Gartner, one of the world’s leading research and advisory firms, considers LCAP (Low-Code Application Platform) one of the top 4 technologies to adopt in the coming years. The assessment was made in the 2021 Gartner Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar report.
Low-code is fundamental to digital transformation. In this post, learn more about the technology and why it matters to Gartner.
Understanding the Gartner Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar
The Gartner Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar is a report that maps the 23 leading technology movements driving digital transformation today and poised to fuel new disruptive shifts in the future.
Several technologies stand out, shown in yellow in the image: Low-Code Application Platform (LCAP), Deep Learning, Cloud AI (Artificial Intelligence), and Edge AI.
The latter three, for example, will be fundamental to building advanced virtual assistants capable of acting as virtual billing agents or even virtual drivers in cars. Their impact will be substantial across industries, organizations, and consumer interactions.
Alongside LCAP, these technologies identified by Gartner align with three important themes in digital transformation:
- Interfaces and experiences: technologies fundamentally changing the way we interact with the world;
- Business enablers: technologies that impact companies by changing practices, processes, methods, models, or functions;
- Productivity revolution: the convergence of multiple technologies and trends that help organizations classify, predict, and solve problems faster, more accurately, and at greater scale than humans can.
The Importance of LCAP in the Gartner Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar
The rings represent the range — the estimated number of years it will take for the technology or trend to move from early adopter to majority adoption.
The size and color of the emerging technology — or trend radar signal — represent the technology’s significance. In other words, how substantial the impact of the technology or trend will be on existing products and markets.
As the image shows, LCAP appears in the Gartner Emerging Technologies and Trends Impact Radar as a business-enabling technology, with an estimated adoption window ranging from now through the next year.
The impact potential of low-code is very high because the technology can be applied across virtually every segment and nearly every application.
The Growth of the LCAP and Low-Code Markets
According to Gartner, the worldwide market for low-code development technologies is projected to total US$13.8 billion in 2021, up 22.6% from 2020. The firm attributes the increase to the push for digital transformation, which is pulling adoption of LCAP technologies along with it.
And even though low-code application development is not new, a confluence of digital disruptions, hyperautomation, and the rise of composable business has driven up demand.
Gartner also believes low-code, as a broader social and technological movement, will keep growing significantly. LCAPs, for example, are expected to be the largest component of the low-code development technology market through 2022, growing nearly 30% from 2020 to reach US$5.8 billion in 2021.
Accelerating Transformation Drives Application Delivery
The acceleration of digital transformation is pressuring IT leaders to dramatically increase application delivery speed and time to value.
Rising demand for custom systems has given rise to developers outside corporate IT ecosystems, which in turn has fueled increased low-code adoption.
Gartner notes that 41% of employees outside IT customize or build data or technology solutions.
The firm also predicts that half of all new low-code customers will come from business buyers outside the IT organization by the end of 2025.
SaaS and Hyperautomation Will Drive Low-Code Adoption
All major software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors currently offer capabilities that incorporate low-code development technologies.
As SaaS grows in popularity and these vendors’ platforms see broader adoption, the low-code market will experience proportional growth in LCAPs and process automation tools.
In addition, business leaders want to create and execute their own ideas to drive more automation across their business applications and workflows.
The need for business-driven hyperautomation will be one of the top three drivers of low-code adoption through 2022.
According to Gartner, most large organizations globally will have adopted multiple low-code tools in some form by the end of 2021.
In the long run, as companies embrace the principles of digital transformation, they will turn to low-code technologies that support application innovation and integration.
Companies today know they need to transform digitally to stay competitive — but they aren’t always sure which tools to use.
Low-code enables developers to work more efficiently by reusing components, delivering new user experiences faster.
It also empowers business experts to build their own applications, freeing IT departments to focus on infrastructure development and other complex tasks.
The ability to build and deploy applications quickly and efficiently can change everything. Keep reading our blog to learn more about low-code and LCAPs.
