New Industry Clouds Launched at Mendix World 2021, Largest Virtual Assembly of Low-Coders Ever
– Turbocharged low-code ecosystem features curated Mendix Industry Clouds with thought leadership, community, and solutions that serve manufacturing industries, finance, retail, and public sector organizations
– Expanded platform capabilities fuel the growth of Mendix Marketplace, enabling the vibrant commercial exchange of solutions, AppServices, and components
– Mendix CEO Derek Roos declares the end of the prescriptive SaaS era in favor of adaptive, customizable solutions
At Mendix World 2021, the largest virtual assembly of low-coders ever, Mendix, a Siemens business and global leader in low-code application development for the enterprise, announced its new, expanded digital ecosystem. New capabilities of the Mendix platform will enable the 250,000-strong members of the Mendix Maker community to assemble and extend high-value solutions with building blocks, and to also deliver and merchandise these building blocks themselves, creating new business value for their organizations and further enhancing the value of the Mendix Marketplace for the entire community.
The shortage of traditional software developers is acute. This year, leading researchers have documented the sudden and accelerated drive for digitalization, automation, and democratization of software development, as enterprises seek new ways to leverage and scale technology to maintain competitive advantage in a transformed marketplace. As Derek Roos, Mendix CEO and cofounder, noted in his Mendix World 2021 address, there is good news, too: Last year’s global disruption also brought innovation on a massive scale across virtually every business sector as enterprises responded to the emerging digital-first economy.
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Describing Mendix’s vision and ongoing leadership in this transformed landscape, Roos said, “The line between consumption and creation is blurring. Brokering more collaboration between low-code makers and low-code consumers unlocks new business opportunities, enabling the commercialization of new digital capabilities, and the data that flows through them. By harnessing and enhancing the power of Mendix’s ecosystem of digital solutions, there are no barriers to our low-code makers’ ability to innovate and drive the next wave of enterprise acceleration in today’s networked economy.”
Mendix Industry Clouds offer a blueprint for digital transformation across key sectors, from Manufacturing to Financial Services, Public Sector, Retail, and Healthcare.
A highlight of Roos’ Mendix World announcements was the extension of the flagship All-in-One Low-Code Platform with Industry Clouds, bringing together industry best-practices, reusable templates, industry partners, customers, and a vibrant developer community for each key industry.
Customers, implementation partners, and industry experts will be able share approaches, best practices, and successes, forming an industry-focused low-code community. Beginning with Mendix for Manufacturing Industries and Mendix for Financial Services, each cloud comprises a rich set of curated building blocks and components specific to addressing challenges found in that industry, including connectors to data sources and systems of record, APIs, AppServices, workflows, templates, and adaptive solutions.
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Peter Hughes, the group head of application development at Corant Global Insurance, said, “Mendix Industry Clouds address a key market need. Everyone is building solutions in isolation of one another. This approach has us joining a commnity that shares the use of best practices, common patterns, and accommodation of standards.”
Roos also introduced several specific new solution templates at Mendix World. These templated solutions can be easily extended and personalized to build customer experiences that align to each organization’s brand and differentiation. For the financial industry, Mendix is introducing templated solutions for Credit Rating, Claims Management, and Portfolio Management. Addressing the needs of manufacturers, Mendix is launching solution templates for Smart Warehousing, Predictive Maintenance, and Smart Workforce Planning to jumpstart the digitization process.
“The adaptive solutions for manufacturing Industries enable our customers to achieve value along the entire digital thread lifecycle of enterprise processes,” said Raffaello Lepratti, vice president of Mendix for Manufacturing Industries. “Typically, these efforts span domains as disparate as engineering, operations, field services, factory automation, and customer and supplier teams. The adaptive solutions that we offer enable customers to maximize the value from respective core investments across domains without high maintenance costs or specialized expertise.”
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Additional vertical Industry Clouds targeting the public sector, education, and healthcare are set to launch next year.
Activating the ecosystem with platform investments
To accelerate the ever-growing scope of the Mendix Marketplace and ensure that ISVs, partners, and best-of-breed service providers can easily merchandise components and solutions, Mendix is announcing several extensions to its platform, including the AppServices Framework and Solutions Platform.
AppServices are a cornerstone of the composability — assembly — that organizations are seeking to alleviate some of the pressure on software development. To that end, Roos announced new AppServices Mendix will deliver, including capabilities for automated document processing, cognitive/AI services, and messaging. For organizations who want to productize their own services as capabilities in the Mendix Marketplace, Mendix announced the AppServices Framework, which includes the provisioning, metering, billing, and security necessary to merchandise seamlessly and safely. In this way, Mendix is fostering a vibrant commercial exchange between enterprise customers and low-code creators.
For ISVs and industry leaders who want to offer adaptive solutions within the Mendix ecosystem, Mendix announced the Solutions Platform. In addition to integrated metering and billing, the Solutions Platform also includes IP protection, extensibility, and maintainability. These capabilities provide a straightforward and secure way for makers to offer their solutions to the 250,000+ strong Mendix developer community. Uniquely, the solutions offered through this platform can be adapted by the partner or customer who acquires them, without risk to the underlying IP. This, coupled with AppServices, empowers developers to assemble, customize, and extend solutions to meet their unique business requirements.
The beginning of the end for prescriptive SaaS solutions
Mendix’s model-based abstraction, unprecedented collaboration between business domain experts and IT professionals, and streamlined cloud deployment has already accelerated software delivery by a factor of ten or more. To compete in today’s dynamic, digital-first economy, organizations must sort through myriad paths promising faster ways to deploy high-value solutions. The answer, according to Roos: Low-code development with adaptive, best-of-breed building blocks and solutions.
“With new, scalable adaptive solutions that can be quickly assembled from reusable components, we believe that fixed, prescriptive SaaS applications are a thing of the past,” said Roos. “A shift to digital-first engagement requires highly personalized experiences for both customers and employees. Rigid off-the-shelf software isn’t going to meet customer or team member expectations or deliver real business value.”
Roos added: “The combination of Mendix vertical Industry Clouds, Platform Solutions, and new AppServices, touching every corner of our ecosystem, empowers Mendix makers to deliver more relevant solutions faster than ever. Enterprises can kickstart their innovation process by leveraging the ecosystem of a vastly larger, vetted, and highly accomplished number of low-code makers. Low-code principles have been widely recognized as force multipliers. They will continue to guide and empower us in the decade ahead.”
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