1. Definition of research scope
With the advancement of the wave of digital transformation, the demand for digital application development of enterprises has exploded rapidly. As a "new paradigm of software development", low-code helps enterprises improve the efficiency of digital application development, lower the development threshold, and deeply embrace digital transformation by virtue of its ability to visualize and quickly build digital applications.
"Low code" is a visual application development method. Compared with the traditional "pure code" development method of writing code, low code can reduce the amount of code writing or develop applications without code writing. In the low-code development mode, professional developers or business personnel can develop applications by dragging and dropping components and modules through a graphical user interface, and can also expand functions by writing a small amount of code. Among them, "zero code" is a special form of low code, which refers to a development method that does not require writing code at all, and also belongs to the research scope of this report.
On the demand side, under the background of accelerating digital transformation, enterprise business needs to iterate quickly to respond to market demand in a timely manner. The whole-process handwritten code development method is gradually difficult to meet the needs of internal business and external users. Enterprises are eager to find a more agile product iteration method. Because of its low cost and high efficiency, the low-code development method has evolved into a trend of enterprise application development.
In recent years, as low-code products have gradually matured, enterprises have gradually increased their acceptance of low-code products, and put forward new requirements based on their own IT capabilities and business conditions, including shortening the cycle of system and architecture design, and developing industry-leading The application of attributes, meeting the application development needs of enterprise-level complex scenarios, enabling low-code development with large models, etc.
On the supply side, low-code is accelerating its integration with industry scenarios. When low-code first emerged, it emphasized low barriers to entry and rapid development of application products, and the industry attributes were not strong; now, the supply side of the low-code market is flourishing, and local and international manufacturers continue to emerge. In order to make products more suitable for the needs of Party A and gain an advantage in market competition, low-code manufacturers are accelerating their integration with industry scenarios and branding themselves industry labels. Data from Ai Analysis shows that 77.4% of manufacturers are emphasizing industry solution capabilities, among which finance, manufacturing, energy, consumer goods and retail, and logistics are the five industry labels that receive the most attention.
Low-code can bring about changes in the efficiency and agility of enterprise application development. Aianalysis expects Chinese enterprises to benefit from the implementation of low-code. Based on this, Aianalysis has carried out research on the panorama and best practices of low-code manufacturers.
Ai Analysis believes that from the perspective of technical architecture, the low-code market can be divided into platform layer and application layer. The platform layer includes low-code development platforms and zero-code development platforms. The application layer includes vertical industry scenario applications and general scenario applications, each of which includes several specific markets.
This evaluation report focuses on the low-code development platform market, and Aianalysis selects manufacturers with mature solutions and implementation capabilities to provide reference for enterprises when selecting low-code development platform manufacturers. At the same time, in this market, Aianalysis focused on selecting the low-code development platform manufacturer Shuju Technology Co., Ltd. for capability assessment.
2. Market analysis of low-code development platforms
Market Definition:
The low-code development platform is based on the concept of visualization and modularization. By encapsulating business components into reusable modules, combined with scripting language and other expansion capabilities, it is a development platform for rapid application development with minimal or no coding. For professional developers.
Party A’s end users:
IT department development engineers, product managers, operation and maintenance personnel, etc.; ITBP
Party A's core needs:
Under the background of accelerating digital transformation, enterprise business needs to iterate quickly to respond to market demand in a timely manner, which puts forward higher requirements for system development efficiency. The development method of handwriting code throughout the process is gradually difficult to meet the needs of internal business and external users. Enterprises are eager to find a more agile product iteration method. At the same time, the low-code development method has evolved into a trend of enterprise application development because of its low cost and high efficiency.
In recent years, as low-code development platform products have gradually matured, enterprises have gradually increased their acceptance of low-code products, and based on their own IT capabilities and business conditions, they have put forward new requirements for low-code development platforms, including shortening system and architecture design. and other links, develop applications with industry attributes, meet the needs of enterprise-level application development in complex scenarios, and enable low-code development with large models.
