The Citizen Development Trend

I’ve got to tell you about a brilliant trend in application design. Citizen Developers—users— who are creators. There are employees with little to no knowledge of code, who with the nodding approval of their companies’ IT departments, are designing business applications with runtime environments. You see, even though they aren’t developers by profession, as citizen developers lack conventional coding skills, they still have a robust determination to build applications.

You might wonder, how did this citizen development trend come about? First, there was an increase in both accessible software and tech savvy employees. Secondly, they design applications that actually focus on tasks the partners and customers need right away, like asset tracking or joint project management. Thirdly, partners and customers are thrilled with these citizen developers, because they create applications faster than traditional coders. In other words, their applications give partners and customers access to unique information as soon as they need it…right away. Innovative businesses should leverage the creative force of these dynamic citizen developers.

As organizations modernize their workforce and launch products and services into new markets, leadership needs a tool that easily adapts to changing circumstances. Considering that workers in the business world have become smarter technically, and more tasks are automated, no-coding platforms are the evolution in efficiency and productivity. These no-code platforms empower managers, project leaders, and other workers with operational problems, to create fast solutions on their own. That’s why citizen development tools are such a hot trend among top corporations, including fortune 500 companies.

Low-code and no-code, drag and drop, cloud based tools empower users to make applications rather than code them. So companies are utilizing these low-code tools to create external-facing apps with broader accessibility. The era of coding, testing, debugging, and beta-testing has given way to citizen developers, with minimal to no IT expertise, creating business applications, ranging from CRM and ERP, to payment processing and customer support.

No-code and low-code solutions spearhead teams to make firm data-driven decisions in real-time. End users and their companies are excited about devising applications for their department, their company or the public using cloud computing and shared services, as well as fourth-generation language style development platforms.

The citizen development trend has ushered in an era where there is little difference between creators and users. And, though, professionals with coding and software development experience are still fundamentally important, many recruiters won’t just focus on those skills when filling development positions. Also, decisions about the technology a company uses, something that was once exclusively managed by IT departments, are now handled by basically anyone, from business analysts to salespeople.

If you weren’t already sold on the trend of citizen development, you will be when I tell you about another major advantage it brings—Cost reduction. Organizations are quickly switching from outdated legacy software to less expensive no-code, cloud solutions. Predicting what resources your business will need in the future, without overspending, is one of the most difficult aspects of running a company or department. However, most no-code solutions offer the benefit of a monthly subscription plan that’s immediately adjusted, scaling up to meet increased demand or scaling down in periods of reduced interest and activity. Also, they let companies control the number of users needed. By enabling businesses to delete users or decrease storage space to save more money, they only have to pay for what they use. Moreover, applications can be updated automatically to support the newest processes, eliminating time-consuming software practices that use to be part of standard software development.

Furthermore, managers no longer have to guess their company’s needs. Business application platforms react to organizational requirements as they evolve. They continuously advance business processes. In the length of time that it would take a manager to plan what his department needs and then to compile a presentation to IT, they can develop and deploy the actual application they want to their team, instead. In addition to the empowerment of easily developing their own solutions, most no-code services offer users a dynamic third party system. That’s right, they deliver an ecosystem that consistently interacts and transforms with every element, to firmly connect employees to the tools they already use.

These days, citizen developers are adjusting and scaling their projects as their businesses change, instead of waiting on IT to produce a new solution or recreate an old legacy code. Due to this advancement, 56 percent of technology budgets are now controlled outside of the IT department.

However, many organizations still lean heavily on old-style inflexible methods like legacy code solutions or disconnected spreadsheets and an excessive cumulation of emails. Those approaches jeopardize the task of managing multiple versions and configurations of software systems overtime, leading to disorganization, errors, and aggravation. But, the Citizen development trend is met with resistance by some IT departments due to control, reliability, and data security issues. In fact, IT departments without defined, updated policies on these solutions might incorrectly label citizen developers as employees operating shadow IT activities. An assumption of shadow IT toward citizen developers would most likely prove counterproductive and even harmful to any business.

