Over the past several years, I’ve watched closely as low code platform Mendix cultivated strategic partnerships with major software vendors such as Snowflake, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and SAP.
These partnerships have matured at an impressive rate and now include platform-supported integrations and connectors to quickly integrate critical cloud-based and on-premises services with Mendix low code solutions. They represent a significant leap forward in how businesses can use Mendix to build customizable, scalable solutions.
However, I’ve found that many companies aren’t aware of all that Mendix offers or how it can help them achieve full digitization.
In this guide, I explain the power of deploying Mendix in combination with strategic Mendix partners and share insights from my experience using these platforms together.
Why Use Cloud Platforms Like Snowflake and AWS with Mendix?
Mendix offers many capabilities, including the ability to build flexible apps, develop custom integrations, and digitize production lines. However, the platform is even more powerful when used with strategic partners like Snowflake, AWS, and SAP.
Let’s look at some of the key capabilities these partnerships enable:
Mendix makes data warehousing more approachable
One of the most complex challenges companies face when undergoing digital transformation is determining the best way to warehouse their data. Cloud storage providers like Snowflake and AWS offer relatively inexpensive storage and advanced tools for data manipulation.
Alone, these tools aren’t sufficient for building a comprehensive data warehousing solution. Companies also need to be able to effectively access, analyze, and use the data they store in the cloud. That requires significant development in SQL, plus custom connectors to ensure a steady flow between cloud data containers and critical software systems.
Mendix navigates this challenge by offering ready-made data connectors for Snowflake and AWS, making it seamless to stream data between custom low code apps and the cloud. Thanks to these Mendix connectors, far less SQL development is needed, and data warehousing is way more approachable.
Just as important is the support Mendix provides for non-SQL experts approaching data warehousing systems for the first time. You can use Mendix’s blog—a five-minute read—and know what you need to do instead of diving into a big pile of AWS documentation. It’s easy to underestimate how important this documentation is, but it enables a low code developer to actually build a data solution and end up with something secure.
Cloud platforms enhance scalability and performance
Another benefit of cloud platforms is that they enable limitless scalability. Solution components deployed on Snowflake or AWS can scale to additional resources or new geographic locations to increase bandwidth and reduce latency for users worldwide.
This is much harder to achieve with Mendix low code apps deployed on local systems only. Scaling up these systems requires direct investment in new IT infrastructure, and that new hardware will need to be maintained for years to come.
Leveraging clouds like AWS makes a lot of sense from an architectural perspective. You can benefit from Mendix’s easy-to-use low code building blocks to design your user interface and orchestrate your business logic. Various AWS services can add the ‘final touch’ to utilize the latest LLMs via Amazon Bedrock, or offer a high-performing search experience with Amazon OpenSearch Service. Just to name a few examples.
It’s worth noting that, by default, the Mendix Public Cloud is already built on top of an industry-standard and highly resilient cloud architecture in AWS. When needed for your enterprise, a Private Cloud deployment of your entire Mendix stack is possible for AWS, Azure, and other major cloud providers too. This is especially relevant to companies that are already heavily invested in a certain cloud environment.
Mendix is designed to work across platforms
When you start building a low code app with Mendix, you’ll probably run into some boundaries. And that’s not a limitation of Mendix, if you ask me. It’s just a boundary of having a regular web application with a Java runtime—because that’s what Mendix is. While Mendix can be used as a standalone platform to build low code apps, it has always been intended to be deployed in combination with other technologies when needed.
If you need more advanced technology to build your app—for example, a high-performance search index or something with generative AI—you need to shop around for a platform that supports that development. With a platform like AWS, it’s easy and efficient to use the Mendix-supplied AWS connectors to implement your desired features.
In other words, deploying Mendix alongside Snowflake, AWS, and SAP is a natural fit for companies that want to integrate the latest technologies, digitize more of their existing processes, and use low code to drive innovation. Mendix provides a foundation and enables developers to quickly implement advanced cloud tools without needing deep experience in AWS development or data warehousing.
All you need to know is what kind of data you need to send to the cloud and what kind of data you need to get back. Mendix narrows the process down to just implementing a specific feature and removes the complexity of understanding cloud services or AWS to a deep level.
That’s a big deal for companies that want to digitize and fully leverage their data but lack the resources to embark on a lengthy and expensive AWS-only development project.
Tips for Implementing Mendix in Combination with Strategic Partners
I’ve worked with dozens of companies to deploy Mendix, and along the way, I’ve discovered effective practices for using the platform’s strategic partnerships. Based on my experience, here are three tips for how your company can successfully implement Mendix and cloud platforms together:
Invest in foundational training
Training before implementing Mendix low code or integrating Mendix with cloud systems like AWS and Snowflake is crucial to a smooth deployment.
Not all employees need to be experts in low code development or data warehousing, but they should all have a basic understanding of what these technologies can achieve. This way, everyone knows what they’re working with and the process will not be uncomfortable or risky. It enables the team to make the right decisions early in the process.
For example, you can provide a basic introduction to Mendix, an overview of the transformative impact of low code, and examples of what’s possible by combining Mendix with cloud data services. For experienced Mendix developers, it is good to know the pros and cons of the main cloud services and Snowflake. In practice, developers with such knowledge can fulfill an architect role at the start of a project.
Your training can also involve creating a framework for developers and non-technical employees to talk to one another about key features that a software project will need.
