New version of Now platform: Quebec Release ushered in a low-code revolution

“How to put the right tools in the right hands?” According to Chris Pope, VP of Innovation at ServiceNow, this question is the guiding principle behind the development of the Quebec version-it will also play an important role in the development of the next version of the Now platform effect.

Because, according to Gartner, low-code tools are becoming a strategic necessity for companies that want to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. Analysts predict that by 2024, application development based on low-code tools will account for more than 65% of the company’s development activities.

There are good reasons: “We often hear from customers that they need to develop digitally faster,” Pope said. “You have to defend your core business and innovate in it, but you also see new business opportunities that must be seized quickly.” According to Pope, the question that keeps asking customers is: how do they digitalize their departments in order to seize them as quickly as possible New business opportunities?

From the perspective of Chris Pope and ServiceNow, this means: “How to expand the Now platform so that more employees who are not part of the IT organization can use it? How can we do this without compromising governance? Access with security? “

The answer to this question is now provided by the Quebec version, which contains many features tailored to this target group. The new Creator Workflows complements the combination of existing IT, employee and customer workflows, and department employees can use it to quickly create new workflow applications and automate existing workflows without the need to become IT experts.

Creator Workflows includes two new development tools for so-called citizen developers:

• That Application Engine Studio Accelerate application development through a fast, intuitive, and guided low-code visual development environment.

• this App Engine template Allow teams to access ready-made workflow modules so that citizen developers do not have to completely redesign individual tasks when creating applications.

The new tool has been tested by many customers during the pilot phase, including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the City of Los Angeles. Currently, both are using ServiceNow’s low-code application engine to create customized end-to-end workflows to help provide critical services to patients and citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As mentioned earlier, low-code and no-code applications will also play an important role in the next ServiceNow release, but not limited to them. “At the same time, our job is to pick up the developers where they are,” Chris Pope explained. To this end, for example, among many other programs, there is a program called DevOps Scaled, which involves continuous development. The purpose is to give developers the opportunity to focus on their actual work while managing processes on the Now Platform.