OutSystems Blog

OutSystems Platform 2014 Winter Release

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, we launched a series of updates to the OutSystems Platform. I guess that for a lot of you, this is one of those gifts you’ll be excited to use all year around.

There are so many mind-blowing improvements that we’re even a bit ashamed of naming it 8.0.1. There’s a great reason for that though: it works just as a patch release… our cloud users will start seeing their platform get updated with the new capabilities and our on-premises or hybrid customers can simply patch their installation and immediately benefit from all that is in there.

So, what can you expect from this release? (more…)

By Gonçalo Borrêga on March 10, 2014

The Changing Role of CIOs

I read a recent analyst report from Forrester which outlined its view on the role that CIOs now fulfil. According to the Forrester report, CIOs are now viewed as the most important senior leaders in driving business transformation and innovation, with many believing them to have more input than a CEO. Forrester highlights the CIOs key role in supporting business change with technology playing a key part in breaking down barriers within an organisation’s structure. (more…)

By Zahid Jiwa on March 5, 2014

Why Retailers Need High-Productivity Development Environments to Speed Innovation

The retail sector was hit hard by the recession. High-profile struggles of longstanding fixtures such as Blockbuster shook the industry as many retailers worked to stay afloat.

The retail industry tends to be the bellwether for the economy as it highlights consumer confidence and today there are signs of cautious optimism. (more…)

By Zahid Jiwa on February 20, 2014

Five Reasons PaaS Will Explode in 2014

The adoption of platform as a service (PaaS) has increased dramatically over the past 12 months, and is now one of the fastest growing areas of all cloud computing services. By 2016, Gartner estimates that every organization will run some or all of its business software on public or private PaaS, driving spending up to $2.9 billion. IDC puts 2017 spending at more than $14 billion. Whatever analyst statistics are used to gauge the growth and uptake of PaaS, there is no doubt that adoption is set to significantly increase in 2014. Why? (more…)

By Sean Allen on February 7, 2014

Under Investment in Banks is Causing Major IT Headaches

A number of recent articles put the spotlight on the latest computer glitches that resulted in down time on Cyber Monday. One can reasonably conclude that banks could stand to invest more in their IT systems to increase their ability to deliver good customer service and further protect customer data from attacks. In fact, RBS’s new chief executive Ross McEwan admitted to the press that the state-run bank had under invested in IT for decades. (more…)

By Zahid Jiwa on January 30, 2014

HTML5 Rocks

What kind of title is “HTML5 Rocks” for a blog post? Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll both understand and feel it as well!

First, a little history. The W3C states that:

“HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) was primarily designed as a language for semantically describing scientific documents, although its general design and adaptations over the years have enabled it to be used to describe a number of other types of documents.” (more…)

By Rúben Gonçalves on January 23, 2014

Don’t Risk Losing Your Ability to Innovate

Recent research by Deloitte shows a growing reversal of the outsourcing trend. In its 2012 Global Outsourcing and Insourcing survey released in March 2013, 48% of respondents said that they had terminated an outsourcing agreement early, either for cause or convenience. While the majority of those businesses subsequently chose to move their outsourcing contract to a different service provider, 34% said they decided to bring the work back in-house. According to Deloitte, the three main drivers were to improve customer service, to gain greater control over functions that were previously outsourced, and ironically perhaps, to reduce costs. (more…)

By Zahid Jiwa on January 2, 2014

App Dev in the Cloud – Different Strokes for Different Folks

SaaS. PaaS. IaaS. aPaaS. xPaaS. BEaaS. XMaaS. Ok, so I made the last one up. But the other “as a service” acronyms are alive and well, and this is the short list! (more…)

By David Holmes on December 26, 2013

In search of a new breed of ‘business savvy’ developers

Today technology is more complex, fast paced and challenging, especially for application developers who are being hit daily with either new application requests or change requests from the business. As a result, many developers are now overwhelmed with the demands placed on them and are finding it hard to keep up. (more…)

By Zahid Jiwa on November 26, 2013

Demystifying PaaS Platforms – An exciting event

Attending as many conferences as I do, and after hundreds of conversations regarding our platform as a service (PaaS) offering, it is clear that while there is a lot of interest in cloud computing, there is also a lot of confusion over what PaaS is and is not, and over the growing number of options for application development and delivery in the cloud.

(more…)

By David Holmes on November 11, 2013