If there’s something that last year taught us, it is that a company’s agility, speed, and capacity to react and respond to new circumstances are crucial for a business to survive and thrive. 2020 exposed the cracks in many organizations’ digital transformation journeys, as it shifted consumer behaviors and workplace relationships. And although the pandemic too shall pass, COVID-19 has forever changed the way custom software is developed.

In a post-pandemic world, to survive, businesses need more powerful approaches that allow them to meet their users’ and customers’ expectations at the speed they demand. This means going beyond traditional software development or outsourcing talent. It’s about adopting modern app dev approaches and reorganizing teams to be more reactive and promote innovation.

It’s in the midst of this scenario that Forrester recently launched The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Development Platforms For Professional Developers, Q2 2021 to help IT leaders find the right technology for their digital transformation initiatives. And, once again, OutSystems was named a Leader.

What Does Forrester Say About OutSystems?

Using OutSystems is like “the experience of driving a Porsche.”— OutSystems user. Source: Forrester Wave. (Photo by Ryan Gagnon)

Forrester named OutSystems “the developers’ choice - and an SI darling.”

Customers and analysts alike say OutSystems “brings a unique vision of turning customers into ‘elite software performers’” because of its “superior tools for user experience (UX) development, data modeling and management, mobile development, and development process support and collaboration — all underpinned by leading investments in AI.”

One referenced customer compared OutSystems with “the experience of driving a Porsche.”

In addition to that, Forrester recognized OutSystems as the only leader with security accessible code. This way, although developers can build their applications visually, they can perform security checks and run code analysis for all the apps they want created with it.

All these make OutSystems “the most prominent option for low-code core modernization.”

But What Makes OutSystems the Enterprise Standard for Modern App Dev Platforms?

Although we’re super excited about the way Forrester evaluated OutSystems, the important question is: what does this mean for you? What makes OutSystems unique in how it accelerates the transformation of your organization to rapidly deliver highly adopted digital products that keep changing?

For starters, our mission is to give every company the ability to innovate through the power of software. We’re the only market leader whose business is 100% focused on creating a platform for continuously delivering serious apps with an obsessed mindset of serious productivity.

OutSystems is a modern application development platform that gives enterprise developers the tools they need to build and manage entire portfolios of enterprise-class applications, and not just simple departmental apps as most no-code/low-code platforms.

Here’s why we’re a true leader.

1. Best Functionality for Developers and System Integrators

OutSystems is the enterprise developer choice because we provide them with the best functionalities for security, user experience development, data modeling and management, mobile development and development process support, and collaboration, as stated in the Forrester Wave.

In addition to that, we’re adding AI into all stages of the software development process to augment engineering processes with intelligent suggestions and code-refactoring opportunities to help development teams maximize their existing capabilities. This way, developers can focus on the software that truly makes the difference, instead of wasting their time on just keeping the lights on.


You can learn more about our OutSystems.AI program here or see it in action in our Tech Talk Leveraging Artificial Intelligence Across the SDLC.

2. Broadest Coverage for Enterprise Use Cases

Enterprise software systems are evolving from boring COTS/SaaS systems that don’t bring any real differentiator to the business, to a modern mindset focused on Build and Speed of Buy with the delivery of brand/business specific, differentiated experiences for users and customers.

For that goal, enterprises look for modern app dev platforms that can excel at these four use cases:

 

With OutSystems, you can:

Plus, OutSystems has the largest open-source marketplace from all the vendors featured in the Wave. The OutSystems Forge is a free repository of high-quality reusable, open code modules, connectors, UI components, and partner marketed business solutions that help customers speed up their app delivery time.

OutSystems also has an active and supportive developer community with over 470.000 members that share knowledge and help other users find solutions with an average response time of 2 hours.

 

3. Unique Security Features

OutSystems is the only vendor featured in the Wave with security scannable code. Unlike vendors in this market that are only Saas based or interpreted models, the code underneath each of the apps created using the OutSystems platform can be scanned by security testing tools, making it not only the developers’ choice but also the CSOs/CISOs’ choice.

Apps built with OutSystems are also protected by default from the top security threats identified by OWASP (both OWASP Top 10 Most Critical Web Application Security Risks, as well as the OWASP Top 10 Mobile Threats) and the platform automatically applies more than 200 (and growing) risk and security controls.

 

Want to learn more? Check out all OutSystem automatic security and risk controls in this infographic.

Unlike low-code/no-code platforms, OutSystems offers the only modern application platform capable of doing dynamic and static code analysis for 100% of the applications created with it. This happens by design, because of the DevSecOps principles that our Engineering implements including a decoupled architecture supported by a compiler mentality instead of an interpreter mentality.

In addition to all this, OutSystems also offers additional tools to help you take your apps’ security to the next level. For cloud users, the platform offers Sentry with extra security, risk management, and monitoring for SOC2 Type II. And for mobile, OutSystems offers AppShield, an add-on that automatically adds additional layers of security during deployment to make applications more resistant to intrusion, tampering, and reverse engineering.

4. Publicly Ranked a Leader by Customers

Last but certainly not least, OutSystems is voted by software users as their platform of choice in the most popular review sites. In the most participated enterprise software end-users review site, G2 Crowd, enterprise users ranked OutSystems as the leader, with over 400 reviews and an average rating of 4,5/5 stars. To quote a user:

“The speed to build apps, mechanization which takes all the tiresome parts of developers away, allows you to concentrate on functions that make consumers move. I can tell my company’s users what their app will look like within minutes, and within weeks they can start using it and test if it meets the business requirements. It's possible for a small team to build a fully developed smartphone application in a few days. —OutSystems user, G2 Crowd.
Source: G2Crowd

We were also named a Customer Choice in the Gartner Peers Insight 2021, a yearly report based on feedback and ratings from end-user professionals with experience purchasing, implementing, and using a product or service. From a total of 586 reviews, OutSystems has received an average of 4.5/5 rating as of June 16, 2021.

“Developing applications with OutSystems it's been a great journey. We are still gaining more and more development speed and leaving behind our competitors. (...)Without OutSystems, I simply do not understand how we would be able to survive market disruption caused by COVID-19 crisis. We were able to develop and Release to Production more than 8 apps on record time. (...) As we all may know, one of the industry's biggest concerns is the security of the applications and systems. During the last weeks, we have been running security tests on our platform and have seen outstanding results. The platform stability and security are simply on the top of the market." — OutSystems user, Gartner Peer Insights.

Conclusion

In a post-COVID world, the key for a business to thrive is rapid adaptation. But with growing backlogs and talent shortage, underpinned with accelerated time-to-market, many companies struggle to differentiate from competitors. And that’s where modern application development platforms come in.

However, out of the professional developer platforms, some have broader use case capabilities and high security standards, while others are more limited. OutSystems consistently ranks as a Leader in the top analyst ranking reports, customers review sites, and security reviews. This is not by chance, but a result of our 100% focus on modern application development—surpassing most alternatives in rapid app development and automated continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD).

OutSystems takes a first-class development approach enabling professional developers with the ability to build serious applications—from modernizing legacy systems to delivering great customer experiences—at the speed, quality, security, and scalability required. This has been our North Star since our founding over 20 years ago and the reason our customers continue to turn to us for their most important projects.

You can download the full report and take your own conclusions in The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Development Platforms For Professional Developers, Q2 2021 page. And for a more in-depth discussion, join us in our upcoming webinar Build at the Speed of Buy: How Modern App Platforms Are Transforming Development Assumptions.