DIGITAL DISRUPTION

54 acquired Mendix for US $ 730mn in cash . Den Haan believes that this signifies how low-code development is here to stay . “ It ’ s important to note that Siemens is investing more into Mendix over the next three years than they bought the company for . This is one of the biggest investments in the lowcode market to date . The physical and digital world are quickly converging , you can no longer imagine a product or company that doesn ’ t have software at its core and I think Siemens has recognised this . If you don ' t grow as a company and become a software company you will quickly become irrelevant . I think that is what digital transformation is all about – it ’ s about transforming your company to becoming a digital native .”

Take Zurich Insurance , who used Mendix ’ s low-code development platform to build a so-called ‘ face quote app ’ to encourage young people to enter the insurance market . “ They had a wild idea whereby they wanted to allow people to take a selfie and use artificial intelligence ( AI ) to identify the age of the person so that they could give them an age-appropriate quote .” Using Mendix ’ s platform they built the app quickly and more recently they ’ ve been nominated for an innovation award based on this application . Most importantly though , den Haan , points out that although Mendix is a technology vendor , housing a technology platform is just a small part of what it

— Johan den Haan , Chief Technology Officer , Mendix

JANUARY 2019