OutSystems Study Reveals 20 Percent of Hong Kong and Taiwan Organizations Plan To Adopt Visual Development Tools In The Next 18 Months

HONG KONG and TAIPEI,Nov. 25,2020 -- OutSystems,the global leader in modern application platforms - including low-code development,has shared results from an InfoBrief study by leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC. The Asia/Pacific 2020 Software Survey: DevOps,DevSecOps,and the Future of Digital Innovation,sponsored by OutSystems,delves into how organizations in Asia-Pacific can turn into digital innovation factories to thrive in today's business environment.According to the results obtained,39 percent of Asia-Pacific IT leaders depend on visually-guided development tools. The top three reasons for adoption were the belief that visually-guided development tools are the future--the simplification of the developer experience,and the provision of a more intuitive developer experience. With more than half of Asia-Pacific decision-makers confident their organizations will rely on low-code platforms for at least a quarter of all planned projects,low-code tools are set to gain critical mass adoption in the upcoming year 2021.

"With the Asia-Pacific region now in rapid growth,the region is set to further expand into an increasingly formidable data powerhouse by 2024," said Mark Weaser,Vice President,Asia Pacific,OutSystems. "It's only natural for enterprises in our region to gravitate towards the dramatic benefits of using visual development tools for building cloud-native applications. OutSystems is privileged to be able to support the needs of businesses in the provision of low-code and cloud technology to help the region reach its full potential as a digital data powerhouse in the near future."

Supporting business expansion plans

While Hong Kong and Taiwan grow quickly as a future-facing data powerhouse,some organizations are under pressure to support business expansion plans,thanks to rising customer expectations and ever-shorter development cycles. Now,more than ever,security is at a premium,and compliance is a major concern. As such,modernize legacy,secure planning and open source management have become top development priorities for organisations in the region.

Primary challenges

At present,20 percent ofHong Kong and Taiwan organizations plan to adopt visual development tools in the next 18 months. Interestingly,the main challenge faced is far different from those of their neighbouring peers in the Asia-Pacific. Rising customer expectations comes in top,with 46 percent of organizations listing it as the top challenge faced,followed by earlier security focus in DevOps and educating leadership about DevOps processes,at 45 percent and 44 percent respectively.

"Having spoken to multiple enterprise tech leaders in Hong Kong and Taiwan,OutSystems is aware of the mounting concern for integrated security,particularly with the rising scale and instances of data theft today," stated Weaser. "OutSystems provides a range of security functions encompassing application security,Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) infrastructure and an always-on incident response team. While OutSystems focuses on accelerating application development,we believe speed cannot come at the expense of security. We provide clients with nothing less than a secure runtime environment and the tools necessary for secure development."

Post-COVID-19 agility

On security in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis,IDC expects software development lifecycles to continue to shorten and gathers that enterprises should take care in integrating security into planning phases in order to stay ahead of the curve. Rising customer expectations can and should be met with innovative customer experiences to engender the creation of new markets and audiences; risk-taking,data analysis and continued incorporation of customer feedback does well in driving new ideas on new platforms. The concerns of the 24 percent of Hong Kong and Taiwan organizations listing security as their top priority are well-founded; speed versus quality is a classic balancing act that applies to the process of building software. To address this concern,it's helpful to substitute the word "speed" with "automation." The speed increases delivered by rapid application development platforms relate to things developers no longer have to do. At the same time,ensuring that applications can be built quickly and meet the precise requirements to remain highly secure,scalable and robust.

About OutSystems

OutSystems was founded in Portugal in 2001 with the mission to give every organization the power to innovate through software. The OutSystems application platform's high productivity,connected,and AI-assisted tools help developers rapidly build and deploy a full range of applications anywhere the organization requires. With more than 350,000 community members,1,200 employees,300 partners,and thousands of active customers in over 60 countries and across 22 industries,OutSystems has achieved tremendous global scale while helping organizations change the way they develop applications.

Visit us at www.outsystems.com or follow us on Twitter @OutSystems or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/outsystems.