What Amazon Honeycode’s Arrival Means For Businesses
We probably thought that when Google started doing it, perhaps they will lead the race of No-code. Apparently, a strong competitor has recently been unleashed, all credits to Amazon and its latest Honeycode. No-code is certainly on the rise and it is wise to adapt to this growing and trending technique than despise it (anything but despise it, please!).
As a quick look into this new product, Amazon Honeycode is a completely low-code (rather no-code) development tool that is aimed at anyone with minimum software development knowledge to start coding. All of this is backed by AWS and its database. I mean, drag-and-drop features allow people to add/remove options. It is as simple as that. A quick introduction below can further clear things for you:
The application allows developers to invite up to 20 users for free. It is after this that they have to pay per user. According to the AWS Vice President Larry Augustin:
“Customers have told us that the need for custom applications far outstrips the capacity of developers to create them. Now with Amazon Honeycode, almost anyone can create powerful custom mobile and web applications without the need to write code.”
Amazon saw the need and produced a solution, that is what Honeycode is all about.
Amazon Honeycode Is All About Businesses Looking For Custom Software
Amazon is sticking a note out for other businesses: “We got you!” Everything they built with Amazon Honeycode is all about businesses and their need for custom enterprise software applications. Check this out:
Honeycode provides users with a set of templates for common uses. These can be as common as to-do lists or surveys, schedules and inventory management. Content tracking is possible along with time off reporting and event management. Users can bring data into a blank workbook and they can use the spreadsheet interface to define the data model and design application screens with objects like buttons, lists and menus and input fields for forms.
Before this, people would have to resort to spreadsheets to do this job manually. The company now claims that they are adding efficiency to this procedure by bringing a product to build custom applications. AWS argues they noticed the demand for custom enterprise applications outgrowing their supply by the software development teams. To cater to the demand-and-supply, they tried to remove the load on the development teams by bringing a no-code application for businesses and entrepreneurs.
“People have been using spreadsheets for decades. They’re very familiar. And you can write some very complicated, deep, very powerful expressions and build some very powerful spreadsheets. You can do the same with Honeycode. We felt people were familiar enough with that metaphor that we could give them that full power along with the ability to turn that into an app.” — Larry Augustin
It Continues The Spreadsheet Display
Perhaps what I like most about this service is how Amazon Honeycode continues to use the spreadsheet display just because there are so many people accustomed to this sort of view. Users are free to work in spreadsheet-style formulae to work with data manipulation. Here, it is interesting how AWS refers to its Honeycode users as ‘Builders’. These builders can easily set up notifications, reminders, and approval workflows.
Additionally, the database can extend to 100,000 rows per workbook, which is so much more than what we had before this. The aim here is to get businesses working without thinking about their software limitations.
A Light-weight Tool Which Businesses Can Certainly Cope with
AWS continues to spam its message that it is aimed at ‘citizen developers’. These are just end-users working at enterprises and corporations. The tool is incredibly lightweight to handle. However, this can go either way for Amazon. I mean, the tool is so lightweight that perhaps it only might be suitable for any custom solutions right now. The functionalities can also be limited for now, but this is just the beta version or the initial release version.
AWS continues to expand and so will Amazon Honeycode. Hence, over time the tool can potentially build a no-code configurable UI, like a form or an application into a complex application running on AWS.
Amazon Honeycode — Definitely Something To Look Out For
If we look closely at Amazon’s intentions with its Honeycode, it is clearly is challenging Microsoft and Google. Both of these big shots have their version of low-code/no-code deployed such as Power Apps and Appsheet, respectively. However, these are giants at this game (but, for how long?). Power Apps launched back in 2016 whereas Google bought a 6-year-old startup in January. Although these products are several years ahead in the market, Amazon is not intimidated at all. Just look at how it is challenging all of the online markets in a single go:
It might not be today, but it will definitely be standing right at the face of Google and Microsoft in just a few years!
