Platformless: the next milestone in software development that can transform time, cost and quality

By Fernando Arditti.

10 years from now, we will be a very different society than we were 100 years ago. This is because Acceleration of changes occurs in increasingly larger stepsSo much so that a single invention can enable the creation of countless new ways.

The evolutionary process was marked by a number of inventions that changed the way things were done, such as writing and the printing press. We can talk about many turning points in the world of technology, such as the emergence of computers, the internet, the web and even the cloud. What all of these have in common is the potential to expand possibilities.

We see a very strong culture of collaboration when it comes to technology, so professionals and companies in the industry are, in a sense, working together to find new ways to make daily life easier and to discover new experiences. From the combination of concepts like API-first and cloud-native middleware, a new way of thinking about development has emerged: Platformless.

Literally translated ‘platformless’, Concept could revolutionize software creation and implementation through tools that remove or hide the complexity of the platform.

Platforms enable organizations to take action quickly and at scale. So it is clear that this term does not literally mean the absence of a platform. In the tech world, the ‘less’ suffix can denote a shift towards greater simplicity and a more user-centric approach.

This understanding is a defining milestone for Platform Engineering and Developer Experience (DX) when we consider a collaboration-oriented role reversal where the user becomes the developer themselves.

GitHub research points out that developers working within strategies that prioritize Developer Experience can experience up to a 50% increase in productivity. Relatively simple actions allow teams to dedicate themselves more effectively to solving complex tasks, reducing time devoted to operational problems.

This approach allows for more creative collaboration, and from this, each professional begins to focus on creation and production without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

The creation process has many steps and challenges, and infrastructure is the most complex part of development, in addition, it requires more crew time and therefore production costs. Platformless provides a more financially sustainable model by eliminating the significant investments required for platform development and maintenance.

In fact, this was one of the main themes. This May, we spoke at our WSO2con Global Conference, where we brought together global developers, partners, customers and guests. There we discussed how the purpose of Platformless is to make developers’ lives easier and more agile, reducing the need for large teams, structures and investments to develop software or applications.

Just like the concept of design thinking, by speeding up the startup process the ‘domino effect’ affects the entire chain, Increasing production speed and streamlining the process of making a solution feasible for testing and evaluationthus providing more information for an even better final product.

The user journey in the digital environment is increasingly becoming a priority for technology companies. At the end of the day, an incredible and revolutionary platform can become just another platform if it cannot adapt to the user’s routine, improve processes and make its goal simpler, more practical, faster or cheaper. This is true for every technology.

This user experience is increasingly becoming a determining factor in how a company acquires customers, builds loyalty and receives recommendations. In other words, technology, often working behind the scenes, makes all the difference in the outcome.

In practice, this is the ‘key change’ for the development field. Prioritizes improving the experience of everyone involved in building, deploying and running platformless applications for people and mainly for companies.

To achieve this, the developer can follow two paths: using a Software as a Service (Saas) platform that provides a ‘platformless experience’, or creating their own strategies and methodologies to develop through blockchains or using open platforms.

Whichever direction it goes, developers can focus solely on app development without having to think about all the elements that make up the infrastructure, reducing delivery time (dreaded SLAs) and leaving more room for creativity and exploring creativity in building digital experiences. adding value to end users.

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Fernando Arditti is vice president and general manager of WSO2 in Latin America.