 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Knowledge 16, brought to you by ServiceNow. Here are your hosts, Dave Vellante and Jeff Frick. We're back at Knowledge 16, welcome. This is theCUBE, the theCUBE of SiliconANGLE's flagship program. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise for you, our audience. John Reimer is here, he's a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. We're going to talk developers. John, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Good, my favorite subject. So we learned today that you and your colleague, Clay, what was Clay's last name? Clay Richardson? Clay Richardson coined the term low-code developer. Low-code platforms. Low-code platforms, that's where it started. And then it evolved, of course, into low-code developer and no-code developer and citizen developer. It has taken on a life of its own. So what was the concept, take us back to the formation of that concept. What were you guys thinking at the time? We were trying to come up with a term to describe a set of customer behaviors and a set of products that we were researching and researching in the field. So we found customers that were choosing application development platforms that allowed them to work very, very quickly. So that meant not only declarative tooling as opposed to coding, but it also meant self-service, very low cost, if any, to get started, build something small, keep going and keep going. And so there was a set of products that basically satisfied that need, but they were all kind of random. So it was like, well, these products seem to have something in common. What are we gonna call it? And one of the proposals was no code, which I rejected because nobody will believe it. So I said, look, there's always code. There's always code. The point here is to try to devote your precious coding resource only when you absolutely have to. And when you can get, when you can deliver the app without coding, that's a huge productivity gain, a huge gain in speed and so forth. Hence, low code. And how long ago was this, you guys? This was two years ago. Now, okay, what you just described of sort of low cost, speed, start small and grow, it's kind of what's on the mind of developers. But let me ask you the question, what is on the mind of developers today? How has it evolved over the last two years? So those concerns are still remain in place. I think they going, so moving on from trying to basically introduce new tooling and new processes like Agile and continuous integrations and so forth to speed up coding and introducing low code. Now people are basically trying to scale it up. So in low code, people are trying to basically apply these platforms very, very broadly. Not only for the departmental and sort of glue kinds of applications, but really their full portfolio and really tackle mission critical, tackle all kinds of scenarios. And the early adopters are having a lot of success there. We have a lot of confidence that we're at the tip of the iceberg here. There's going to be a lot more adoption. So we go around a lot of these events and you see, I mean, the developer events are some of the big ones. They're obviously the Worldwide Developer Conference. Google IO was this week. Facebook's Developer Conference. Clearly Microsoft for years has had a developer affinity. And then you see, you know, entrance from Cloud Foundry. IBM at all of its events now has sort of little spinouts. EMC even at EMC World had a thing called code. Everybody's trying to get in the act of covet developers. And now you see ServiceNow put up a sign and say, okay, we're going to have a little code. I mean, the place gets swamped. 3000 people. Right, it's ironic to me that you have a low code developer culture burgeoning here. And I juxtapose that to some of the others. Now some of them, obviously Apple swamped. Yeah, everybody wants to participate there. But what do you make of that phenomenon of ServiceNow's developer community? Well, ServiceNow has a developer community and is trying to expand it. I mean, the bottom line is that ServiceNow has an opportunity to really apply its technology much more broadly as do other vendors in this space. The opportunity here is that what they're really doing is trying to fill a shortage. They're just, everybody's concerned about developers because developers are crucial now for all business activities. You can't produce any business innovation or any business change now without software. You either need new software or changes to existing software. And there just are not enough coders to go around. Nowhere close to enough coders to go around. So the vendors like ServiceNow that have low code approach have the opportunity to help their clients essentially expand their developer community beyond just the coders, empower more folks who understand a business process or understand an analytic approach or understand customer behavior and what customers might respond to to actually produce software or in a minimum really positively influence a production of software. I think this low code phenomenon that we're seeing is going to result in just a different, a whole new community of people coming into software delivery, a much bigger community and that's how we're going to solve this gap. What are some other examples? Because you see some pretty intense code at some of the, like AWS, you know, it's a hoodie crowd. But I thought Pat made an interesting comment this morning. Pat Casey about somebody that was an app developer and made an app and had no clue that they were an app developer or made an app. They built a workflow and they