I would guess the RPA hype wagon will slow down on its own accord soon. The big users will start to see the downsides now that their implementations have been up a while. Scraping is brittle. And I imagine it's not experienced developers writing (or point/click generating) the scraping code at the customer locations.
Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
21–30 of 198 posts
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#22This is addressing a market. I have seen it first hand more than once. Highly driven and competent individuals that are not programmers for whatever reason and that create a monstrosity that works (using some low code solution). It’s ugly and buggy but gets a job done. This works for as long as they don’t hit a technical limitation then call devs like myself in to replace it. It was a great phase 1 and made money. Th…
Yes, no-code solutions almost always become ugly, buggy, monstrosities, and there are technical limits that mean it needs wholesale replacement, but pragmatically I too have seen them getting jobs done. I'd also wager it will not cost more to rewrite it, especially if you deeply discount the non-developer resources that were used to create it (often salaried employees' time, and even then those individuals likely cam…
On the flip side, there's plenty of ugly, buggy, code monstrosities that have to be rewritten or refactored. This just means the professional developer gets to start with a clean codebase with the UI & processes already laid out as an example. Almost like the no-code is a working prototype in place of a requirements doc.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#23Who has actually seen a success story with this sort of thing? We arrived at "low-code", but by way of actually solving our problem domain through many hellish iterations and figuring out what all of the various points of configuration should be . As far as I am aware, this is not something that Microsoft or any other vendor can determine for your business ahead of time. I am sure that there are a lot of types of sma…
We have a Microsoft "Access app" build by a ex employee. it was used by a lot of people and now in process to be rewritten into a web app. i guess that's a success story(?).
>I am sure that there are a lot of types of smaller needs that can be addressed with these sorts of tools, but the big tasks of integrating multiple unique/legacy business systems together into a single logical process with its own internal state is not ever feasible with these tools. You can always get close, but its like a siren song in my experience.
i'm fine with that. when they hit a problem that no Microsoft "connector" can solve. you charge them 10x to implement a real solution.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#24Does SQL qualify as Low-Code? A lot of technical non-programmers are very successful using SQL.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#25If this works, Microsoft is going to hit a long-term retention jackpot. Low-code ecosystems are sticky and excel in ARR as their model is usually consumption based. Moving away costs companies millions. Every employee is automating their work on this platform. I working with a consulting firm and one of our customers (+50,000 employees) has onboarded power-platform for every individual to automate their work. If ever…
I don't know if they're pursuing this, but Microsoft also has the opportunity to create low-code solutions that more gracefully transition into conventional solutions, because unlike a pure-low-code play, that doesn't have to mean they are losing a customer. They aren't incentivized to lock you in to low code as long as one way or another you pay Microsoft on the way out, too, via either being in the conventional Microsoft developer ecosystem or being on Azure.
Given that they seems to be acquiring they way into this market, I'm sure it's nowhere near this integrated yet, but could you imagine being able to take any individual component of the system, or the system as a whole, and getting a "Click Here to create a Visual Studio Project" that completely replicates the low-code solution into Visual Studio, ready and waiting for you to start modifying it? Probably with some sort of automatic "Click Here to Deploy Your Changes Into Azure"?
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#26Who has actually seen a success story with this sort of thing? We arrived at "low-code", but by way of actually solving our problem domain through many hellish iterations and figuring out what all of the various points of configuration should be . As far as I am aware, this is not something that Microsoft or any other vendor can determine for your business ahead of time. I am sure that there are a lot of types of sma…
Do you consider Excel a low-code solution?
That depends on how you use excel. Lots of formulas, et. al. would probably become easier to manage as part of a proper codebase at some point.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#27I think this article misses the mark of the actual move Microsoft is making here, but I think MSFT also gets their own messaging wrong. Microsoft's "Low-Code" strategy is not RPA, nor is it enabling the development of enterprise applications with "Low Code" development tools. RPA is already a legacy solution in it's current form, and increasingly only useful with regards to mainframe emulators and applications that don't offer an API, which are rarer and rarer with the move to cloud everything. Enterprise applications should only exist as applications, not as components/products of another enterprise application.
Microsoft's Low-Code "strategy" is providing tools for business process applications, they're just really bad at messaging that. Enable original data to get into their ecosystem (Power Apps), transform, evaluate, and move it around (Power Automate), and then provide understanding and feedback (Power BI). If every part of their ecosystem -*including their productivity suite and OS*- has an API backing it up (which it does) then their real play here is not providing "Low-Code/No Code" tools for building *applications* but rather for API integration and orchestration. This is the "new" RPA.
Why would one need to build an RPA "bot" or enterprise application if one can just generate a form with Power Apps, use Power Automate to reach into your Outlook, Excel, SharePoint List, OneDrive, or Windows file system, and then crap out the desired product in the system of record or a Power BI dashboard?
Source: I've worked in the RPA space for over 5 years now as a SWE, Tech Lead, and Architect.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#28If this works, Microsoft is going to hit a long-term retention jackpot. Low-code ecosystems are sticky and excel in ARR as their model is usually consumption based. Moving away costs companies millions. Every employee is automating their work on this platform. I working with a consulting firm and one of our customers (+50,000 employees) has onboarded power-platform for every individual to automate their work. If ever…
Couldn't agree more. By providing tools that allow you to "reach in" to every part of their ecosystem, from their OS to their productivity suites to their cloud offerings, they're creating a very comfy lock-in that would be hard to justify your way out of.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#29This is addressing a market. I have seen it first hand more than once. Highly driven and competent individuals that are not programmers for whatever reason and that create a monstrosity that works (using some low code solution). It’s ugly and buggy but gets a job done. This works for as long as they don’t hit a technical limitation then call devs like myself in to replace it. It was a great phase 1 and made money. Th…
Isn't that survivorship bias in action? Good solutions that not only work, but work well and don't hit the tech limitations would never be seen like developers like you, because they would never need to be rewritten.
Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies
#30I think this article misses the mark of the actual move Microsoft is making here, but I think MSFT also gets their own messaging wrong. Microsoft's "Low-Code" strategy is not RPA, nor is it enabling the development of enterprise applications with "Low Code" development tools. RPA is already a legacy solution in it's current form, and increasingly only useful with regards to mainframe emulators and applications that d…
The original article is brilliant but your correction is much more valuable. Thank you.