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Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

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Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#61

Post by bob1029 »

haswell wrote: post #40
bob1029 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the flip side, some of those spreadsheets that reach the "would be easier to manage with a proper codebase" status never would have gotten off the ground had they started as a development project.

It really is full-circle with excel. You can start there, then wind up using it again once you realize its still an excellent data interchange mechanism.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#62

Post by brixon »

slumdev wrote: post #46

How is this conceptually any different from InfoPath + SPD Workflows? And if it's not conceptually different, what's going to make it work this time? Aside - it's probably been discussed ad nauseam, but the Teams vs. Slack graphic is highly misleading because of the way it's bundled and distributed. It'd be like comparing the install base of Notepad vs. that of Notepad++.

InfoPath is end of life and PowerApps is their replacement.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#64

Post by mywittyname »

bob1029 wrote: post #3

Who 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…

This stuff is really prevalent. I'm a programmer and I'll happily build out some low-code solution in Google Sheets or whatever.

Since it takes out of the equation a whole host of potential workloads (deployment, environment maintenance, source code control, etc), these low-code solutions offer rapid deployment of prototypes. Often times, these little prototypes end up being used by 100s of people within a company.

I love it because I bill out like $x0k for a few days of work. Once it's done, I pretty much never have to support it, since Google is managing that for me.

Clients love it because development is done in a few days and they never seem to have to contact anyone for support. The successful ones always lead to more business. Especially with megacorps with lots of brands. Brand X will show off their new dashboard, and Brand Y wants their own version and will happily pay pretty close to the original price for basically a copy-pasta job.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#65

Post by _jal »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #57

The most mind-blowing part of the article was the Teams vs Slack screenshot. https://res.infoq.com/articles/cloud-vendors-low-code/en/res...

Seems like Microsoft feels threatened about once a decade and feels the need to demonstrate how comprehensively it can stomp on someone lacking a similar portfolio.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#66

Post by enraged_camel »

ajcp wrote: post #27

I 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…

I've recently been dipping my toes in the RPA space (with Kofax RPA) and what you wrote validates my first impressions. The partner firm I'm working with insists that they have been seeing "insane and growing" demand for RPA solutions, which I kind of find hard to believe.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#67

Post by fartcannon »

This is the kind of article that I believe would benefit from authorship identification/stylometry. I would like to know how much of the conversation occurring in this comment section is real, and how much of it is part of the recently revealed work that Microsoft has being doing in swaying opinion on hacker news.

Wouldn't that be an interesting tool for press releases like this?

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#68

Post by 7952 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #52
ajcp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very well could be. I think where MSFT gets mixed up is that they are obsessed with their products being able to solve *everyone's* use-case. Which means if they're talking to the business then it's a friendly "Low-Code" platform that any citizen developer can use. However, when they're talking to IT it's an amazing CI/CD tool for developing powerful enterprise applications! What's something that corporate IT is o…

MSFT is just doing so well at getting "enterprise" lock-in, that I'm reluctant to conclude they are getting anything at all "mixed up" in their messaging to decision-makers. At present they seem to be doing it exactly right for their business goals. I have worked at and know of so many place that are "no, you can't spend money on that product, you have to use the equivalent from MSFT that is already included in our d…

I work in an enterprise and use flow and other Power platform stuff. The sense I get is that management look at the headline features and see it as essentially safe. But Microsoft have included some features that will be exploited in unexpected ways that create a maintenance and security problem.

A good example is that Flow/Power Automate can be triggered using an API end point. That can then be configured to provide a http response (including headers). It makes it super easy to setup APIs that have no security and expose corporate data.

I think the Power platform is like a modern Excel. Simple and inoffensive at first glance. But full of features that let unskilled users do risky things that will quickly become business critical. But the convergence of Office 365, SharePoint, Flow, PowerBI and dynamics is unstoppable.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#69

Post by Spooky23 »

nightski wrote: post #19
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not everything is a large ugly, buggy monstrosity that needs to be rewritten into "real software". There are may business processes served quite well by excel which might be enhanced with a low code solution like this and could stay that way for over a decade.

Usually significant low code stuff is more reflective of organizational politics than anything else.

Individual or small team productivity is one thing, the bigger low code monstrosities are usually a way for a vendor to weasel in and sell services under the IT peoples noses. The power automate bullshit cements whatever legacy junk it is feeding into and makes Azure the happy path for modernization.

Re: Microsoft's low-code strategy paints a target on UIPath and other RPA companies

#70

Post by pkilgore »

fartcannon wrote: post #67

This is the kind of article that I believe would benefit from authorship identification/stylometry. I would like to know how much of the conversation occurring in this comment section is real, and how much of it is part of the recently revealed work that Microsoft has being doing in swaying opinion on hacker news. Wouldn't that be an interesting tool for press releases like this?

> recently revealed work that Microsoft has being doing in swaying opinion on hacker news

I'd love a link. Unfortunately "microsoft and hacker" get's swallowed up in search results by recent attack news.

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