Most traditional IT organizations with rigid approval procedures require employees to present a compelling case before they’ll develop a new technology solution. In addition, even when a strong case is made and approved, it might take months before a solution is initiated because of the huge backlogs most IT departments have. Some Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers, for example, online database platforms like QuickBase, TeamDesk, Caspio etc are equally accepting of both the demands on business users, with their new capabilities as citizen developers, and the needs of the IT department to direct the company’s technology. These SaaS providers bridge the gap, offering a sought after middle ground for both custom solutions and IT security. They can also lessen the IT department’s backlog. Moreover, they can even provide IT with the control necessary to manage agile development, while still empowering business users to create, deploy and change their own solutions with little to no coding skills required.

TeamDesk

QuickBase

Caspio

Using SaaS Web-Database products like QuickBase, TeamDesk or Caspio is a smart, resourceful way to meet business needs, speedily and proficiently. SaaS products will play a significant role in maintaining a balance between IT departments and users as the citizen development trend continues to rise.

Top 5 Online Project Management Databases

The essence of any business is making money. The mechanism of businesses is delivering projects on time and under budget. Thus, keeping track of all the tasks and processes that are needed to accomplish a project is one of the top priorities.

There are dozens of specialized project management tools (online and offline) out there. They are mostly single-tasking applications worth a good buck. But considering my blog's subject, I'll be talking specifically about the online database software that among a lot of functionality in a number of different areas can also provide decent project management solutions.

So here is my rating of 5 web databases that offer pre-designed project management databases templates or let you build your own PM app from a scratch to precisely tailor your business needs:

5. Transpose

Transpose is a relatively new online database management platform built on secure enterprise-grade technology. As a database for project manager, it has the fields and views that allow for task management, progress tracking, and team collaboration. Transpose also provides several views for project information management. Users can choose a table view (rows/columns), a calendar view (tasks against schedules), a Kanban view, or a compact view (see the whole picture at a high level). The system also makes uploaded files searchable by converting them into text. Pre-built PM templates are available.

Generally, Transpose's PM tool offers solutions that may fit individuals and small to mid-sized business owners. Though for now the functionality is somewhat limited, perhaps, as more users join the system, new features will be introduced.

4. Zengine

Zengine is out on the market for quite some time now. Today, it offers users the ability to quickly put together data-driven applications (including PM) with very little knowledge or background in software. Users can track processes, collaborate and share information on the team, create and export report views – really easy.

But looks like that for this kind of simplicity Zengine is, to some extent, paying with functionality – you will get just the basic set. On the other hand, this problem is in part solved by the great library of Zengine third-party integrations (like MailChimp, Quickbooks, Twilio, etc.)

3. Caspio

Caspio is one of the leaders of online database management industry. And, of course, it has a good and worthy solution to offer for project management, either in the form of ready-made web applications or in the form of point-and-click app builder to make your own PM tool.

On top of it Caspio provides expert support and a very flexible price plan.

2. Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects is an application by well-known Zoho Corporation, launched specifically to deal with project management. Although developers claim that the platform can be used by teams of all sizes, it obviously suits best for small to medium-level companies. The most attractive features of Zoho software, from my point of view, are its flexible and inexpensive pricing structure, a rich variety of integrations, and communication tools.

At the same time, the biggest Zoho Projects drawback is that the best features are only available with the most expensive plans. Also, as for the award-winning company, Zoho customer support leaves much to be desired.

* Initially, I've planned to share the second place between Zoho Projects and Intuit QuickBase. But almost three months later after Intuit announced that QuickBase is going to be sold, its fate is still unknown. It is (or was?..) really good tool for team collaboration, but rumors are flying around that many leading staff members are looking for another place to implement their skills... So I prefer for now not to include QB to my rating.

1. TeamDesk

TeamDesk has been present on the market for over a decade now. Although it's not advertised as widely as it competitors like Caspio, QuickBase or Zoho, this custom online database delivers great web-based application solutions, including database for project management. You have three options:

• Get a pre-built all-in-one project management database;
• Build your own PM tool from a wide range of pre-defined templates;
• Start your own PM tool from a scratch.

