OutSystems uses AI throughout the platform – not just for development – to improve every aspect of the Dev/Sec/Ops lifecycle.
Through deep integration in our development tools, AI assists developers in the application building process by automating, guiding and validating design choices. Leveraging our experience with tens of millions of anonymized application graphs, we have developed an AI engine that subtly suggests and validates design patterns based on learned code patterns and best practices, reducing developer guesswork and eliminating most of the repetitive tasks associated with traditional, procedural coding. This seamless integration of AI enables developers to express their creativity without being intrusive and while ensuring that customers reach their desired business outcomes faster.
Along with using AI to help developers more efficiently build applications, OutSystems includes powerful tools so developers can include AI-powered functionality in their applications. ML Builder is a great example of this – it enables developers to train new models based on their own data to power new features in the software they are building. We have other AI-based development features that rely on OutSystems own models. For example, we have models built into the platform for natural language interface creation (e.g. chatbots), text recognition and image processing. We also have a collection of pre-built components to help developers take advantage of cloud AI services such as Rekognition in AWS.
In addition to AI-powered development capabilities, something that sets Outsystems apart is the extent to which we also rely on AI to enhance our platform automation services and management capabilities. For instance, enabling applications to continuously change is one of OutSystems most important capabilities and this is powered by one of our most innovative features: TrueChange. This platform service, powered by AI, manages all of the dependencies across the entirety of the application modules in an organization’s software portfolio. TrueChange ensures simultaneous updates by multiple developers are seamlessly merged. With automated, AI-powered impact analysis, it protects changes in one module from breaking any dependent modules, and TrueChange eliminates costly issues caused by inconsistent version control.
This AI-powered automation also enhances deployment and management functionality. We all know that deploying applications to the cloud has traditionally been complex and daunting. With intelligent, AI-powered automation, OutSystems is able to make this as simple as a single click. Powerful platform services, including TrueChange, automate most of the complexity associated with application deployment such as version control, application/module impact analysis, management of multiple operating environments (i.e. dev, test, production), database management, access control and generation of KPI and metrics. Even deployment rollback functionality is fully automated.
Finally, we’ve recently introduced some ground-breaking AI-powered functionality to help with architectural analysis. Architecture Dashboard is a state-of-the-art, AI-powered management tool that helps architects evaluate the application of design best practices, enforces approved architectural patterns, and performs technical debt classification. With unique, AI-powered intelligence, Architecture Dashboard also performs refactoring analysis across enterprise-wide portfolios of applications and modules. Refactoring detects and suggests solutions for remediating redundancy. By enforcing good architectural standards and by detecting and eliminating repetition, we dramatically reduce the complexity of making future updates and, at the same time, dramatically reduce management overhead.
OutSystems takes advantage of AI to improve every step of the application lifecycle – from design and development to deployment and management. We are on a mission to not only make developers 100x more productive, we want to help make the entire IT organization 100x more productive.