Low-code platform is the last mile for "business on the cloud" to move towards thousands of enterprises

About Cloud Smart Dingding Division Senior Technical Expert Fan Zhiyue shared Dingding's low-code digital practical experience in the sub-forum. He believes that under the trend of full cloud access, low-code platforms make "cloud" more approachable, and it is the last mile for "business cloud" to move toward thousands of enterprises.

The Qcon2021 Beijing Station "Low Code Practice and Application" sub-forum was created by Ye Zhouquan, a senior technical expert in the Alibaba Cloud Smart Dingding Business Unit and the person in charge of Dingding Yidah’s low-code platform, and collected typical cases of low-code platforms in the industry. Interpretation of how to choose and use low-code platforms from the user's perspective.

Fan Zhiyue, a senior technical expert from the Alibaba Cloud Smart Dingding Division, shared Dingding's low-code digital practical experience in the sub-forum. He believes that under the trend of full cloud access, low-code platforms make the "cloud" more approachable, which is the last mile for "business cloud" to move toward thousands of enterprises.

Fan Zhiyue, Senior Technical Expert of Alibaba Cloud Smart Nail Business Unit

The following is an excerpt of Fan Zhiyue's speech at the "Low Code Practice and Application" sub-forum of Qcon2021 Beijing Station (this content cannot be reproduced without authorization):

Today's sharing revolves around Alibaba's low-code practices and the evolution of DingTalk's low-code platform product technology.

First of all, let us see what kind of customers we will encounter as a low-code platform and what are the needs of different customers? Our target customers are small and medium-sized enterprises, and some large group companies.

Our proposition is about our customers. What kind of demands and challenges do they have in the digitalization of business operations and management?

The digital appeal of enterprises is constantly changing with the development of scale

As shown in the figure: we can see that as an enterprise continues to develop, it will have different digital demands at different stages and at different scales.

Is low code useful here? My answer is yes, even at different scales and stages, low code is useful.

A few years ago, at Alibaba, we had the Enterprise Intelligence Division (formerly the Information Platform Division). What we did was to take all the commercial software purchased in the initial development stage of the group offline and use a completely self-developed method to research and develop. Developed its own HR system, procurement system, legal system, and IT administrative system.

Why self-study? Because, when a group's business and organization mature, the entire company's business operation management will give rise to many unique and specific requirements, which are often not met by externally sourced systems.

But after a few years of self-study, we also ran into problems. Our HR, procurement, and legal systems are all heavy-duty mid- and back-office systems, and their complexity is quite high, especially to deal with scenarios of multiple organizations, multiple branches, and subordinates. We invest 70% of our R&D resources in these heavy-duty The system is under development, and one application needs to be maintained by multiple people.

However, in addition to these heavy applications, there are still many needs and demands within the group, such as administrative, IT, project management, and so on. This leads to a result: a lot of demands have to be queued, and ultimately the core application cannot meet the very rapid changes.

How to break this situation is a question we have been thinking about.

Low-code platformization is a trend

Without changing the current enterprise application development model and platform architecture, this question cannot be solved. Combining the capabilities of PaaS with the application scenarios of Saas and adopting a low-code approach should be one of the core strategies to solve large-scale enterprise applications to support extended customization.

Looking at the industry, Salesforce is very good at CRM and SaaS, with a market value of hundreds of billions. So how does it respond to the customization needs of major customers? It launched the PaaS platform corresponding to CRM and SaaS very early, for developers and delivery integrators, who can use the platform to deliver customized requirements to customers.

There are also many PaaS products that focus on developing platforms. The is low code and platformization. This is a trend. are not only low-code technology platforms, but also combine the attributes of industry services, business components, and PaaS platforms.

The product technology evolution of Dingding low-code platform

The DingTalk low-code platform did not happen overnight, and it originally came from within Alibaba. The digital appeal of Alibaba Group finally incubated Dingding low-code platform-Dingding Yijia.

In the DingTalk 1.0 stage, the first thing to do is to make the process online. Simply put, the approval is online and mobile. This is the initial appeal of many companies, including Ali, and it is also the problem that DingTalk solved in the 1.0 stage. At this stage, we hope that the low-code platform can be used by all Alibaba secondaries to reduce development barriers and costs, and improve work efficiency. Therefore, in the 1.0 stage, with the help of the zero-code capability of DingTalk, and the low-code capability, we have truly realized "all the people are developers" inside Alibaba, so that Ali juniors only need to consider the business scenario and use DingDing. Dingyida was able to quickly create a digital application that supports business collaboration, solving the demands of mid-to-long-tail applications.

