This article is reproduced from 36kr, and the low/no code revolution is about to break out.
On January 14, DingTalk held a press conference and released version 6.0, which integrates the low-code development platform " Yida ".
On March 1, the no-code platform Qingliu completed tens of millions of A+ rounds of financing, led by Tencent, and the old shareholder Source Code Capital followed the investment.
At the same time, the low-code development platform ClickPaaS also announced that it has completed tens of millions of US dollars in Series B financing, led by BAI Capital and SIG Hainer Asia.
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At the beginning of this year, the low/no code development platform ushered in an explosive incremental market. According to the exclusive data provided by Qichacha to First Xinsheng, there are 486 "low/no code" related enterprises in China, of which 438 are in operation/surviving.
At the same time, Internet leading manufacturers have also entered the game, and independent vendors in the subdivisions are emerging.
Is low/no code a subversion or another round of conceptual hype? What are the important players in the current market? What challenges will it face in the future?
Over 45% growth rate
Low code is a software development model, and you can quickly build software by simply "drag, pull, and drag" (this article defaults no code is a form of low code, and the specific definitions of the two are not repeated here). Compared with traditional development tools, low-code development tools can help companies reduce the threshold and maintenance costs of system development. Currently, more and more companies choose to use low-code development platforms to achieve their internal needs.
According to incomplete estimates, the current penetration rate of low-code application development in China is less than 5% , while the penetration rate in the United States is at least 40% and will reach 75% in 2020. This shows that China's low-code platforms still have huge development potential.
According to Garnter's report in 2020, by 2023, more than 50% of large and medium-sized enterprises will adopt a low-code application platform (LCAP) as one of their strategic application platforms.
Public data shows that in 2018, the global market for low-code development platforms has reached 5.6 billion U.S. dollars, and it will reach 8.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. It is expected to exceed 10 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. It may rapidly rise to 52.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Application development will be low-code development, with a compound growth rate of 45.2% .
Among them, the Chinese market will be an important incremental market. According to the research data of Haibi, the scale of China's low/no code market will be 1.9 billion yuan in 2020, and it is expected to maintain rapid growth in the next five years, reaching the order of tens of billions in 2024 .
The huge market prospects naturally attract capital pursuit.
According to the statistics of Haiby Research, from 2018 to 2020, there will be a total of 16 investment and financing events in China's low/no code fields. From the perspective of the total financing scale, domestic low/no-code platform vendors have raised nearly 1.5 billion yuan in total. There have been 50 historical financing rounds, with an average single financing scale of 30 million yuan, and the total valuation of financing companies is nearly 7 billion yuan.
Data source: IT Orange Drawing: First New Voice
However, the domestic low / no-generation code City field is still in its early stage, indeed should actively embrace the capital, full use of the power of capital in the market cultivation stage of completion of the initial development effort further to help their businesses grow faster, and then break through Become a unicorn company in the low/no code field.
Source Capital executive director Hao Yiwen has said that enterprise digital has become a trend of the times, Chinese companies in this wave of wave of unprecedented undergoing rapid change, light flow to seize the opportunity of the times, and the rapid development in just a few years, Become a leader in the field of no-code, and look forward to the development of Qingliu in the trend of enterprise digitalization.
According to Xun Weiqian, executive director of Tencent Investment, business personnel can build their own organization system without any IT budget and personnel support. This is a very futuristic scenario.
Internet giants grab a beach
Low codes can be traced back to 1999.
Marc former vice president of Oracle Beni Auf (Marc Benioff) was founded Salesforce, put forward the "End of Software" slogan, developed force.com application development platform for developers, while based on force.com platform to quickly develop a CRM software system, Since then started the journey of low-code application development.
From the perspective of commercial evolution stage, foreign low-code markets have entered the early mass market and even the later mass market.
In recent years, domestic low/no code service providers of the same type have also developed rapidly, with startups such as Qingliu, ClickPaaS, and Yichuang Technology appearing.
Data source: public information collation and mapping: the first new voice
On the other hand, Internet giants have also launched their own low-code development platforms, such as Huawei ’s AppCube and Ali’s Yichao. At the same time, traditional software giants and SaaS vendors are also keeping up with the trend of the times. For example, well-known companies such as Inspur, Kingdee , and UFIDA have also entered the low-code development platform.
At the beginning of this year, Dingding relied on the influence of the 6.0 release conference to push "low code development" to the forefront. As Dingding's number one competitor, corporate WeChat is not to be outdone and follows up in the direction of low code. On January 15, LowCode, a low-code platform developed by Tencent Cloud , officially opened its public beta. At the same time, Tencent has also invested in a number of low/no code related companies.
So far, Ali and Tencent, which account for more than 80% of the Chinese collaborative office market, have chosen to bet on low-code tracks at the same time from the beginning of 2021.
Zhang Jianfeng, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, once publicly stated that future software development must be fragmented, and low-code development will be the industry key word in 2021.
The domestic low/no code industry ushered in an explosion and there are many players. However, Haibi Research proposes that from the perspective of enterprise digital transformation needs, the existing low/no code platforms can be divided into four types, namely scenario application type and product development type. , Platform ecology, technology empowerment .
"In the long run, the platform ecology has more development opportunities, and its essence can be the best scale effect. In the short term, the scene application platform will land more quickly." Treelab CEO He Junxuan said.
