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The call for innovation and simplification of our processes grows every year, but business demand is often greater than IT capability can deliver. How can we spend more time on the innovation part and less on actual developing? What if we require innovation through a custom app, but don’t have the resources and budget for months of development? SAP has partnered up with the leader in low code development Mendix to offer a fitting solution.
What’s Mendix?
Mendix is a low-code rapid development kit that enables you to create apps in a fast, iterative way for SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) and Cloud Foundry. It is known within SCP as Rapid Application Development by Mendix. The focus is on the collaboration between business and development experts, enabling stakeholders to contribute their requirements directly into the development of the app.
How does Mendix make sure everyone is able to collaborate?
Mendix focuses on drag and drop development within the interface and the code. This keeps development as easy and simple to understand as possible. Mendix offers coding through building blocks and offers a wide variety through its own app store. Consider the building blocks like Lego bricks; you can build your own app in Mendix with these blocks. If you need a special block, a round Lego brick for example, then the large Mendix community usually has a place to start, and somebody that’s already created a free coding block.
Developers can extend existing blocks or create their own blocks through the power of Java or JavaScript. And that’s what makes the collaboration of business and development experts fruitful, because the business experts can focus on the initial app and the developers on the special functionality.
This ensures a quality app is built. Mendix has adopted user-centred design principles, with a project always kicking off with a design thinking workshop to capture requirements. This workshop is supported by a user experience (UX) expert who coaches the team though the project to make sure the right user experience is offered throughout the app development.
The Mendix package
Mendix offers a full stack package from the outset to final delivery of a project. To make sure everything works as smoothly as possible, Mendix offers three sub-platforms:
1/ The web modeler (for business users)
This platform is created for business experts, key-users and end-users. This tool offers basic visual development tooling where users can create the foundation of the app, by adding fields, giving feedback to the developers, adding requirements and building basic functions with code blocks.
2/ The desktop modeler (for developers)
This is a development area for developers, providing flexibility to create, extend and deploy apps and coding blocks. Mendix offers a full security package and the option to deploy the app to the required system. This could be the Mendix cloud, Cloud Foundry or in the near future directly onto SCP, including the SAP Fiori look and feel.
3/Sprintr (for the team)
This is the project management page that contains a launchpad with an activity feed and integrated Agile SCRUM project management package. The launchpad assists the team to operate as a self-functional team and makes sure they meet their definition within the agreed time scales.
Within Mendix the whole team is able to contribute to the development of the app; everyone is very much part of the development process. Each person’s input is based on their own skillset, contributing to the overall quality and usability of the app.
When should you choose a Mendix solution?
Within the SAP landscape there are plenty of options. But where does Mendix fit the gap? In this overview we give an example where you could explore the capabilities of Mendix:
Mendix is ideal for partners that require lots of customisation in their landscape to stay ahead of the competition, but at the same time still require a clean version of SAP. Still not convinced about choosing Mendix over UI5 for customisations? Mendix offers a lot more out of the box too, such as offline support, model-based development and custom functions. One of the key benefits is being able to make modifications in Mendix and keep your SAP system lean and standard.
Mendix provides a complete development platform for SAP Cloud Platform offering all the benefits of custom development in less than 15% of the time it would take with a traditional development project. It also includes all the required tools such as GIT, project management and development tooling in one full stack package.
How will SOA People support you on making the right decisions? Our sales, pre-sales and development team have extensive training in SAP Fiori, SAPUI5 and Mendix, validated through our Design Thinking process to define which product would be the right fit for you. Together we can kickstart your innovation and build amazing solutions to make sure you’ll stay ahead of your competition.
