The No Code Summit was held at Station F, the world's largest startup campus in Paris. This event brought together the French and international No Code community (for the first time) for two days of exchange and learning. I spoke on the second day, with a panel to conclude the event.

Key points of the event

• 1000+ No Code enthusiasts
• 50+ international speakers and experts
• 30+ workshops and practical sessions
• Demonstrations of the latest No Code tools
• Networking between entrepreneurs, developers and professionals

Key themes

• Business process automation
• Creating applications without code
• Integrating No Code tools into the enterprise
• Best practices and feedback
• Trends and the future of the No Code movement

For Smile

We took part thanks to Numeum. As a sponsor, they invited us to one of their conferences, consolidating our relationship.

This type of show is of limited interest to Smile, as it is aimed at solution publishers, whereas we are integrators. However, attending is beneficial for understanding industry trends and assessing our position in the value chain.

Market overview No Code

Current state of the market in France and Europe

The no code/low code market is growing rapidly in France and Europe, thanks to a shortage of developers, accelerated digital transformation and the democratisation of development tools. Players such as Bubble, Webflow and Airtable are becoming stronger in Europe, while local solutions such as Bravo Studio and AppSheet are gaining in popularity. Gartner forecasts that the European low-code market will reach €45.5 billion by 2025, with annual growth of more than 20%. SMEs, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises (large enterprises) are most in demand, looking to rapidly digitise their processes, as well as large companies using these solutions for their specific departmental needs and rapid application prototyping.

At the show

The main players and big names in No Code were present:
 

• Bubble
• Webflow
• Airtable
• Zapier
• Make (formerly Integromat)
• Notion
• Adalo

The notable absentee was GlideApps, for reasons unknown. The other major US players were present.

Key trends identified

The emergence of open source solutions

Open-source solutions are gaining little ground, mainly because of a lack of visibility. Publishers with proprietary solutions dominate at the top, but open-source is attracting strong interest. This is explained by the need for interoperability, better cost management (by escaping publishers' licensing models), and a means of increasing digital sovereignty.

Growing adoption by the public sector

To my surprise, a number of public sector players were present: the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES), the tax department and the education department, all of whom I met. There is a strong desire to enable public sector employees to devise solutions to their problems, by empowering them and giving them responsibility. However, this brings with it a number of challenges: integration with common core systems (such as SSO, knowledge bases, etc.), and a need for sovereignty of solutions, data storage and processing systems, etc.

Focus on digital sovereignty

This subject is crucial for many people exploring solutions, and no exhibitor or publisher was able to answer it today. There is an opportunity for integrators. They need to identify one or two open-source solutions and integrate them into technology packages that ensure digital sovereignty.

Maturity of enterprise solutions

No Code solutions for businesses are maturing, with advanced security, compliance and integration features. The major vendors are offering Enterprise versions with SSO, detailed access rights management and robust APIs. These developments meet the governance and scalability needs of large organisations. The tools integrate effectively with existing systems, making them easy to adopt in complex environments. However, the public sector remains a difficult market for software publishers to penetrate.

No code/low code is becoming an employability skill

More and more companies are looking for professionals with a command of no-code tools, opening up new career prospects. Training courses and certifications are multiplying, and schools and universities are incorporating these technologies into their curricula. There are even agencies providing staff qualified in no code for repetitive tasks.
This trend illustrates the evolution of the job market, where the ability to rapidly develop digital solutions is becoming as crucial as traditional programming skills. Citizen developers’ are emerging as a popular new category of professional.