Comparing development platforms

The world of cloud applications and services development is splitting into two camps, according to a comparative study undertaken by Bloor Research. In addition to the classic code-cutter environments of the SDK (Software Development Kit) variety, there is now a growing need for a richer, more comprehensive Platform as a Service (PaaS) development environment that allows both developers, and increasingly tech-savvy business managers, to pull together the applications components they require to build the services that their businesses need.

The Bloor study, an InComparison Report undertaken by Practice leader, David Norfolk, sets two of these latter development environments against each other. One is arguably the `big cheese’ cloud PaaS environments, Force.com from Salesforce. The other is the OutSystems Platform, and both are targeting high-productivity cloud development platforms help IT organisations build modern, effective web and mobile applications that can be delivered and changed quickly.

These unlike PaaS-for-coders platforms, provide additional value and acceleration for web and mobile application creation.  High-productivity platforms allow organisations to quickly build and deploy applications in the cloud – significantly reducing the time and cost to build them.

“The era of the silo’d IT shop is past and business success now increasingly comes from minimising time-to-market, using agile, app-based, user-centric computing,” Norfolk said. “The cloud and PaaS fits the emerging business automation model well – but businesses adopting these new paradigms still need and expect choice.”

The analysis of the OutSystems Platform and Force.com includes a seven-point comparison of architecture, performance, ease of use, fitness for purpose, stability, support, and value. 

According to the study, both OutSystems Platform and (possibly to a lesser extent) Force.com are typical examples of ‘high productivity’ development tools in that they abstract away the complexity of conventional (third generation or 3GL) computer code and generate much of the routine parts of an application from high-level declarative statements. This leaves the developer free to concentrate on the high-value business logic.

There is no question in Norfolk’s mind that this OutSystems innovation is a timely one. The era of the silo’d IT shop is past and business success now increasingly comes from minimising time-to-market, using agile, app-based, user-centric computing. The cloud and PaaS fits the emerging business automation model well.

In the study he suggests that in addition to its basic high-productivity capabilities (allowing development of business apps at the visual modelling and business logic level), its strong features are providing a rich developer experience, without limits, and with support for change management and re-factoring.

It also compares well against Force.com in putting greater levels of choice and control in the hands of the organisation employing it. For example, whereas Force.com is very cloud-centric, OutSystems gives users more operational leeway by providing full support for on-premise and hybrid cloud, as well as public cloud deployments.