didn't build an app but he's like, well, is there data involved? Yeah, is there process involved? Yeah, is there notifications involved? Yeah, you know, so back to your point, it wasn't a developer in the hardcore sense writing code but the output was a quote unquote an app. Quote unquote an app, right? Exactly, this is exactly how we're going to, this is exactly how we're going to fill this gap is to broaden the community because there are different kinds of apps, right? If I'm going to go and write the next great Java framework or the next great, you know, service on AWS, well, I'm probably a hardcore coder. I'm probably, I'm even a DevOps person. I'm in configuring infrastructure as well. You know, there's a lot of business apps that don't require that level of skill. So let's not, let's basically devote those people to the tasks where they're really, where they're most needed. And a lot of business apps in fact can be built by developers that have their primary value is they understand the business, they understand the vertical industry or they understand the business process. So I think we're going to see this much, much more of this as we go forward. Have universities picked up on this and is there curriculum emerging to support low code development? Not that I've seen, but I'll admit I haven't looked very hard. Should there be in your view? Absolutely. I mean, I think that one thing that I feel like is that we as an industry don't really have language to talk about this productively. So people talk about citizen developer. What is that? You know, we talk about business analysts and you know, there are different roles that we talk about. We really don't have precise, you know, definitions for these roles. So therefore, how can we possibly train for them? How can we possibly even recognize who these people are? So I think hopefully what I'm hoping to see is that we'll somehow come up with a way of recognizing people who have technical ability but their real value is solving business problems. So it's this melding between a developer and a business analyst kind of a role. So Benioff kind of got it right when he said that there'd be more SaaS companies coming from outside of the technology industry than inside the technology. And that's part of the big reason for the shortage. And those business people can envision an outcome and if they could develop an app to make it happen, that would be a good thing. But what do they need to do that? They need a platform like ServiceNow, for example, or others? Yeah, they need the right tools. They need a platform that is managed rather than an app maybe runs on there, that generates a file that runs on a laptop under Joe's desk. They need a managed platform. And frankly, I think they need some additional skills. They need to know what an app is. Not everybody, not all business people are gonna be good at this. You know, building an app that's gonna be used by other people, you have to have a certain ability to think with a certain abstractness about the experience of it, about the algorithms or the data that are gonna go into that app or the process flow. So I'd like to see the university step up to this to sort of equip people to take their business talents and their gumption and be more effective in creating apps. Well, even in the high schools, I mean, everybody takes biochem and physics, why isn't CS one of those? Either one of those options, you take four math classes, take four English classes, you take the four, or I'm not gonna be a biologist, I'm not gonna be pre-chem, should CS be the third? Take three of the four, CS being one of them because as you said, there's not enough skill and talent and it just hasn't been, the demand for as technologically savvy as we are in those kids that are on the bleeding edge that are running through the schools, the schools are so far behind in kind of making that a core piece of their basic language, right? You know, the recent grads that I've talked to, it's not quite that bad, I suspect. Recent grads I've talked to, many of them, it's like they're in engineering disciplines and all that, they do take coding. So they at least, they'll take like a Java class or a C class or something like that. So at least they're getting introduced to, that sort of structured thinking about information and logic and so forth. I think essentially what we're seeing is an over-rotating on computer science. And you know, there's a need for that, but you know, business development, a lot of people doing business apps, they can be successful without a comp-side background. Absolutely, they can be successful. So it's, this is why I say, I think we're struggling with the language to even describe what we need. Here we are, kind of fumbling around. The other new dynamic is data, you mentioned data, and we always talk about theCUBE as data, is the new developer kit. And you know, back in the day, logic and structure, yes, but now data is a fundamental part of the process of building an app. Couldn't agree more. If you start there. Talk about that dynamic a little bit. I couldn't agree more. So much of the value going forward is understanding is being able to think creatively about data and about correlating data, relating data, both to basically do, to create analyses that have integrity, because there's a lot of junk out there, but to be able to think creatively about data and then figure out how you can act on that. People these days are doing some amazing things with customer data, and we haven't even scratched the surface yet on device data, on the so-called internet of things. There's a lot of it that's