The advantages of consolidation against the risk of lock-in must be weighed by application development teams when deciding between native and third-party low-code technologies.
Some organisations find it difficult to decide whether to continue with a third-party vendor or use a native service from their cloud provider as the usage of no-code and low-code platforms increases.
Cloud-native resources
Consolidating cloud services and infrastructure may make management and monitoring easier. It may be possible to advance that plan and reduce complexity and cost by using a low-code tool that is a component of a larger cloud platform you already use.
The following are some popular public cloud providers’ no-code or low-code platforms:
Mendix on the IBM Cloud, App Creator on the Google Cloud Platform, and PowerApps on the Microsoft Cloud.
AWS also intends to create a low-code platform for its cloud.
Lock-in dangers
These native technologies do, however, carry significant risk, notably in terms of vendor lock-in. The degree of risk differs between suppliers. Low-code systems like Mendix and Microsoft PowerApps are also relatively agnostic. Users can build their own custom connectors for resources that are not officially supported, and PowerApps, for instance, offers connectors that allow apps to connect to third-party infrastructure. Although being integrated with IBM Cloud, Mendix nevertheless adheres to its autonomous, pure-play heritage.
User knowledge
In general, the technological skill required for application development with low-code solutions from cloud providers is higher. For instance, even if users of low-code platforms don’t need to be seasoned programmers, they do need to comprehend the subtleties of the APIs and databases of their cloud provider.
In third-party low-code platforms, by contrast, databases and other extra resources are created especially for use with low-code applications. This makes them more user-friendly and distinguishes them from public cloud services, which are created with a range of uses in mind and are often managed by qualified IT personnel.
