OutSystems Developer Salary in 2024

OutSystems

Understanding the Concept of OutSystems

OutSystems, a low-code development platform, helps organisations build, deploy and maintain custom applications that bypass hand-coding whenever possible. As Mattnem notes, often you can get very far just manipulating interconnected already-built components – in OutSystems’ case, with a few clicks of the mouse. With low-code platforms like OutSystems, citizen developers can build simple applications with almost zero hand-coding. And for citizen developers, that’s exactly what they need.

The Benefits of OutSystems

Rapid Application Development

It takes programmers hours or even days to set up a similar environment for a traditional development project. One of the prominent benefits of OutSystems is that it significantly speeds up application development. By creating the infrastructure of our application development platform prior to the delivery, developers are able to quickly churn out prototypes without all the heavy lifting; they can make dozens of iterations of designs and still end up with a working application in days, weeks, or months, depending on the complexity. It is encouraging to see large organisations moving away from the traditional mindset and embracing more modern approaches to software development.

Increased Efficiency

By automating repetitive development work and binding it to industry best practices, OutSystems helps development teams get more done – rapidly, reliably, and cost-effectively. Once applications are deployed, OutSystem’s built-in capability for one-click deployment and easy scaling can help teams make modifications, update user interfaces and add new features without any issues.

Seamless Integration

OutSystems allows for smooth integration with current systems and databases by building on your legacy infrastructure. Thus, it offers easy-to-configure integrations with data sources, APIs and third-party systems, so that any application built on OutSystems can connect with other parts of the stack.

Scalability and Flexibility

It can scale up from a small prototype to an enterprise solution, with advanced scalability options for every type of application. You can scale a solution up as your business needs change, or scale it down as needed, and because OutSystems is fully customisable, it’s also very extensible. You can add components you develop or off-the-shelf libraries as business requirements change, without sacrificing speed and without sacrificing quality.

How OutSystems Works

Visual Development Environment

It comes with a visual development environment that allows the programmer to build applications without writing an immense amount of code. Programmers typically retrieve these components from a standard library of pre-built UI and behaviour components, such as data connectors and logic modules, and hook them together in various configurations to create a complex program.

Drag-and-Drop Functionality

Rather than requiring developers to write code, OutSystems’ users ‘assemble’ application building blocks by dragging pieces, such as forms or simple business rules, to the canvas. Not only is this easier, but it also reduces the time needed to train users on the software’s capabilities. By dragging and dropping things on a canvas, developers can visually define the application’s user interface, workflows and data model.

Backend Integration

OutSystems integrates with backend systems and databases using connectors and APIs. Access to backend enterprise data is vital, and developers can retrieve and process this data through connectors provided by OutSystems and by APIs (application programming interfaces) offered by the enterprise systems. OutSystems allows all backend systems to connect to the same integration environment, configured on a standard template, and ensures that the data is validated and updated in a single place.

Use Cases of OutSystems

Enterprise Applications

Developed by OutSystems, this platform is used to create enterprise-grade applications for complex business processes and requirements, enabling enterprises to work on applications across various functions such as customer relationship management (CRM), human resource management, supply chain management and so on.

Mobile App Development

Mobile app development is another area where OutSystems is a good fit: it comes with robust support for cross-platform mobile development, so your organisation can market its apps to users on both iOS and Android devices. OutSystems creates native mobile experiences, with features such as offline data synchronisation, push notifications, device-specific features and any other goodies you’d expect from mobile apps.

Legacy Systems Modernization

Modernising legacy systems is a common challenge that applies to many firms. OutSystems revolutionises the way legacy applications are maintained and upgraded. For example, combining legacy application data with new services, visual style and functionality examples are illustrated below:

OutSystems vs. Traditional Development

Time and Cost Efficiency

When compared with traditional development approaches, OutSystems makes development projects much more agile and cost effective – as outlined in this graphic below. In conclusion, OutSystem’s uber-development approach relies on a visual development environment accompanied by reusable components that expedite the development process by avoiding multiple initial starts. On the other hand, traditional development approaches do not provide these advantages.

Adaptability and Agility

With OutSystems’ low-code approach, applications become more adaptable and flexible: developers can make immediate modifications to and extensions of existing applications, and adjust their logic or scope as business requirements change. Each set of changes made can be implemented within the same familiar visual-modeling environment, which makes modelling easy and intuitive, even for a non-coder. This enables the iterative testing processes that have become integral to software engineering, leading to the highly scalable applications that organisations can depend on as their requirements shift over time.

Collaboration and Team Productivity

OutSystems increases collaborative working between development teams since it displays the visual work in progress that each colleague is working on. Without version control, or specialised skills (for example, defining a With ‘friend list’), development slows down as conflicts can rise significantly.

Limitations and Challenges of OutSystems

While OutSystems has its advantages, it’s not a silver bullet; there are some limitations to the tool that require advanced skills with code. For example, configuring complex business processes or integrating with niche and highly specialised systems might not work well with OutSystems: the software might require extensive manual coding, or the very low-level optimisations just might not be the right fit for the app.

Security and Compliance Considerations

These considerations are of utmost importance for any development platform that you decide to adopt, and OutSystems provides an elegant framework for security and compliance. Data security OutSystems security approach is founded on the principle that security must be part of the framework, not only of the application. This builds both resilience and creates confidence that helps companies to comply with security governance regulations. OutSystems supports industry standard best practices for authentication, access control, data encryption, etc. To help organisations be compliant, OutSystems is certified against quality standards defined by the ISO, such as ISO 9001 and ISO 27003. Applications must also meet currently evolving requirements for data security. Validating application security is fundamental in reducing significantly the risk of data breaches. Compliance laws may be required in your territory. For example, the new European Regulation on data protection (GDPR) came into effect in May of last year. Some of the requirements, such as specific deadlines, are already available, but more are expected to be added.