In either case, you'll get a centralized but at the same time completely customizable, scalable and searchable environment to track project tasks, issues, and bugs, as well as due dates and statuses. It can be viewed as timeline (Gantt chart) or calendar.

Minimalistic design and zero programming features make TeamDesk dead simple to build applications that can precisely fit a specific workflow or way of doing business.

Project Management Database – Your Superpower

This rating doesn't claim to be super exhaustive or anyhow impartial. These are just mine subjective impressions on available database software. Moreover, lots of new utilities appearing on the Web every now and then that can satisfy the most elaborate requests. I can just add that as you can see, all of the featured app builders might help a company build their own custom project management tool. Some require very little coding knowledge, some fit better for the more technical users. Anyway, it's hard to argue that creating your own customized project management software is like having a new superpower. Use it wisely :)

Business Database Trends 2016 – What's Around the Corner?

The new year has begun, and this is a good time to look forward and try to see what the day to come is bearing for us. As since the area of my interests includes business data management, naturally, I'm focusing on business database trends that will intensify or emerge in 2016.

So here is my top of digital business trends in data management field.

1. Faster migration of business database to the cloud

Hosted databases have been around for years now (take TeamDesk, Zoho, Caspio, QuickBase, etc.), but for business moving a database to the Web still is more a trend than a conventional solution. Two major obstacles that halt transition process are the security concerns and cloud costs. Therefore, only 37% of U.S. small businesses have fully adopted cloud computing, according to Forbes. On the other hand, digital commerce trends demonstrate that cloud solutions will evidently become more secure, and the technology will be getting cheaper. Due to this, the number of businesses that will move their databases online is expected to reach 78% by 2020.

2. Shifting database for business to mobile

Moving to the Web will naturally trigger discovering new ways to access and work with data over smartphones and tablets. The reason for this is that today 80% of mobile devices owners use them to surf the Internet. And the role of mobile computing is increasing exponentially. And I bet that one of the most important trends in mobile - when it comes to databases – will be creating a reliable application that will function properly even when a network connection is unavailable.

3. Merging different database standards, e.g. SQL and NoSQL

Today's business environment is getting more and more data-heavy, and this data comes in a huge variety of forms that SQL is not always able to handle. Hybrid SQL-NoSQL database solutions combine the advantage of being compatible with many SQL applications and providing the scalability of NoSQL ones. Some steps to bridging SQL and NoSQL have already been made (NuoDB, Clustrix, VoltDB, etc.), but this is still the grey technology area where the biggest breakthroughs are yet to be made.

4. Managing, analyzing business sensors data in real time and converting it into 'Clean Data.'

Soon web-connected sensors will be inside all kinds of items around you. They will provide companies with all kinds of information about their customers, employees, and operations in real time. Furthermore, developers will be paying lots of attention to improving current and creating new ways of real-time data analysis to make better use of constantly incoming data (like Informatica does). From my point of view, the most likely outcome of these efforts will be transforming Big Data into Clear Data – the sorted data sets ready to be used like the out-of-the-box product.

5. Automated decision-making

Today data and analytics are just tools for decision-makers. But this will inevitably change in foreseeable future. It already is changing. The first step here was made quite some time ago with data-driven predictions and/or forecasting under specific conditions. My guess is that automated data-driven decision-making will be the next big step in database software for business development (check'em out: SAS, FICO, Scorto).

So to make the most of your online database software, keep an eye on the latest digital business trends we've marked out. The future may be much closer than you expect :)

Online Custom Database vs. Custom Developed Database

From time to time all throughout my professional activity I run into people who totally mess up web database terminology. One of the most glaring examples is confusing terms 'Online custom database' and 'Custom-developed database'. They are frequently labeled as synonyms that basically indicate the same thing.

Though, for outsiders, these terms may really sound pretty much similar to each other, as a matter of fact, they represent two diametrically opposite approaches to a custom database development.

