Microsoft Integrates Power Apps and Azure for Powerful Low-Code Development
One of the major trends gaining traction in the software and business worlds is low-code development, one of the biggest elements in the democratization of software development.
What is low-code development, and why is Microsoft integrating it with Azure?
Low-Code Development
Low-code development involves using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tool to visually design, develop and “program” an application. Low-code tools often provide template controls and interface elements that contain built-in functionality.
As an individual combines various components and predefined elements, they are able to create their app’s workflow and functionality, while the low-code tool handles the background code.
These types of tools have become very popular as companies have increasingly relied on custom applications to speed up operations and ensure agility. Rather than investing heavily in software development to create applications that customers will never see, low-code provides a fast and inexpensive method to create these applications that are vital, but not direct contributors to a company’s income.
Companies that have development teams still benefit from low-code development options. These tools can free up development teams to focus on those money-making, customer-facing applications, using the low-code tools to quickly develop internal apps.
In addition, low-code tools help bridge the gap between management and development, improving the communication between the various parts of the company. This can help developers gain significant insights into the true needs of sales and management, and help those departments better understand the challenges involved in development.
Microsoft Power Apps
In an ever-crowded industry of low-code development options, Microsoft Power Apps have established a reputation as a powerful platform that is relatively easy-to-use. Power Apps also offers the benefit of integration with Microsoft’s other products and services.
Microsoft describes the advantages of its Power Apps suite:
Power Apps is a suite of apps, services, connectors and data platform that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps for your business needs. Using Power Apps, you can quickly build custom business apps that connect to your business data stored either in the underlying data platform (Common Data Service) or in various online and on-premises data sources (SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and so on).
Apps built using Power Apps provide rich business logic and workflow capabilities to transform your manual business processes to digital, automated processes. Further, apps built using Power Apps have a responsive design, and can run seamlessly in browser or on mobile devices (phone or tablet). Power Apps "democratizes" the custom business app building experience by enabling users to build feature-rich, custom business apps without writing code.
Power Apps also provides an extensible platform that lets pro developers programmatically interact with data and metadata, apply business logic, create custom connectors, and integrate with external data.
The Marriage of Power Apps and Azure
With everything Power Apps offers, it’s little wonder Microsoft was keen to pair the low-code tools with its Azure cloud platform. This has become especially important since the coronavirus pandemic forced companies to adopt remote workflows. As a result, companies have been forced to adapt and roll out new applications like never before in an effort to help their employees remain productive.
Charles Lamanna, CVP, Low Code Application Platform, highlights the benefits of this new integration:
To respond to the growing demand for digital solutions, pro developers are increasingly looking for ways to blend code-first tools with low-code tools like Power Apps to accelerate their delivery of business apps. Low-code platforms help pro developers move faster, and without taking away the ability to use code when needed. Power Apps is the only low code platform that has been built from the ground up to work together with pro developer platforms like Azure, Visual Studio and GitHub. That means you can build solutions with low-code or code-first without stitching together different platforms.
Microsoft touts T-Mobile, Toyota Motor North America and G&J Pepsi as some of the companies using Power Apps and Azure to power thousands of applications.
As part of Microsoft’s efforts to improve Power Apps, it is rolling out a host of new features. These include Power Platform and Azure API Management, giving developers the ability “to unlock access to any Microsoft cloud hosted data source.”
Because Microsoft owns GitHub, Power Apps can integrate with the popular version control platform. With GitHub Actions, developers can create their own project lifecycle and collaborate with other developers more easily.
Power Apps will also integrate with Power Virtual Agents and Azure Bot Framework, opening up new possibilities for bot deployment.
Conclusion
Microsoft Power Apps was already one of the most well-rounded, powerful and easy-to-use low-code development platforms available. With its increased integration with Azure, Power Apps gains new abilities that will assist companies as they take advantage of the benefits low-code has to offer.
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One of the major trends gaining traction in the software and business worlds is low-code development, one of the biggest elements in the democratization of software development.
What is low-code development, and why is Microsoft integrating it with Azure?
Low-Code Development
Low-code development involves using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tool to visually design, develop and “program” an application. Low-code tools often provide template controls and interface elements that contain built-in functionality.
As an individual combines various components and predefined elements, they are able to create their app’s workflow and functionality, while the low-code tool handles the background code.
These types of tools have become very popular as companies have increasingly relied on custom applications to speed up operations and ensure agility. Rather than investing heavily in software development to create applications that customers will never see, low-code provides a fast and inexpensive method to create these applications that are vital, but not direct contributors to a company’s income.
Companies that have development teams still benefit from low-code development options. These tools can free up development teams to focus on those money-making, customer-facing applications, using the low-code tools to quickly develop internal apps.
In addition, low-code tools help bridge the gap between management and development, improving the communication between the various parts of the company. This can help developers gain significant insights into the true needs of sales and management, and help those departments better understand the challenges involved in development.
Microsoft Power Apps
In an ever-crowded industry of low-code development options, Microsoft Power Apps have established a reputation as a powerful platform that is relatively easy-to-use. Power Apps also offers the benefit of integration with Microsoft’s other products and services.
Microsoft describes the advantages of its Power Apps suite:
Power Apps is a suite of apps, services, connectors and data platform that provides a rapid application development environment to build custom apps for your business needs. Using Power Apps, you can quickly build custom business apps that connect to your business data stored either in the underlying data platform (Common Data Service) or in various online and on-premises data sources (SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, SQL Server, and so on).
Apps built using Power Apps provide rich business logic and workflow capabilities to transform your manual business processes to digital, automated processes. Further, apps built using Power Apps have a responsive design, and can run seamlessly in browser or on mobile devices (phone or tablet). Power Apps "democratizes" the custom business app building experience by enabling users to build feature-rich, custom business apps without writing code.
Power Apps also provides an extensible platform that lets pro developers programmatically interact with data and metadata, apply business logic, create custom connectors, and integrate with external data.
The Marriage of Power Apps and Azure
With everything Power Apps offers, it’s little wonder Microsoft was keen to pair the low-code tools with its Azure cloud platform. This has become especially important since the coronavirus pandemic forced companies to adopt remote workflows. As a result, companies have been forced to adapt and roll out new applications like never before in an effort to help their employees remain productive.
Charles Lamanna, CVP, Low Code Application Platform, highlights the benefits of this new integration:
To respond to the growing demand for digital solutions, pro developers are increasingly looking for ways to blend code-first tools with low-code tools like Power Apps to accelerate their delivery of business apps. Low-code platforms help pro developers move faster, and without taking away the ability to use code when needed. Power Apps is the only low code platform that has been built from the ground up to work together with pro developer platforms like Azure, Visual Studio and GitHub. That means you can build solutions with low-code or code-first without stitching together different platforms.
Microsoft touts T-Mobile, Toyota Motor North America and G&J Pepsi as some of the companies using Power Apps and Azure to power thousands of applications.
As part of Microsoft’s efforts to improve Power Apps, it is rolling out a host of new features. These include Power Platform and Azure API Management, giving developers the ability “to unlock access to any Microsoft cloud hosted data source.”
Because Microsoft owns GitHub, Power Apps can integrate with the popular version control platform. With GitHub Actions, developers can create their own project lifecycle and collaborate with other developers more easily.
Power Apps will also integrate with Power Virtual Agents and Azure Bot Framework, opening up new possibilities for bot deployment.
Conclusion
Microsoft Power Apps was already one of the most well-rounded, powerful and easy-to-use low-code development platforms available. With its increased integration with Azure, Power Apps gains new abilities that will assist companies as they take advantage of the benefits low-code has to offer.
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