Dingding should take the 2.0 stage, considering whether the low-code platform can solve the demands of heavy-duty applications. We came up with a concept that is driven by a metadata model. We use metadata to drive processes, pages, rules, data reports, and even directly expose defined metadata to the business workbench of business personnel. The capabilities added in the 2.0 stage are mainly for relatively professional developers and improve the R&D efficiency of developing complex business systems. We refactored the metadata layer and data layer, and also provided the ability to orchestrate business flows. Different business actions can be defined at each node of the business flow to meet the logic requirements of complex business processes.

At the 3.0 stage of DingTalk, it presents three distinctive features: data-driven, cloud-nail integration, and industry digitalization.

First: data drive . What is the difference between it and metadata-driven? Metadata drives relational product technology, while data drive is a true business drive. We have to close the business and use data to make decisions.

Secondly, industry digitization . Our ultimate goal is to make the ecology and industry online. The low-code platform must have business characteristics and industry characteristics. When we enter a certain industry, there is another proposition that must be solved, that is, business integration, system integration, and data interconnection.

The new challenge of Dingdingyijia 3.0 is to digitize the industry. We have to prove that low-code platforms can be successful and have business results, so we have to do a lot of things.

This brings up the third feature of the 3.0 stage: cloud nail integration.

1) We lowered the threshold to a sufficiently low level, because in the end our customers want business. The low-code platform encapsulates the capabilities of cloud computing and can make the cloud truly approachable. Why do customers pay? To pay for the business system he wants, he doesn't need to understand, but he can feel the technical value the cloud brings to him.

2) Our customers have many systems, including many applications that we have nailed, and they are also liked by many customers, but these systems and applications are single-point, their appeal is how to integrate the data of these systems and applications .

A simple example is that if a company wants to rate people’s performance, in addition to looking at the attendance system, it also depends on the output of the work. It requires a business system to first digitize the work, and then the generated data and attendance data are combined for performance appraisal. We firmly believe that with DingTalk and low code, it can become a brand new interface for enterprises to use the cloud. We are no longer simply exporting to customers, but relying on low-code platforms and a whole business solution to help customers realize the value of business customization.

The practice of Dingding low-code platform in the manufacturing industry

When we entered the industry, we found that many scenarios and businesses were not digitalized. As shown in the photo on the left side of the above figure, their process management is to use these paper cards, and they also find it easy to use and will not change easily.

For this single-point scenario, the low-code platform can actually be digitized very quickly. But what do we hope to deepen in the manufacturing industry? Solving single-point problems is certainly not enough. This is why we need to create low-code industry solutions.

The middle part of the picture is centered on the integration of "production, supply, and sales" management in the manufacturing industry, and there are many application scenarios. There may be dozens or even hundreds of products in the entire manufacturing solution, waiting for us to implement it in a low-code way.

The middle application scenario is to generate data. In fact, the real value lies in the upper layer. After the low-code platform realizes the business closed loop, a large amount of data will be generated. Through data analysis and data display, it helps our customers to make decision-making analysis. This is what a low-code platform must solve: not just to produce data, but to make it worthwhile.

In addition, the manufacturing industry has a very strong demand for application interconnection and IOT, and equipment must be interconnected. All of these must be done through a low-code platform with connection and integration capabilities. In the end, a low-code platform can solve the digital transformation of an entire industry.

In the future, DingTalk will no longer be an independent low-code product. It will not simply commercialize the product, but will become a provider of low-code infrastructure. We will have a lot of ecological partners.

Some partners wanted to build a SaaS before, but they didn't even dare to think about it, because in the past, To B had a high SaaS threshold, and it was impossible to make an excellent product without a R&D team of dozens of people. But the low-code platform can lower the threshold low enough. Only a small team with certain development capabilities can create an industry-level product that truly belongs to this team. This is the advantage of low-code. We told our partners that we hope that you will use Dingdingyi to build a platform to create something that belongs to you.

The advantages of applications and products on low-code platforms don't stop there. It is native to the low-code PaaS platform and naturally has the ability to expand and customize. The products that we build on low-code platforms can embrace changes, and customers have no problem with any needs. They can be customized and modified quickly, and even what we see is what we get. This is what we hope to achieve. This is no longer a vision, because including DingTalk, low-code platforms are realizing all this.

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