being collected, but there's a lot more to do with it. And it does play into a developer's mindset in terms of, okay, if we can get the data, how can we process them? What do we do with it? What's the process that kicks off? Or what's the notification maybe we send out to a customer, or the view that we create for the manager? And how should that involve? I agree with you. I think this is the next big thing. That brings visualization into it as well. I mean, the gamers obviously have had to always worry about that, but now just the business analysts have to worry about that. John, talk about some of your research in this area, some of the cool stuff you guys are doing, some of the things you're proud of, some interesting findings, have at it. Okay, thank you. We're, certainly the low-code research is about two years old. We've been working on it for about two years, and there's a lot more to do. There's a lot of demand from clients, a lot of interest from clients in that research. So we've looked very heavily at the products. We've looked at things like do they scale? We've looked at, we've compared products. The next set of things we really are gonna go after are governance. So if I bring in a low-code platform, and I've already got java.net or what have you in-house, how do I use these things together? How do I decide which apps to do on which platforms? And a lot of people struggle with that. They, you can do a lot, doesn't mean you should do a lot, you know that kind of thing. One of the examples we saw was one of the low-code platforms was a large insurance company brought in one of the low-code platforms. Again, it was not a strategic choice, it just came in. They ended up with 17,000 applications, completely unmanaged on this platform. That's not good, that's a problem. Anyway, governance is a big deal. That's one of the next things we're going after. And then we're also going after this question of who are these developers? Who are the low-code developers? How do you find them? Can you transition coders? If so, which ones? Because a lot of coders look at these products and say, not for me, not for me, the toys, they're wrong, but, you know, such as life. Well, are they born or are they created? Because I would hypothesize that trying to find them is probably the wrong way. It's trying to find the potential to make someone who isn't a low-code coder, right? Which is absolutely spot on. You mentioned that people come out from outside of Compsi, and they always have. When I first got involved in the computer industry back when dinosaurs were on the earth, most of the developers I ran into, or a lot of them anyway, came out of anthropology backgrounds. Why was that? But clearly, they weren't Compsi people, but they were effective. So what is that combination of background, sort of just aggressiveness, interest in solving problems, business problems that we can highlight to basically find these people and promote them? Have you seen any good examples in your client base of organizations deliberately saying, okay, hey, we have an opportunity to fill the gap, and we are going to deliberately go out and create a framework and a training and a process, a growth path for low-code developers? Not much. Not much. Huge opportunity, I would imagine. Huge opportunity. Not much. I have seen some, just was speaking with a gentleman the other day that's using one of the low-code platforms and they're starting small. So they've got two people that are working on this environment. And by the way, that's one of the benefits of low-code. They're so productive. You don't need a hundred people, you know? But anyway, two people, his go-to developer does not have a comp-side background. He's a person that he found who just had technical ability and just was really good at solving business problems. And that's what he got up in the morning thinking about. And so it is this sort of combination of tech skills, you know, ability to find a way around a tool and the ability to think productively and creatively about business problems. So I've seen, he's now, this person has now got that model and is starting to look in his organization for others like that. But generally, no, we're all as an industry, I think, casting about, trying to figure out who these people are. Do you think, and in that case specifically, is that person now, is that their full-time job? Yes. Or will the low-code developers of the future be just part of the other things in which they do? And depending on time of year, what's the priority, you know, the percentage of time shifting to that type of activity versus other things will be different or flexible. That's a really good point. The most, in most cases, you'll see people set these products up as essentially centers of excellence. So the people who work doing applications, building applications, are full-time. But if we're going to actually expand the base out, as you say, and we're going to have business people who are producing software as they need it, then I think we will get into, well, this is part of my job, but it's not all of what I do. I'm not a full-time software deliverer, producer. That's more the citizen developer idea, which again, we're struggling to figure out exactly how to organize that. But I think it's coming. We're talking to John Reimer, Forrester Research. Good stuff. We'll leave it there. Thank you so much for coming to the Cube. Thank you, guys. It's good to see you. All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. We're winding down the third day of the Cube coverage at Knowledge 16. Bright back. We have hundreds and maybe thousands.