Without this training, stakeholders won’t know why they’re using Mendix or the cloud and implementation will be a bumpy ride for no reason. If they know when to use it properly in the first place.
Introduce guardrails
When using Mendix in combination with strategic partners for the first time, it’s important to set clear guardrails — both financial and operational.
A good place to start is by establishing a defined budget. This enables you to try data connectors and features without overspending. Both AWS and Snowflake offer fine-grained cost monitoring and alerting.
Remember, a budget isn’t meant to constrain your team’s ability to experiment with low code deployments. Rather, it’s to ensure your team remains on track and uses financial resources wisely. It’s not good internal marketing for your project if you have to admit you spent thousands of dollars on random resources because you thought an experimental feature would be neat to try out.
Guardrails also apply on the operational side. For example, it’s possible to allow certain users to only add data to certain schemas in Snowflake, instead of allowing them to create their own. For services like AWS, it is advisable to combine resources for a solution in an account with pre-defined guardrails, as discussed with the team. This prevents accidental deployments of services that are not approved or outside the scope of the solution.
Lean on expert partners
Finally, I want to emphasize how valuable it is to work with experienced low code partners like CLEVR. That’s because they’re essential to empowering—not replacing—your existing development team.
I find that while I have a decent background in AWS development, the in-house low code developers working on a project might understand AWS a bit less. They can build everything they need with Mendix, but they don’t know how to configure AWS in terms of data security, authentication, and the like. Here, a partner can step in and help provide that AWS configuration, enabling them to start building the application they need without the barriers.
Expert low code partners can also speed up your digital transformation process and reduce costs by ensuring the systems you develop address real business needs. In addition, they help you identify opportunities for combining low code with strategic cloud platforms and make sure your new systems offer the scalability and flexibility your solution needs.
Challenges Surrounding Mendix and Cloud Deployments
While deploying Mendix in conjunction with other technologies can be extremely powerful, I’ve also seen companies face some challenges with this multi-system approach.
The first is that developing across more systems requires more knowledge. Developers in smaller teams need to be familiar with Mendix and AWS or Snowflake, which requires familiarity with more programming languages and development patterns.
Another challenge is cost. Cloud services can become very expensive very fast, and it’s easy not to notice how quickly the costs add up. Having a budget helps keep costs within reason, but it’s also necessary to design applications that use cloud-based services efficiently.
Finally, there’s a challenge around what I call observability: companies’ ability to monitor the low code apps they’ve built and track data movement across their systems. Without observability, companies end up building redundant or throw-away apps, which can quickly turn into a landscape that is challenging to maintain. Fortunately, this is easy to overcome when sufficient attention is given from the start.
The Future of Mendix and Strategic Partnerships
Mendix’s strategic partnerships have enabled a new degree of connectivity between low code apps and state-of-the-art cloud vendors and data warehousing systems. I see two trends for how companies can use these strategic partnerships going forward:
Using Mendix for back-end systems
Mendix low code has long been used to build standalone customer or employee apps because of its simplicity, lower cost of ownership, and flexibility. However, companies were initially wary of deploying low code into more complex back-end systems that serve as critical IT infrastructure.
However, I’ve seen that starting to change—largely due to Mendix’s investments in strategic partnerships. All the connectors for AWS, Snowflake, and other services make deploying Mendix in critical back-end systems a realistic use case. Various large enterprises have positioned Mendix as their go-to technology for over a decade already.
In addition, while low code systems might not be as computationally efficient as traditional high code systems for some very specific back-end applications, the gap has closed significantly. In a growing number of cases, I’ve seen companies decide that the much lower cost of low code development outweighs a slight decrease in operational efficiency.
I now find that companies that have built many low-code apps with Mendix are comfortable using it to replace outdated back-end systems. This is especially true when 1) companies don’t have enough developers or 2) their developers are tied up, but they have a Mendix license and a lot of apps. These businesses realize they can build the updates they need with low code in weeks and save a lot of resources along the way.
Combining Mendix and cloud data warehouses to support generative AI
You can also use Mendix’s strategic partnerships with Snowflake and AWS to integrate generative AI into low code software. The cloud platforms offer tools to use large language models (LLMs) with your company’s data in a secure fashion, while Mendix offers connectors to make the user experience seamless with minimal custom coding.
This is exciting because it enables companies to experiment with generative AI relatively cheaply. If you’re using Mendix and you’re open to using cloud vendors like AWS and Snowflake, you can get started with a generative AI prototype in just two hours. That lowers the bar for trying something out and deciding whether it fits your business well. It avoids the need to select one of hundreds of “hype tools” for a similar PoC.
Low code applications with generative AI integrations can also give companies new ways to analyze their data. We often refer to this as “retrieval-augmented generation”—using generative AI to ask questions about your data. As an example, I’m currently working with one customer who has hundreds of pages of legal documents. With generative AI, they can interact with all those documents to see what’s relevant to a specific case, and the AI will highlight what bits of the data it used to answer a particular question. This contributes to explainable AI.
Conclusion
Mendix’s strategic partnerships with Snowflake, AWS, and SAP make it easy for companies to connect low code apps with cloud-based data. They enable companies to quickly develop, iterate, and scale applications that fully leverage their data and unlock the full potential of low code.
To learn more about how your company can deploy Mendix with strategic partner platforms, check out CLEVR’s full suite of Mendix services and solutions.
Article originally published here
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