One study commissioned by a low-code platform indicates that 29% of SEA enterprises think that low-code holds the key …

How can organizations in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) turn into digital innovation factories to thrive in the post-pandemic business environment?

As organizations rush to digitalize, software development lifecycles will likely continue to shorten to meet rising customer expectations. Fueling the need for agility and native security in application development will be DevOps and DevSecOps.

This is one of the findings of a survey commissioned by a low-code solutions firm. According to data, 39% percent of APAC IT leaders depend on visually-guided development tools. The top three reasons for adoption were the belief that visually-guided development tools simplify the developer experience and provide a more intuitive workflow.

More than half of APAC decision-makers polled were confident their organizations will rely on low-code platforms for at least a quarter of all planned projects next year.

Said Mark Weaser, Vice President (Asia Pacific), OutSystems: “With the APAC region now in rapid growth, it is set to further expand into an increasingly formidable data powerhouse by 2024. It’s only natural for enterprises in our region to gravitate towards the dramatic benefits of using visual development tools for building cloud-native applications.”

APAC vs SEA DevOps priorities

While Southeast Asia (SEA) continues to grow quickly as a future-facing data powerhouse, some organizations still struggle to adopt agile and DevOps processes and practices across the software development lifecycle.

For countries with more advanced efforts such as Singapore and Indonesia, the emphasis is heavier on finetuning DevOps teams and securing those processes. As such, integration and open source management have become top development priorities for organizations in the region.

According to the report conducted by IDC (methodology not disclosed), at present, 29% of SEA organizations planned to adopt visual development tools in the next 18 months.

The main challenge faced in the region was far different from those of their neighboring peers in APAC. Security and development integration came in tops, with 58% of organizations listing it as the top challenge faced, followed by creation of multidisciplinary teams and convincing of leadership on the value of DevOps at 48% and 47% respectively.

“Having spoken to multiple SEA developers, (we are) aware of the mounting concern for integrated security, particularly with the rising scale and instances of data theft today,” stated Weaser. This means organizations should address these cybersecurity concerns end-to-end, from the ground up.

Achieving agility amid constraints

The report noted that, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the need to offer innovative customer experiences engenders the creation of new markets and audiences; risk-taking, data analytics and continued incorporation of customer feedback does well in driving new ideas on new platforms.

Some 27% of SEA organizations listing recruitment as their top priority due to the constraints of hiring freezes, labor crunches and tightening regulations as the pandemic situation pans out in a complex global economic dynamic.

The report encourages organizations to start recruitment planning before the need to fill any post even arises. Also, in a low-code app development environment, personnel can benefit from upskilling and continuous education, while having citizen developers working side-by-side with IT can improve collaboration and agility while addressing traditional development shortfalls.