Gartner: The global low-code development technology market will grow significantly by 23% in 2021

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According to Gartner's latest forecast, the global low-code development technology market will reach US$13.8 billion by 2021, an increase of 22.6% over 2020. The surge in remote development during the epidemic will continue to drive the popularity of low-code, even as companies continue to optimize costs.

"Low-code application development is not new," said Fabrizio Biscotti, research vice president at Gartner. "Digital disruption, hyperautomation, and the rise of composable business have all led to an influx of tools and a surge in demand."

As a general social and technological development trend, low-code is expected to continue to grow significantly. For example, low-code application platforms (LCAPs) are expected to remain the largest component of the low-code development technology market by 2022, increasing by nearly 30% from 2020 to reach US$5.8 billion in 2021 (see Table 1).

Table 1: Low-code development technology revenue (in millions of US dollars)

*Other LCD technologies include rapid mobile application development (RMAD) tools and rapid application development (RAD) tools. Low-code is an evolution of RAD into cloud and SaaS models. Note that Gartner defines no-code application platforms as LCAPs that require only text input for formulas or simple expressions. Therefore, the LCAP market includes no-code platforms. In addition, "no-code" is not a sufficient criterion for tasks such as "citizen development" because many complex tool configuration tasks are not code but still require professional skills. Due to rounding, each column may not add up to the total data.

Source: Gartner (February 2021)

Digital business acceleration drives application delivery

The acceleration of digital business has put pressure on IT leaders to significantly improve the speed of application delivery and time to value. As a result, the market demand for customized software solutions that support digital transformation continues to grow, triggering the emergence of grassroots developers outside of IT, which in turn has an impact on the rise of low-code technology.

Gartner research shows that an average of 41% of employees (or business technicians) outside of the IT department customize or build data or technology solutions. Gartner predicts that by the end of 2025, half of all new low-code customers will come from business buyers outside of IT.

“The economic impact of the pandemic has validated the value proposition of low-code,” Biscotti said. “Low-code capabilities that support remote work, such as digital spreadsheets and workflow automation, will offer more flexible pricing as businesses need low-code technology to keep running.”

SaaS and hyperautomation will drive low-code adoption

Currently, all major software as a service (SaaS) vendors offer the ability to incorporate low-code development technology. As SaaS becomes more popular and these vendors’ platforms become more ubiquitous, the low-code market will see a corresponding growth in LCAP and process automation tools.

In addition, business technologists want to come up with and execute their own ideas to drive more automation in their business applications and workflows. By 2022, business-driven hyperautomation demand will become one of the three major drivers of low-code adoption.

"By the end of 2021, most large organizations around the world will have adopted multiple low-code tools in some form or another," Biscotti said. "Longer term, as enterprises embrace the idea of ​​the composable enterprise, they will also embrace low-code technologies that support application innovation and integration."