The first one is applied when the matter concerns a hosted customizable database software, which can be modified by the USER at any moment. On the other hand, when a custom-developed database is the subject, it is usually said about the software that was built according to a client's specific requests but is supported and can be modified only by the VENDOR.

For better clarity in understanding the difference, here is the table comparing these two custom database solutions.

Custom Database Solutions

Online Custom Database	Custom Developed Database
Getting started
Start is fast. You can create a database from a scratch or just upload your existing spreadsheet. Moreover, professional support as IT consultants for new users is provided by most vendors. Some of them can even create a database for you for free.	Traditional approach when the client is separated from developers by formal methods of development is applied. Every modification of original design has to be discussed and approved. Thus, you have to wait until a vendor presents a ready product.
Functionality
You only use functionality necessary for the present moment. But at any moment you can modify the software in a real time, adding functions you need or removing the ones you don't require anymore.	The developer implements customers business processes according to your requirements. But any workflow change takes time to carry out, and the database may be not available during the upgrade.
Cost efficiency
The majority of hosted custom database providers have pretty straightforward pricing policy and don't charge extra for changes made within packages. That means you control all development costs.	The initial cost is usually higher, and additional expenses can happen when your requirements change.
Interface consistency
Vendors use standard intuitive elements to build your application’s interface. At the same time, they can be fine-tuned to satisfy a particular operator – by operator himself or by the vendor.	The interface is developed according to your given specifications.
Business process changes
In case your business process changes, you can easily adapt your database software to precisely fit your modified needs. Or you can address support for assistance, that is usually delivered in 24-48 hours.	To change workflow process, you must make a request to the developer and wait till it's applied. Changing process can last from couple days to several weeks or even months, depending on complexity.
System usage and support
Due to a high competition and client's ability to change vendors in no time, providers value their customers more. Because great help service makes more clients, support teams try to take care of all problems ASAP.	The customer depends on the developer greatly, because it's the vendor who holds the keys of your software. The developer resolves problems according to the type of support agreement. Extended support costs more.

Which Custom Database Software Do You Need?

Summing it up, I can say that customizable online database will fit your needs the best when you run unique business with ever-evolving workflow processes in agile markets and know that you're going to expand and scale your business periodically. In my honest opinion,

On the other hand, you should better use the custom-developed database when you know for sure that one ready-made database solution fits your needs right from the box. Then it will serve you for years without the need for major changes.

Personally, I prefer online database - it’s more flexible. If you decide to go with online database, I suggest you choose one of the following: QuickBase, TeamDesk, Caspio, or Zoho.

At the same time, as you can see, both solutions offer building custom database software tailored to your needs. But the devil is in the detail. So, know the difference – the right choice can save you lots of nerves and energy that you need to run your business.

Which type of database does your vendor rely on?

In the majority of cases users have no direct access to database back-end that their system uses for data organization/storage. Usually you manipulate data with interface or API. One can say it doesn’t really matter from the end user standpoint.

But still the choice of the database back-end defines system possibilities and ideology in many respects. This is the reason why I questioned vendors of products I review in my blog which database they use (if any), the reason of their choice and what kind of advantages it offers.

Avi Bryant from Dabble DB:

"We use a custom, in-memory object database. This allowed us to more easily provide the flexible data migration, sophisticated data types, and fast interactive querying that we wanted to offer our users."

Frank Zamani from Caspio Bridge:

"Caspio utilizes Microsoft SQL Server for its database. From day one, back in 2000, we knew that employing a powerful and scalable database is of utmost importance to us. We initially chose Oracle but soon encountered issues operating Oracle on a Microsoft stack. As a result in, our next release we dropped Oracle and replaced it with SQL Server.

The criteria remain high reliability and high scalability within a Microsoft stack. The result of our choice is evident in our ability to power some of the most demanding web applications for our enterprise customers."

Jim Salem from QuickBase:

"QuickBase chose to build a proprietary database to store app data. There are three reasons:

1) Scalability
Traditional relational database platforms are targeted towards supporting a relatively small number of potentially very large databases. Because of this, they run into significant scalability challenges when trying to host millions of independent databases. QuickBase’s architecture avoids these traditional scalability issues entirely. It can continue to support more and more applications just by adding additional hardware. Our application density (number of active applications hosted per server) is significantly higher than other online databases.

