Low-code pioneer Appian has pushed out a new release of its developer platform, and has added support for users to take advantage of AI capabilities powered by Google’s Cloud Platform.
Appian’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) combines process management and digital process automation with a low-code development model aimed at delivering business solutions with considerably less coding required than traditional development approaches.
The new release includes Appian AI, touted by the firm as a way for Appian customers to add artificial intelligence capabilities to any application built with the platform. It is claimed to be free, although charges may apply with increased levels of usage.
The AI capability is delivered via Google AI services, which Appian links to via a library of no-code Connected System integrations. The result is drag-and-drop composition for AI apps, without the complexity of contracting with Google as a third-party provider and having to manage the associated resources, Appian claims.
“We set up their link to Google’s AI services and our customers are off to the races. And, we subsidise the entire cost of the free tier of Appian AI, so all the customer has to think about is which services to use for their business problem,” said Medhat Galal, Vice President of Software Development at Appian.
The kind of facilities that Appian is covering includes Google’s Vision API for such tasks as Optical Character Recognition and Google Natural Language for sentiment analysis, syntax analysis, and content classification.
Elsewhere, the new version expands the Appian AppMarket library of no-code Connected Systems and UI Component Plug-ins for its platform. These are packaged integrations to specific third-party systems that enable solutions built with Appian’s platform to include data or functionality from key enterprise applications.
Support has been added for Salesforce, Google Maps, Microsoft PowerBI, Amazon S3, Twilio, Genesys, and others.
Appian claims that the new release makes application design even simpler than before with a new no-code visual interface for creating data store queries. A new Visual Query Editor is integrated with Appian’s Interface Designer and Paging Grid, and allows designers to create queries faster and with fewer errors, while requiring less expertise to get started, the firm said.
New DevOps features are said to make it easier than ever to automate deployment of new applications across systems. This includes automated code review and monitoring features across application elements including process models, data, rules, and interfaces.
Appian also touts new security accreditations in the latest release, including ISO 27001, Health Information Trust Alliance HITRUST, and US government Impact Level 4 requirements for Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).