Even specialist IT companies use low-code strategies and technology to help them move up in their markets, gaining market share alongside the agility to meet specific customer needs.
Low-code is often publicised as helping less knowledgeable or experienced developer teams – but two case studies from platform vendor LANSA show the platforms can also assist more skilled teams to customise solutions and modernise applications.
Australian financial services consultancy Advance Computing used LANSA to expand market share “dramatically” from an IBM focus to include numerous Windows implementations, according to senior consultant John Martin.
“A scalable solution that can be deployed on multiple platforms, LANSA lets you start from where you are and build on what you have,” Martin confirmed. “Accuracy and reliability are of utmost importance in the finance industry. LANSA helps us manage the complexity and risk of implementing new technologies, getting it right the first time.”
Advance – previously M&S Computer Services – developed early versions of its mortgage investment software system and contributory mortgage scheme software in the 1980s, working alongside its first AS/400 customer.
RPG2 applications were migrated from IBM’s System 34/36 to run on IBM AS/400, and the customer then wanted to reuse the existing business logic as well as benefit from the DB2/400 relational database.
Using the LANSA Repository, Advance reworked the database into a relational design and externalised the business rules and validations, reengineering the RPG programmes to work with the modernised database.
The software was more recently still extended further, including for online banking, using LANSA.
“We decided for the incremental modernisation approach, as we could not afford to break with what we had. We wanted to avoid a disruptive and risky big-bang approach,” Martin said.
“LANSA allows us to deliver a scalable low-cost solution on a variety of Windows and IBM i operating system versions that we can support with a single set of LANSA source code… (It) has made it easy to deliver just about any enhancement our customers have asked for.”
US-based hospitality solutions provider Agilysys, similarly, reported that the LANSA low-code platform helped it better serve its hotel and casino management customers across North America, Europe and Asia.
Agilysys‘ Lodging Management System (LMS) implemented LANSA-based web extensions in 1997, turning the LMS ResNet solution into an integrated on-line hotel booking system with up-to-date inventory visibility that also facilitated credit authorisation, customer information availability and ratings strategies.
Criss Chrestman, vice president of software and services at Agilysys, said that it now offered multiple variations in rating, inventory management and process flow, despite the original property maangement and reservation modules having been developed in RPG for IBM i.
“We wouldn’t have considered making this online reservation solution ourselves without LANSA. We would have outsourced the task to web development specialists,” Chrestman said.
“We have designed ResNet to be as ‘smart’ as possible, for example, by allowing it to be tailored to the individual requirements of each customer.”
