Forrester sees three potential futures for the low-code market: it is going to both maintain occurring its present trajectory, be accelerated by AI, or be slowed by AI as builders do extra coding duties with an AI assistant and don’t want the productiveness positive factors of low-code as a lot. 

That is in response to Forrester’s Low-Code And Digital Course of Automation Market, 2023 To 2028 traits report.

Forrester says the primary choice — that low-code continues on its present development pattern — is the probably state of affairs in the intervening time. This state of affairs would see low-code and digital course of automation (DPA) development being pushed by AI. 

The agency predicted again in 2020 that the market would develop to $12 billion by 2023, which was really an underestimate because the market was really evaluated as a $13.2 billion market final yr, giving it a 21% common development yearly since 2019. Forrester predicts this development fee to proceed over the subsequent 5 years, and anticipates low-code rising to $50 billion by 2028. 

The corporate additionally predicted two different situations that would happen: low code will get extra development due to the recognition of AI, or the alternative happens and AI hinders low-code development. 

In keeping with Forrester, almost each low-code and DPA vendor is including AI-enhanced capabilities, aka TuringBots. This state of affairs assumes that low-code market development will roughly comply with the expansion trajectory for generative AI, which Forrester predicts as 33% per yr. 

The opposite state of affairs — that AI kills the low-code market — is the one Forrester considers to be least probably. It will come about on account of situations like a nasty financial system, market saturation, or a number of high-profile safety incidents tied to citizen builders. 

“Essentially the most dramatic risk is that TuringBots make conventional high-coding so productive that skilled builders reject low-code and swap again to high-coding every little thing,” Forrester wrote within the report. “Due to this fact, on this state of affairs, we assume a development fee of 11% over the subsequent 5 years, which is usually in keeping with Forrester’s projections for the business software program market as a complete.”

Along with predicting what’s to return, Forrester’s report additionally included a number of observations on what’s taking place available in the market presently. It appears that evidently low code and DPA have change into interchangeable and that the excellence between citizen {and professional} builders is blurring, with fusion groups have gotten a actuality.  

Tendencies amongst low-code distributors have included that distributors from adjoining classes are coming into the house, the bigger distributors (Microsoft, Salesforce, and ServiceNow) are dominating the house, and the smaller distributors are beginning to specialize on particular use circumstances in consequence.