2) Performance
We chose an "in memory database" architecture because it’s significantly faster (and simpler) than traditional database architectures for the size problems that QuickBase targets.

3) Native Support for Easy-to-Use Web Data Types
We wanted to avoid the complexity of traditional databases leaking through into QuickBase’s UI. Unlike traditional databases, QuickBase was built from the ground up with the web in mind. Primitive QuickBase data types include email addresses, URLs, and versioned file attachments. These all require special coding (and overhead) on traditional databases. In addition, we implemented an easy-to-use relationship model that our users find simpler than the SQL "join" operations and index configuration required on traditional databases."

Chris Basham from TrackVia:

"TrackVia is built on the LAMP stack (Linux / Apache / MySQL / Perl).
The reason that we chose the LAMP stack is that TrackVia is differentiated from our competition by 1) Security, 2) Uptime, 3) Fast page loads.

Unlike many technology companies, we actually don’t want to have our service run on the newest technology that’s available. We only want our service to rely on mature, "battle tested" technologies that have been around for so long that all of the bugs have already been discovered and fixed. For example, we don’t run the most current version of MySQL. We run an older version that’s more stable and predictable.

As a result of this philosophy, we are able to truly deliver on the 3 items above – security, uptime and fast page loads."

Kirill Bondar from TeamDesk:

"We are using Microsoft SQL Server for TeamDesk.

In fact, we are using it for all our products for about 8 years. It proves itself reliable and scalable, delivers good performance in almost every case and provides tight integration with server platform, web environment and development tools.

Just one fact: rather than storing formula or summary column evaluation results and tracking the changes in dependend columns to know when the value needs recalculating, TeamDesk, thanks to Microsoft SQL Server performance, just calculates it on the fly. Even with large data sets and a lot of interconnected tables, this way rarely causes performance problems."

Yoge from Zoho Creator:

"We use our proprietary grid storage that is based on MySql. The reason for our choice is open source solution allow us to scale the performance to the desired level."

Treff LaPlante from WorkXpress:

"We use MySQL. We began our R&D in 2001 on MS SQL backend, and in 2003 switched to MySQL. We made the switch primarily because we knew we wanted to save our customers licensing costs, however, it's turned out to be a great decision on many levels. First, MySQL has a talented user community that we interact with to share knowledge and code. Second, MySQL has established itself in recent years with all manner of enterprise as an accepted and in some cases preferred database. Finally, the available packages and options for MySQL have greatly accelerated our time to market with new feature sets."

Aditya Tandon from Wolf Frameworks:

"We support Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL database. Currently for our OnDemand model, we offer the MySQL database which helps to lower cost for our customers. For us, database is storage and we plan to add support for other databases soon."

Paula Selvidge from PerfectForms:

"When we began development of PerfectForms in 2006, we primarily evaluated Oracle vs SQL and chose SQL due to the factors outlined below. We are also going to support SQL Express by year end, since it will further reduce costs for our customers who want to pursue an on-premise solution.

We chose SQL over Oracle due to:

1. Reliability and scalability
2. Lower cost for customers
3. Consistency with our MS stack
4. Our API is built on asp.net, so going with SQL offered better performance
5. Less costly from a support, maintenance and resource perspective for us internally."

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading all the answers as I did. Frankly, I don’t want to make any conclusions here. But I think this information can help you choose the system that is of better use for you.

So, you can check out the summary on back-end database vendors provided us with:

Dabble DB	Custom, in-memory object database
Caspio Bridge	Microsoft SQL Server
QuickBase	Custom proprietary database
TrackVia	MySQL
TeamDesk	Microsoft SQL Server
Zoho Creator	Custom storage based on MySQL
WorkXpress	MySQL
Wolf Frameworks	MySQL (for hosted service option)
PerfectForms	Microsoft SQL Server