Low code/no code automation allows DevOps teams to delegate development in response to a shortage of software developers. Gartner projected the low code/no code market to grow nearly 20% in 2023 and reach nearly $45 billion by 2026, but some professionals say there is a limit to how far automation alone can take development teams.

DevOps engineers are “really, really hard to find,” said Venkat Thiruvengadam, CEO of DevSecOps software provider DuploCloud. “It’s this unique skill set where you need to be a developer and you need to be an operator – and operator also means being aware of security and compliance and whatnot, especially in the SaaS world.”

“Typically, you will not find developers who are good at operations and you will not find operators who are good at software development. And the same goes for security. So that makes DevOps really unique,” he told SDxCentral.

Thiruvengadam said he believes that the DevOps industry has spent far too much time with high code or infrastructure-as-code in its current form. As enterprise computing moves to the cloud, the DevOps layer running on top of new infrastructure has become “super complicated," and low code/no code software can democratize the development and operations skill sets by essentially creating DevOps-as-a-service.

“Anything as a service fundamentally means to hide the nuances and deliver the outcome. People want to do low code or no code because it's easier,” Thiruvengadam said. “You need a lot more skill sets to write programs, write code, test code.”

Companies that build low code/no code platforms take the ownership of understanding a lot of nuances and present a much lighter-weight abstraction to the end user. DuploCloud, for example, an eponym of Legos’ Duplo Blocks, provides a cloud automation platform that makes putting together, securing and operating cloud infrastructure “as easy as children putting together blocks of Legos,” Thiruvengadam added.

“So, in essence, if there is a new technology, people can just start using it without having to invest so much effort into trying to find out what's happening behind the scenes," he said. “Low code/no code makes adoption of any new technology easier because it's just a much simpler consumption model.”

With improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities, scalability, development speed and integration driving this growth, it's estimated that up to 50% of new low-code users will come from outside IT organizations by 2025.

Many in the industry are optimistic that low code/no code automation can provide relief from the global DevOps talent shortage, but there are a few caveats to consider, according to LeanIX VP Dominik Rose.

AI and automation can make software development more efficient in many ways, Rose said, but they also present inherent limitations on creativity, as development is not just a technical activity but one that requires “the human touch.”

“I believe that software development and product building products is a craft which requires a lot of empathy, which requires us to make trade-offs on a daily basis,” he said. “This profession is not going away.”

Rose noted that recent AI feats and the pace at which automation is still evolving “is astonishing.” But new AI tools like ChatGPT, which uses text processing to aggregate information, still only solve “a finite domain of problems.”

“There are tons of other domains which are not solved by this technology,” Rose said. “This human touch, this empathy and trade-off and thinking, is not going away.”

Thiruvengadam said that even for use cases where automation can complete 95% of the tasks, current technology still needs at least some human supervision or action. This leads to companies feeling reluctant to use automation instead of having paid employees do the work.

“People will be like, I have to hire all these expensive skill sets to deal with like half of the work anyways. They have time, I'm paying them salary, they might as well just go to the whole thing. Why do I have to deal with these two systems,” Thiruvengadam added.

Additionally, while labor optimization is touted as a major benefit of low code/no code automation, it also draws pushback from professionals in the industry.

“Jobs are not getting eliminated, but it changes things,” Thiruvengadam noted. “You have to evolve from what you were doing for a long period of time to doing something new.”

Companies building low code/no code platforms are already building trustworthy automation, he added, but convincing the people with decision-making power is one of the biggest obstacles in adoption.

“Sometimes you can't convince someone out of their job,” Thiruvengadam said.