- Enterprises need to shorten the cycle of system and architecture design, and develop applications more agilely. The core purpose of enterprises purchasing low-code development platforms is to achieve agile development and shorten the application development and delivery cycle. Although the low-code development platform can reduce the amount of code writing through component encapsulation and calling, thereby shortening the application development time, the interaction between developers and business personnel, system and architecture design, and micro-application split design still bring long-term challenges. Project Cycle. Enterprises hope that the low-code development platform can help enterprise IT personnel shorten such development links and further improve development efficiency.
- Enterprises need to use low-code development platforms to develop applications with industry attributes. Enterprises need to develop industry applications with the help of low-code development platforms. Compared with applications in general scenarios such as finance and supply chain, industry applications usually do not have standardized components due to less demand and need for industry Know-how support. Taking the energy industry as an example, the "Oil Price" component consists of elements such as fuel type, current price, and date. If an energy company wants to develop a fuel sales system, it needs to obtain this component through customized development, which will bring additional costs and costs to the company. research period. To this end, enterprises need low-code development platforms with components and models for industry application development to support enterprises in developing industry applications.
- To meet the needs of enterprise-level application development, enterprises need to integrate low-code platform capabilities to complement their own low-code products. Central state-owned enterprises and leading enterprises in the industry are the pioneers and main user groups of low-code development platforms. In recent years, such enterprises have deployed localized low-code/zero-code development platforms to assist business personnel in developing lightweight applications such as forms and automated office programs. However, this type of platform is mainly driven by forms, and it is often unable to develop complex systems such as ERP and WMS in enterprise business scenarios. To this end, enterprises need to introduce their low-code development platform capabilities from manufacturers with corresponding solutions to complement existing low-code platforms.
- Enterprises need to combine generative AI and large model technology to enable low-code application development. The large model makes the generative AI more intelligent, thus forming a good complementary relationship with the low-code development platform and improving the experience of low-code development. On the one hand, natural language development fills the thinking gap between low-code development and traditional code development. The low-code development platform changes the development process in a compromise way of "drag and drop" visualization of the form, which does not conform to people's natural expression habits. The natural language interaction mode brought by generative AI is more suitable for the development thinking of such users. Generative AI, on the other hand, has the ability to enforce rules. Enterprise application construction needs to complete a lot of configuration work, such as configuring coding rules, upstream and downstream push of documents, etc. Generative AI can reduce the workload required for configuration work and improve accuracy. Enterprises hope to make full use of the value of generative AI supported by large models to empower low-code application development.
Manufacturer capability requirements:
Enterprises' demand for low-code development platforms puts forward multiple capability requirements for low-code manufacturers, including precipitating complete application components and templates, precipitating industry capabilities through industry components and expanding ISV partners, having the ability to develop complex enterprise-level scenarios, and being flexible and scalable. split etc. In addition, low-code vendors need to actively explore the integration path of large models and low-code development platforms to empower enterprise application development.
- The low-code development platform needs to accumulate complete application components and templates, and pay attention to the construction of the delivery partner system to fully empower enterprise application development. In order to meet the agile development needs of enterprises, manufacturers not only need to provide low-code development tools, but also need to deposit components and templates on the low-code development platform, allowing enterprise developers to directly reuse them. The needs of enterprises for application development are significantly different, such as PC-side application development, mobile-side application development, process development, etc. This requires that the low-code development platform must have complete business components and capability components to meet the needs of enterprises as much as possible.
In recent years, the demand for customized development of enterprises has become more and more obvious, and standardized low-code applications are difficult to cope with. In this context, low-code manufacturers need to pay attention to product ecological construction, build a complete developer training system, and cultivate more low-code development platform delivery partners. When low-code standard applications cannot meet the development needs of enterprises, manufacturers can invite delivery partners to participate in the project to provide enterprises with services such as development, interaction, and technical support.
- Low-code vendors need to have rich industry accumulation and accumulate industry capabilities by providing industry components and expanding ISV partners. In order to meet the needs of enterprises to develop industry applications, low-code vendors and their ISV partners need to accumulate industry experience in past projects, such as industry norms, industry logic, and industry-specific business processes. On this basis, manufacturers need to transform the industry Know-how into the characteristic system of the low-code development platform, and make it available for enterprises to call in the form of components.