Clouds innovative founder Ma Hongxi said: " From the narrow sense of 'low codes, no code' perspective, the ecological platform may be more tricky bit. For example, as the nails were the same scale, low-office integration scenarios / None Code applications will have a lot of room for imagination. But if it’s just a third-party neutral low/no code platform, it will only provide a three-piece set of “tabulation, process, and deployment” to allow traditional financial, manufacturing and other medium and large enterprises For the use of the business development department of, this scene positioning may still need to be explored. For the above-mentioned heavy and professional development scenes, it is still the mainstream today, which requires more professional efficiency tools to allow programmers to better use their wisdom for business innovation Provide scientific and technological support, rather than using tools to kidnap programmers and solidify their thinking . This is the focus of Xingyun innovation."
However, Bo Zhiyuan, the founder of Qingliu, has a different view. A platform is like a wooden barrel and cannot have shortcomings. It is necessary to have both the underlying product and the ability to reach the scene, use the product to better serve the scene, and use the scene feedback to iterate and optimize the product.
"If you only do product research and development, it is just a simple tool-based platform, and the customer's willingness to pay is limited. Assuming that a customer is 5,000 yuan per year, it takes 10,000 paying customers to reach a revenue of 50 million yuan, but this is 50 million yuan. The income of the company cannot support the survival and development of a normal and mature company. If it is completely vertical to the scene and does not have the underlying tools or products, then the platform cannot be copied to other scenes, which in fact reduces the true value of the so-called codeless. "Bo Zhiyuan explained.
Both Hu Bai, the founder of ClickPaaS, and Yibo, the founder of Yichuang Technology, believe that any kind of technology platform will actually have these four attributes and develop in parallel, and they have great opportunities, but the weight of each company is different . Yi through- to-use platform, the product must first grind, combined with the scene, otherwise no value.
Unicorn will appear in 3 years
What is the current situation of the domestic low/no code industry with the pursuit of capital, the entry of giants, and fierce competition? What challenges will it face in the future?
In Hu Bai's view, the current domestic industry situation must be divided into two. One is that the domestic low-code is in its infancy stage . "Because we have not encountered too many domestic competitors in the real commercial competition, most of them are foreign companies and traditional software development companies." Hu Bai said that the low-code scenarios will be more complicated. , So the technical requirements will be higher.
The second is that no code in the country is no longer the initial stage. This market has developed very fast last year, gradually reaching the middle and late stages , and leading companies have emerged. Dingding has integrated Yituo, and Tencent is also rapidly increasing its investment, investing in a number of non-code-related companies. At present, there has been a situation in China where platforms must rely on basic cloud vendors. Once a no-code company does not stand in line, they may be out of the game.
Image source: ClickPaaS official website product architecture diagram
Regarding the future domestic low/no code industry pattern, Bo Zhiyuan and Ma Hongxi predict that in the next 2 to 3 years, there will be a greater outbreak of low/no code , because the leading companies have begun to use it and have achieved certain results. Everyone has a higher recognition of low/no code, and the competition will definitely be fiercer by then.
He Junxuan holds the opposite view, predicting that there will be no unicorns in China within 3 years. One is that the domestic low/no code is not mature enough, and many industries now have too little understanding of this field. Second, domestic companies are not willing to purchase corporate services, and it takes time to accumulate. Third, the competition is becoming more and more fierce. The domestic low/no code industry will not enter the relatively mature stage for at least 5-6 years .
Some people in the industry pointed out to the first Xinsheng that at present, the technology of the domestic non-code platforms is not very different, mainly to see who can rely on the power of capital to attract traffic . At present, each platform is still struggling with product capabilities, but it quickly crossed the boundaries of the product's own functions. The next step is to fight for ecology, and even fight for cooperation between operating vendors.
No matter what the low/no code is at this stage, the value of improving software production efficiency in the industry is unquestionable. The domestic development speed is also accelerating, but how to realize its value is an urgent need for domestic low-code platform companies. The problem.
Bo Zhiyuan believes that the biggest challenge facing low/no code is people's insufficient knowledge of the industry, and users need to be trained to better use such products. "At present, we are pushing the Qingliu Academy to design training and curriculum systems to help users learn products, just as easy as using Excel."
The face of low domestic / code-free business at the present stage of development bottleneck, seedlings Long-Partner Founder Hao think there are three main aspects: First, wages of domestic IT developers 6-7 times cheaper compared to the United States, low / no cost source platform The advantages are not significant yet . However, with the continuous increase in employment costs and the acceleration of changes in enterprise business, the IT requirements that support enterprise business are changing rapidly, and the demand for low/no-code software will gradually increase.
Second, the payment habit of enterprises has not yet been developed, especially for enterprises below medium-sized enterprises that have not yet established a good habit of buying software . "But this trend will change, as after 90 after 80 enterprise managers, they are the indigenous people of the Internet, from buying Tencent video, love the Fantastic Art and other members from the platform, they've got accustomed to the subscription-based products. "Fang Zhenghao said.
China Software Network and cube net tables CEO Shaosu Yi also believes that this positive trend and develop the use of code-free development platform for business, the degree of acceptance for code-free product development, attach importance to adopt only from the beginning of the business, the business has gradually expanded to The level that the department and the IT department attach importance to at the same time.
Third, in terms of product experience, most manufacturers still need improvement at this stage . Indeed, many enterprise users have proposed to purchase a software product, but the user experience cannot meet the requirements, and in the end they will not repurchase the product. At the same time, the current low/no-code products are not so simple that users can DIY freely. It also takes a certain amount of time to cooperate with the external ecology of the no-code platform and the construction of the material library.
Although the domestic low/no code industry has many shortcomings, compared with foreign low-code development platforms, domestic platforms have more advantages in user demand mining, service capabilities and prices in the service market of local enterprises, and they are more hopeful in China's industrial Internet New giants were born in the wave.
Low/no code is not pure hype, but the systematic progress of the information service industry, and it is also the future development trend.