{"id":288,"date":"2015-12-11T16:07:18","date_gmt":"2015-12-11T16:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=288"},"modified":"2015-12-09T16:08:03","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T16:08:03","slug":"george-karaplis-low-code-an-inflexion-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/?p=288","title":{"rendered":"George Karaplis – low code – an inflexion point?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The advent of \u2018low code\u2019 technology could be an \u2018inflexion point\u2019 \u2013 a point of major change \u2013 in the whole universe of software, said George Karaplis, senior associate with IG Icon Investments<\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps we are under-estimating the impact which \u2018low code\u2019 technology could have on the software industry, said George Karaplis, senior associate with IG Icon Investments.<\/p>\n

He was speaking at the Oct 29 Athens conference “Software for Domain Experts” download the full report<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Mr Karaplis is a senior associate and Investment adviser to I.G. Investments, a private investment and consulting firm. He has served as Chairman and board member of Netia ( Poland), general manager in Group Suez\u2019s water division and chief financial officer and vice president of international investments for the Hellenic Telecom Organization. He worked for 15 years in Canada and the US in various management positions.<\/p>\n

In recent years there has been something of an acceleration in the use of \u2018low code\u2019 tools, which enable the rapid building of applications with minimum hard coding, he said.<\/p>\n

Forrester Research recently published a study saying they are mostly used in customer facing applications at the moment.<\/p>\n

Roughly speaking, you build applications by making a diagram of your process in your software, and then the \u2018low code\u2019 tool creates the code automatically.<\/p>\n

An analysis by Capgemini found that the average time to build a \u2018function point\u2019 in low code is 2.5 hours, compared to 10.6 hours for Java and 15.5 hours for C#.<\/p>\n

Using \u2018low code\u2019 also means that tools can be developed and changed faster, he said. \u201cThis is very important in environments where markets and customer requirements are often changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Karaplis is an investor in a company which builds software for African markets, which will work over low bandwidth mobile and satellite communications.<\/p>\n

The company started using low code tools 3 months ago. \u201cThe development that took place is incredible,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were fighting for a year to build an app, and all of a sudden in one month it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Karaplis envisages that software developers could also develop templates and libraries, which could be re-used in different software applications, speeding up programming time in the same way.<\/p>\n

Consider a shoe manufacturer who has custom built sales software for managing transactions with retail outlets, and the manufacturer starts selling in a new territory where it is customary for manufacturers to sell to distributors, who then resell to retail outlets.<\/p>\n

Instead of the software requiring extensive manual coding work to incorporate the distributor, it would be possible to just upload templates of \u2018low code\u2019 and the change in the software would be implemented, he suggested.<\/p>\n

In another example, Mr Karaplis was working for a large company (as an employee) and was asked to arrange IT support for the company\u2019s 45 subsidiaries around the world. He signed a large contract with a supplier to provide it, and the company spent 6 months \u201cgoing to countries and supposedly building things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But then Mr Karaplis found that all the subsidiary companies had been developing their own IT projects on the side, which was feeding data into the main corporate IT system. The locally built software was proving much more capable at coping with local requirements, including tax and regulations.<\/p>\n

But in future, companies might use \u2018low code\u2019 to build different tools for their subsidiary companies much faster, which all feeds into a larger system.<\/p>\n

Low code tools could also make it easier to facilitate data sharing between departments of a large company.<\/p>\n

Low code tools might also help change company structures, so you can have small teams developing and using their own software, he said.<\/p>\n

SUBHEAD
\nSmall company business models<\/p>\n

Low code could be very valuable for small software companies. \u201cIt\u2019s a cheap and relatively inexpensive way to develop a platform,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A possible business model is that domain experts can work for, or set up, a small company and put together a software tool to do something useful, perhaps working together with programmers. \u201cThey take their brains, they put it in a model,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However it can be difficult for small software companies to sell to large company customers. It may be worthwhile creating umbrella organisation with a number of small software companies serving a certain sector (such as banking). This means you appear to the buyer as a company selling a whole portfolio of products, he suggested.<\/p>\n

When selling to big companies, you often face a \u2018herd mentality\u2019 problem where buyers only want to buy software someone else is using.<\/p>\n

Another challenge is the organisation\u2019s dreaded IT department, who will often be the people who make the final decision whether the company will use your software. \u201cIT departments can be your friends or your enemies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The best way to make friends with the IT department is to develop software tools which will improve the company\u2019s relationship with outside customers, because that way the impact of the software will be felt much faster through the whole company. Or you can provide tools which enable the IT department to respond to request from the company\u2019s sales force or marketing staff.<\/p>\n

Selling to IT departments can be a long process. \u201cThey have to look at the application, test it, then they have to go and get money. You\u2019re talking to 6-9 months a year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And also bear in mind that for the company to take benefit from your product, they may need to stop using something they are currently using \u2013 and this could lead you to make enemies of people who are invested in the current software, he said.<\/p>\n

SUBHEAD
\nGreece<\/p>\n

When asked how Greece could do more to support its software industry, Mr Karaplis said that there could be more co-operation between industry and universities. \u201cWe don\u2019t have that here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Greece also makes a very low amount of investment in research, ranked 154 in the world, he said. Uganda spends a similar amount of its GDP on research as Greece, 0.6 per cent, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The advent of \u2018low code\u2019 technology could be an \u2018inflexion point\u2019 \u2013 a point of major change \u2013 in the whole universe of software, said George Karaplis, senior associate with IG Icon Investments Perhaps we are under-estimating the impact which \u2018low code\u2019 technology could have on the software industry, said George Karaplis, senior associate with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.softwarefordomainexperts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}