APIs. Application PROGRAMMING Interfaces. Someone needs to Program, aka write code, aka develop, aka “build the software” to interconnect the APIs of the various systems we want to interconnect and also implement the business logic. Who is going to do that? How long is it going to take? How much is it going to cost?

Unfortunately, more often than not the answers to these questions are:

  • We don’t know, because we may not have the right people with the right skills or even if we do, it’s not their job to do it, or we just don’t have the time.
  • It’s going to take a lot longer than we originally thought, because the learning curve of the languages, APIs, markups, protocols, etc. is pretty steep and then no one thought about the security, auditing, troubleshooting, logging, etc. requirements that still need to be taken account of in any system that is going to automate core processes in your most business-critical infrastructure.
  • It going to cost a lot more than our budget because most of us are not a part of a software development team dedicated to building automation. We have to scrounge for resources and time and consulting dollars. Then we have to get these approved in committee where folks are going to tell us to stay in our lane – ie. no you can’t have automation

So where do we go from here? There is more work than ever, we need to work smarter, and we know how to, but we don’t have the resources to do it. Workload automation via No-Code systems is the way to go.

No-Code systems are not a silver bullet and they won’t replace traditional programming languages for ordinary day-to-day tasks. When it comes to implementing robust SecOps, ITOps, DevOps, and even AIOps automation across a heterogeneous, hybrid, software-defined infrastructure that is easy to understand and modify in an agile manner by your technical staff without weeks of coding and testing, then they are the right tool for the job.

In the modern enterprise, there is no such thing as a true MoM – manager of managers. It’s truly a service mesh where events can originate at every level. So an automation platform needs to be able to offer an easy northbound interface and seamlessly integrate the workflows you are building into dashboards, orchestrators or event handlers. Because in today’s enterprise – no platform is an island.

So are No-Code systems (and fine…. Low-Code systems too while we are at it) right for you?
Well they address the question of “who is going to write this” – almost anyone can use them, they address the question of time – scripts built in minutes or hours, not days, and they address the large budget concern around hiring an army of consultants to implement the use of API’s in your modern infrastructure.