product while some parts are still part of your existing landscape.

In practice

For example, one of our customers wants to switch from Dynamics 365 Finance to a new financial system. In this case, using OutSystems, we first create an intermediate layer that retrieves data from Dynamics and communicates with the new financial package. In the meantime, we can continue building, testing and migrating the new application undisturbed. Because we work with OutSystems, it doesn't matter to us whether the data comes from system x or system y. Because we work with separate blocks, the impact on your IT landscape is much less.

Separation of Role and Responsibility

Within OutSystems, you have the ability to easily separate roles and responsibilities, with different teams responsible for specific tasks. You can create shared objects that can be used by multiple applications. When you modify such an object once, this change is immediately applied to all applications that use it. Plus, you can assign components to specific teams so that other teams can use them. This ensures that you can continue to grow quickly and controllably. Although several platforms promise this, it appears to work best in practice at OutSystems.

Latest security standards

By default, OutSystems follows the latest security standards and applies the latest technologies. This means you don't have to worry about security. OutSystems also manages the patching and upgrading of your entire technology stack, so you always use the latest technologies. Other platforms usually require a dedicated team to keep your technology stack up to date.

Continued performance improvement

OutSystems helps you build a strong architecture. The platform includes various control tools to monitor the quality of code, architecture and dependencies, which in turn contributes to continuous performance improvements.

Integration

If at some point you need a specific piece of code for a specific purpose, you can take a trip and write your own custom code outside of OutSystems. You can then easily integrate this with OutSystems. In practice, it is rare that we have to write custom code, but the possibility does exist. If you need AI or machine learning, or if you need to process large data sets, you can use Azure, for example, and seamlessly integrate them into the Outsystems platform.

Faster onboarding

Today, it is a huge challenge to find and retain good developers. And then you also have to make sure that they all follow the same standards. With OutSystems, the onboarding period is significantly shorter than with other technologies. Someone with experience in OutSystems can quickly be deployed to a new customer.

Conclusion

OutSystems is not only a platform for rapid initial development, but it also supports continued growth and evolution. It offers flexibility and modularity to build and integrate secure business-critical applications. If you care about efficiency, agility and cost savings, OutSystems is definitely worth considering. With a growing community and a rapid onboarding process, it can help you keep up in an ever-changing digital world.

Curious?

Do you also want to be able to make use of Quatronic's collective memory and are you curious about how low-code can transform your organization and what we can do for you? Please contact me at mail or give me a call on 06 48 28 46 70.

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