Since enterprises are distributed in different industries, it is difficult for low-code vendors to accumulate enough components for each industry. To this end, manufacturers should actively expand ISV ecological partners in different industries, develop standardized industry applications based on low-code development platforms, and provide SaaS services for enterprises.
- The low-code development platform needs to have the ability to develop complex business scenarios at the enterprise level, and has the characteristics of flexibility and detachability. In order to solve the needs of enterprises to integrate low-code capabilities and develop complex business systems, the low-code development platform needs to have an enterprise-level PaaS base to provide distributed architecture, process consistency, high performance, high concurrency, and operation and maintenance required for enterprise-level application development. Observability and other technical support during the period. Secondly, the low-code development platform needs to have higher openness, be able to open up middleware, metadata and cache, and integrate with the original low-code/zero-code technology platform of the enterprise in layers to achieve complementary capabilities. In addition, considering that the introduction of new low-code products will bring additional learning costs, the low-code development platform needs to have a smooth technical service system to provide guarantees for the enterprise developer team to learn and adapt to new platform development.
- Low-code manufacturers need to explore the complementary integration path of generative AI and low-code development platforms to empower enterprise application development. In order to meet the needs of enterprises for generative AI empowered by large models, low-code manufacturers should actively explore the integration path of generative AI based on large models and low-code development platforms to empower enterprise application development. For example, manufacturers can train their natural language model design capabilities based on their own project requirements documents after self-development or access to large models, and reduce the accuracy requirements for natural language descriptions by increasing the richness of models.
Inclusion Criteria Description:
- Comply with the vendor capability requirements of the low-code development platform market analysis;
- The manufacturer's revenue in this market in the past year is not less than 10 million yuan;
- In the past year, the manufacturer has no less than 10 paying customers in this market.
3. Vendor evaluation:Shuju shares
Manufacturer introduction:
Shanghai Shuju Software System Co., Ltd. (referred to as Shuju) was established in 2009. It is a "specialized, special and new" high-tech enterprise focusing on digital transformation and intelligent transformation in China. The company provides digital-related software products and technology development and implementation services, and provide one-stop application solutions in terms of data-driven management innovation and data aggregation middle-end business empowerment. Since its establishment, Shuju has served nearly a thousand customers in various industries such as manufacturing, distribution and retail, government, finance, and modern services, and has extensive industry experience in automobiles, medicine, and hotel management.
Product service introduction:
Shuju Yizhang® E-Bui is a low-code digital application that adds free page design and process engine on the basis of Shuju Model Factory® and Shuju Yishi® data analysis platform, which are two other self-developed products of Shuju Co., Ltd. Development Platform. E-Bui supports the creation of personalized pages in the way of "what you see is what you get". Combined with visual process configuration, it can quickly build various personalized business application systems. Driven by the data model, E-Bui provides functions such as visual data integration processing (ETL), data modeling, visual task scheduling, report and data visualization (BI), forms, processes, and application portal building. The product features of Data Juyi Build are metadata management and visual data integration, processing, and modeling. It has full-link lineage analysis, influence analysis, and version management capabilities, and is suitable for digital application construction.
Vendor Evaluation:
Shuju has advantages in product functions and industry experience. In terms of product functions, the digital application developed by Shujuyibuild® E-Bui has both ease of use and ability to solve complex requirements, and can solve unsupported requirements with a reusable and extended architecture; its "agile one-stop" delivery The process further improves the efficiency of application delivery; the applications designed by it have the ability to run in high-concurrency scenarios and support the development of Internet applications for tens of millions of users. In terms of industry experience, Shuju can provide light consulting services for enterprises based on project experience and industry Know-how, and combine Shuju Easy Build® E-Bui with other products of Shuju to provide a complete digital field according to the needs of enterprises solution.
