A Look at Gartner’s Low-code Trends for 2024

In this article, we look at Gartner’s 2024 predictions and analysis regarding the low-code landscape presented during FlowFest’23. From IT democratization to the rising trends in composable business architectures, Gartner's projections shed light on the key developments shaping the low-code landscape in 2024.

1. Democratization support

Democratization of technology is a strategic response to the mounting IT backlog and workforce shortages. In the upcoming year, leveraging low-code tools will be imperative for business technologists to construct systems and establishing automation workflows. Paul Vincent, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, highlights democratization as a significant trend. He emphasizes the need for technology to be user-friendly, enabling individuals to actively create automation workflows aligned with their objectives. Democratization support is a steadily growing trend. Gartner even estimates that by 2024, about 80% of technology services and products will be built outside IT departments. And indeed, we've witnessed compelling instances where low-code and pro-code seamlessly converge. Kindred Credit Union, a Canadian membership-based credit union, recently highlighted how they relieved their IT department's workload by incorporating Citizen Developers. This innovative approach not only accelerated workflow creation but also nurtured collaboration across the entire organization.

2. Composability

According to Gartner, organizations are still spending significant amounts on building their back-end systems and acquiring complex services such as CRM and ERP. While these systems will not fade away soon, the need persists to build applications that work with these foundational systems.

A composable business architecture aligns business with IT, providing a framework for integration based on key principles: adaptability, modularity, autonomy, and reusability. This approach focuses on creating flexible capabilities at all levels by facilitating integration with other systems and technologies. Essentially, composability allows organizations to smoothly adapt to new market demands and requirements by providing a flexible architecture. Meeting the demand for businesses to provide reliable solutions has never been more crucial. However, understanding how various technologies can support these goals is not always straightforward. Amidst emerging trends like AI, it's tempting to jump on the trend bandwagon without considering their usage. Organizations must assess these technologies carefully, considering resource management and cost optimization.

3. Professional productivity

Professional and citizen developers in organizations are shifting their approach towards application building, moving away from the traditional coding approach. Instead, they are looking to use the appropriate tool for different tasks, whether it is user interface design, general application development, or workflows. Professional developers are increasingly exploring the possibilities for using low-code, BPMN, CMMN, and model-driven solutions for diverse tasks such as user interface design, general application development, and workflow automation. This trend is a departure from coding-intensive approaches, as organizations recognize the efficiency and speed offered by visual development interfaces and pre-built components in low-code environments, such as drag-and-drop elements and forms. This shift also involves using Business Process Modelling and Notation (BPMN) and Case Management Modelling and Notation (CMMN) for modeling and automating business processes. These speed up the delivery of applications by reducing complexity, testing time, and error rates, leading to enormous productivity gains and enhancing internal capability to fight competitive forces.

4. Hyperautomation

All the above trends seamlessly overlap, creating a landscape where democratization accelerates Hyperautomation. There's a simultaneous emphasis on composability, granting access to both external and internal systems while recognizing the crucial need for professionals to engage. This encompasses systems of record, complex databases, and services that play integral roles in business processes. Looking at it from a Gartner perspective, Hyperautomation aligns with the broader trend of low-code and model-driven approaches. However, Gartner also offers unique insights into specific Hyperautomation trends, which we present in this article: Decoding Gartner's Hyperautomation trends 2024.