How to Develop and Deploy Digital Solutions Faster on AWS

The core of the Mendix Ecosystem is driven by sharing – whether it be ideas, software, or values – and this holds true in one of our most significant partnerships to date with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Providing a true all-in-one platform experience is only possible when you empower users to share and build between their favorite technology providers.

For Mendix and AWS, our partnership dates back to 2015 and is now evolving at a rapid pace, empowering AWS Cloud users to reap the benefits of low-code application development in a low-effort and cost-efficient way. What we also share is a common goal for our customers – to enable you to rapidly develop and deploy applications which have an immediate impact on your business.

Rapid Application Delivery

Development teams have struggled to keep up with the business demand for new digital solutions in the last decade, a trend which has snowballed since early 2020. With two key ingredients hard to come by – more professional developers and more time – the rise of low-code is a logical reaction to these deficits. Over the last 15 years Mendix has helped customers to address decades-old backlogs, realize millions in cost savings, and deliver differentiated customer experiences.

Cloud adoption is another connected metric, and unsurprisingly an estimated 64% of large enterprises are AWS Cloud users. The ability to deploy custom digital solutions with ease is just as important as the ability to create them in the first place. Mendix has been cloud-native on AWS since 2016, with the Mendix Cloud offering, and customers can also deploy Mendix in their own AWS environment with our Mendix for Private Cloud offering.

The next step in becoming the fastest and easiest way for you to develop applications on AWS is a further integration of our platform ecosystems, which features new suites of connectors and industry-ready templates.

Shortening the Path to Productivity

The same way that Mendix automates tedious and time-consuming development tasks, our goal alongside AWS is to further eliminate the roadblocks that hinder a productive software development environment.

Harness Domain Expertise with Ease

Specialized development talent capable of leading custom integration projects is costly and scarce. Instead of finding and hiring a developer with years of experience integrating AWS services, you can now rely on a low-code developer to drag-and-drop hours’ worth of integration work within a consistent and governed environment.

The Mendix Marketplace is full of out-of-the-box functionality to help your team deliver connected experiences more quickly, and today that includes several AWS connectors which enable you to:

  • Innovate your app experiences with machine learning services like Amazon Rekognition for image and video analysis, Amazon Polly for text-to-speech, and Amazon Translate 
  • Delight your developers with scalable storage, database, and compute services like Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB and AWS Lambda
  • Integrate your applications smoothly with Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) and Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS, coming soon)

    Your development team will no longer have to spend time on the complexities of authentication against AWS APIs, and can instead integrate a significant experience enhancement with just a few clicks.

    Pre-Configured Solutions for Your Industry

    Every organization has unique business needs, which often makes it challenging to meet 100% of your requirements with off-the-shelf tools. With low-code, you can take a modified approach to the build vs. buy quandary by starting with an app template.

    Across industries like financial services, insurance, and manufacturing, there are still many commonalities in the types of processes your business carries out (think: client onboarding, claims management, and supply chain management, respectively). In these instances, templates offer a foundation with the majority of the required functionality, allowing you to then customize the app to meet your organization’s specific requirements. Contributors to the Mendix Ecosystem have been creating application templates for some of industry’s most common and critical processes – all of which can run seamlessly on your AWS Cloud environment.

    In some cases, these templates are already integrated with common and proven AWS services. For instance, the Mendix Claims Management template is a responsive web app template meant to guide a customer through the claims process with speech-to-text and chatbot functionalities, the latter supported with Amazon Lex.

    Efficient Spend Management

    While it may not be as enticing as drag-and-drop IoT, the ability to leverage new platforms without onboarding a new technology vendor or finding incremental budget is an important one. AWS Cloud users can speed their Mendix adoption by purchasing the Platform in the AWS Marketplace. In this way, you have the flexibility to experiment with (and eventually scale) low-code development without starting an entirely new procurement process.

    Prioritizing Ease of Deployment

    Organizations like Banijay Benelux, an independent television production company, are already realizing the accelerated transformation possibilities between Mendix and AWS. By deploying on Mendix for Private Cloud and using AWS services such as Amazon Transcribe and AWS Elemental MediaConvert, Banijay Benelux is automating hours of manual employee work and adapting more quickly to their users’ demands.

    Throughout this year, Mendix will continue to expand the availability of AWS Connectors, increase template integrations, and further simplify deployment. As our ecosystem grows, there will be more opportunities to get the maximum value out of your preferred cloud provider and develop solutions holistically, in a low-code way.