- E-Bui is deeply involved in the field of digital applications, with both ease of use and the ability to solve complex needs. How to balance the ease of use and the power of the software is the difficulty of the low-code development platform. Relying on the accumulation of Digital Technology Co., Ltd. in the field of digitalization and focusing on the field of digital applications, Shujuyidao® E-Bui solves the contradiction between software ease of use and powerful functions. In terms of ease of use, Shujuyibuild® E-Bui has a visual designer, using drag and drop, and "what you see is what you get" operation methods, which can realize 90% zero-coding construction. In terms of function, Data Juyi ® E-Bui can realize the data processing and analysis capabilities of mainstream BI software. Data Judgment also has its own metadata management capabilities. Applications built with Data Judgment can easily perform data blood relationship analysis and influence analysis, and automatically complete data map drawing to realize data problem troubleshooting and system optimization and transformation analysis. In addition, considering that the existing functions of the platform may not be able to meet all the customization needs of the enterprise, DJE-Bui also has a reusable extension architecture to solve unsupported needs of the product in a plug-in manner.
- Data Juyi build ® E-Bui has an "agile one-stop" delivery process, which further improves the efficiency of application delivery. One of the core requirements of enterprises for low-code development platforms is to improve the efficiency of application development and iteration to ensure the rapid delivery of customized applications. E-Bui products are highly agile and can be built quickly, updated iteratively, and continuously optimize requirements and improve applications. E-Bui also has the characteristics of "one-stop", which includes data integration, data modeling, data processing, task scheduling, report and data visualization design, form process, page design, workflow and program For functions such as flow design, developers do not need to obtain different product modules from different vendors for integration. In addition, by providing API interfaces and common SSO integration configurations, DJT can also complete the integration with third-party applications and external web pages, which enables the original IT investment of the enterprise to seamlessly connect with the low-code development platform and go hand in hand. Compared with the mainstream low-code development and delivery process, the "agile one-stop" low-code delivery process of E-Bui can further shorten the application delivery time, improve delivery efficiency, and reduce input costs.
- Data Juyi Build® E-Bui has the ability to design applications for high-concurrency scenarios, and supports the development of Internet applications with tens of millions of traffic requests. High concurrency is a common problem in Internet applications, but some applications developed on low-code platforms do not support high-concurrency solutions for enterprises. Data Juyi build ® E-Bui is aimed at Internet application development problems, and the high concurrency scenario of the application is considered at the beginning of the design. Specifically, in the application designed by Data Juyi ® E-Bui, the database realizes the separation of reading and writing, and the backend supports large cluster deployment and CDN static resource distribution, effectively supporting the throughput of application access. During the COVID-19 epidemic, the nucleic acid monitoring system developed by a government department in a certain region using E-Bui has high concurrency, high reliability and stable operation capabilities, supports the throughput of more than 30 cluster servers, and satisfies tens of millions of personnel in 7×24 hours Nucleic acid sampling requirements.
- Shuju has rich industry and project experience, and can provide enterprises with more complete digital solutions based on Shuju Easy Build® E-Bui. Since its establishment 14 years ago, Shuju has mostly solved the digital needs of enterprises in the form of projects, and has accumulated rich project experience in the fields of medicine, hotel management, retail and automobiles. From a product perspective, based on project experience and industry Know-how, Shuju shares the combination of Shuju Yidao ® E-Bui low-code development platform and other products of Shuju shares to provide complete solutions for enterprises. For example, in response to the needs of enterprise data governance, Shujuyidao® E-Bui can seamlessly connect with the data gathering governance platform DGP, providing enterprises with multi-dimensional, cross-department, and full-process data governance capabilities; for enterprises' digital intelligent management and operation needs, E-Bui can be combined with Dimple® DIMP to design and build enterprise digital applications based on digital management ideas. Through index sorting, the high-level executives can clearly perceive the front-line situation and empower the front-line with data.
From the service point of view, Shuju has light consulting capabilities for digital applications. It not only deploys low-code development platform products for enterprises, but also provides light consulting services for enterprises. Combined with industry best practices, it creates a collection of business analysis, software supply, and development training. and after-sales service integration.
Typical customers:
Michelin Tires, Geely Automobile, KWG