Enterprises seeking to innovate quickly often experience challenges when it comes to connecting the IT and business aspects of their organization to complete shared goals. Priorities can sometimes be misaligned or poorly communicated, and there is much that can get lost in translation.

To mitigate these challenges, enterprises will often employ software solutions that seek to cut out the middleman and empower business users to accomplish their goals without involving IT.

One example of such a solution is Software as a Service. For example, enterprises may use software like Hubspot to manage marketing contacts and campaigns, Buffer to create and execute social media strategies, or Slack to manage intra-organizational communications.

In certain contexts, these kinds of software do the trick. The software is managed entirely by another organization, is web-based, and can often be set up relatively quickly and easily. What they lack is customization features. So if an organization needs them to do something more than what they currently offer, they must either wait for the company that manages the software to offer an update or find another solution.

Often, when looking for a solution with a higher degree of customization that still empowers business users, enterprises will look to low code or no code platforms.

Low Code Platforms

Low code platforms are a way to allow business users to have relative independence from IT but still accomplish their goals through a graphical user interface. The setup cost of this solution is relatively low and quick, and it often requires less maintenance. What’s more is that the applications they produce are managed internally and offer greater customization.

However, while business users have a limited but sometimes considerable range of customization that may allow them to accomplish a number of different goals, the software they create is inextricably tied to the platform. So if business users need to take customization a step further than the platform allows, they unfortunately will need to do so on a different platform.

This often involves completely rewriting the code of the application, as the code that had been produced via the visual user interface is not human readable or editable.

Furthermore, even if an organization continues to use a low code platform for certain applications with relative success over the course of time, they may end up being managed by shadow IT outside the official processes of the centralized IT department. This can work out in some cases, but can often lead to security issues and an inefficiency of effort and resources.

In light of these challenges, the key to fast innovation and great software isn’t the complete independence of business and IT, but interdependence.

Nevertheless, in order to achieve success in bridging business and IT, organizations need proper tools to facilitate that connection. This is why we recommend a Pro Code methodology, powered by an Application Composition Platform like Entando ACP.

Pro Code Methodology

In a Pro Code method of development and deployment, applications and solutions are assembled from fully modularized packaged business capabilities (PBCs), which are software components that represent well-defined business capabilities and are a bounded collection consisting of a data schema and a set of services, APIs, and event channels.

These PBCs can be curated into a component catalogue, tagged with metadata, and organized for easy access across the organization. Then, using a graphical user interface like the Entando App Builder, business users can then see visually how the different parts of the application will be stitched together and assemble components into the final view. From the perspective of the business user, their experience is very similar to a low code environment.

The major difference is that beneath this interface that functions like a low code platform, there is human readable and editable code. Therefore, if the business consumers of an application need a particular component updated, they can open a ticket to IT. And since the PBCs are completely modular, the development team will only need to update that particular component and put the newest version of it in the component hub, rather than updating the entire application.

Rather than being truly low code, this process is what we call pro code: allowing business users to be meaningfully involved in the creation of applications, while also leveraging the full force of your development teams’ skills and creating a more integrated organization across the board.

By using a platform like Entando ACP, organizations can move from trying to create a world in which business users will need to interact with IT as little as possible to creating an organizational structure that actually bridges the gap between them.

Build modular applications on Kubernetes with Entando ACP.

If you run containerized deployments, you understand the benefits of Kubernetes. You also understand how complicated it can be and how difficult it can be to gain developer adoption. It feels like there should be an easier way.

That’s why we created an application composition platform that makes it easy to build enterprise applications on Kubernetes using modular components.

Entando ACP is changing the way enterprises think about building their apps, sites, and portals in order to promote developer productivity in a Kubernetes environment.

With Entando ACP, you can:

• Bootstrap an application from a customized template.
• Accelerate app development to update iteratively.
• Simplify deployments by abstracting the complexity of Kubernetes.

We integrate trusted open source technologies and extend their functionality to give you a cohesive and streamlined developer experience with easy-to-use patterns. From deploying on Kubernetes to creating modular backend and frontend architectures using your current technologies, Entando helps you at every layer of the stack.

Entando is open source with available enterprise support and services. Begin developing on the platform today, and get a quote to see how our team can help your enterprise build better apps, sites, and portals––faster.