Application Composition Platforms facilitate the rapid creation, integration, and deployment of applications using modular, reusable components or microservices. By leveraging low-code or no-code development paradigms, these platforms enable both technical and non-technical users to participate in application development. ACPs support integration with various systems and services, ensuring seamless data flow and interoperability. These platforms enables IT professionals, software developers, and business leaders to accelerate time-to-market, reduce development costs, and adapt swiftly to evolving business requirements, thereby enhancing overall productivity and innovation.
Gartner defines enterprise low-code application platforms (LCAPs) as software platforms for the accelerated development and maintenance of applications, using model-driven development tools, generative AI and prebuilt component catalogs for the entire application’s technology stack. Enterprise LCAP features include support for the collaborative development of all application components; runtime environments for high performance, availability and scalability of applications; and application deployment and monitoring with detailed usage insights. Enterprise LCAP platforms feature governance controls and insights, self-service capabilities, APIs for integration with external DevOps tooling, success management with exhaustive technical documentation, training programs and a comprehensive global partner network. Enterprise LCAPs provide the foundation for developing a wide range of applications and application components with distributed data architectures, including complex multimodal front ends, business workflows, agentic AI and integration capabilities. The enterprise LCAP market is closely related to the citizen application development platform (CADP) market, as they both aim to address the use cases listed below. However, they are distinctively different in terms of the target audience and complexity of the applications built on the platform.
Mobile development framework refers to a preestablished set of tools, libraries and components designed to facilitate the creation of mobile and/or multi-experience applications. These frameworks provide developers with a structured environment and standardized methodologies for building platform-native and cross-platform apps which run on operating systems such as iOS and Android. They typically include features for user interface (UI) design, data management and device compatibility, streamlining the development process and enabling faster deployment of mobile apps. Mobile development frameworks streamline the app creation process by providing software development kits (SDKs) consisting of prewritten code libraries and tools, reducing development time and resources. The majority of them offer cross-platform compatibility, allowing businesses to deploy apps on multiple platforms using a single language with minimal rewrites, thus saving costs and enabling a wider audience reach. By ensuring consistent user experiences on mobile devices and platforms, mobile development frameworks enhance brand identity. Additionally, they support scalability, enabling businesses to accommodate growing user bases and evolving needs without major overhauls. Mobile development frameworks provide access to a variety of device features and integrations, such as push notifications and analytics, enriching app functionality and enhancing user engagement. Leveraging community support and ecosystems, organizations can troubleshoot issues, access resources and stay updated with industry best practices, further optimizing app development efforts. Overall, mobile development frameworks address an enterprise’s need for efficient, cost-effective and scalable mobile app development, contributing to faster time to market, a wider audience reach and enhanced user experience (UX).
An MXDP is an opinionated, integrated set of front-end development tools and “backend for frontend” (BFF) capabilities. It enables a distributed, scalable development approach (in terms of both teams and architecture) to build fit-for-purpose apps across digital touchpoints and interaction modalities. At minimum, an MXDP must support cross-platform development and building of both custom iOS and Android app binaries, responsive web apps, and at least one of the following: PWAs, chatbots, voice apps, wearables and Internet of Things (IoT) apps, and augmented-reality (AR) and mixed-reality (MR) apps.
Rapid mobile app development (RMAD) tools are a class of coding-optional tools that enable nonprogrammers to build mobile apps to support, at a minimum, iOS and Android devices. These tools offer high productivity for developers and nondevelopers alike through a variety of approaches that both automate and abstract app development efforts, including drag-and-drop editors, code generation and orchestration, model-driven development, virtualization, business process mapping, component assembly, app configuration and forms construction.