Firm Pushing Low-Code Software Development Platform for 'Citizen Developers'

A Cambridge, Mass., firm is marketing a software development platform they say can help companies create applications without skilled coders.

The QuickBase Inc. Low-Code Platform for Citizen Development is designed to allow line of business (LOB) employees to build applications with little to no coding skill.

The cloud-based SaaS tool is billed as a way to dramatically reduce the time and costs associated with building applications.

“Most enterprise applications can take two months to two years,” said John Carione, head of marketing for QuickBase. “We have enterprise applications that can be rolled out in two weeks.”

The platform is designed to allow employees with only basic computer skills to have an active hand in developing business software solutions.

“The interface is … you can think of it as low-code ability, no-code ability,” Carione said. “It’s drag and drop and point and click; similar to (Microsoft) Excel, but it’s wizard-driven.”

He offered one example of the interface in which a user imports a spreadsheet into the platform.

“It auto-generates a schema and can create dashboards and reports, using wizard-like workflows,” Carione said. “There’s a complete spectrum of the ways that (LOB employees) can contribute to the process.”

Using midlevel LOB employees can also improve efficiency, he said.

“Versus using an IT pro coder, you can get these apps built a lot cheaper,” Carione said. “Also, we really feel like the apps get built better – exactly to specs.”

The vendor believes that citizen development and the growing trend toward DevOps can be used together, depending on an organization’s specific software development needs.

“DevOps tools are more for Tier 1 applications,” Carione said. “We think citizen development is really a different approach that is ideal for the less mission-critical apps and that’s what our platform accomplishes.”

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