In today’s volatile economy, enterprises can face dizzying disruptions or golden opportunities. The outcome often depends on an organization’s assessment and adoption of new technologies and innovations that are transforming market sectors at a torrential pace.
To master this complexity, C-suite leaders use an organizing principle from the natural world: the ecosystem. An ecosystem goes beyond the simple model of competition to describe dynamic interactions and collaboration within an aligned community of customers, suppliers, and partners that enables all to thrive.
Technology leaders align for digital enablement
Mendix is an end-to-end platform ecosystem fortified with strategic alliances and partnerships that align with the speed and power of low-code software development. Our driving vision is to build a virtual galaxy of enterprises and technology providers capable of providing end users with a one-stop shop of digital enablement.
Mendix has formed partnerships with industry leaders — including AWS, SAP, Capgemini, and other global partners —to accelerate the time to market of an enterprise’s most ambitious business goals and greatly simplify any risks or challenges when deploying purpose-built digital solutions.
Unleashing the “network effect”
Partners in the Mendix ecosystem operate in one of three ways:
- Reselling the Mendix license
- Providing expert services for digital transformation
- Building business solutions that run on the Mendix platform
Alliances create so much added value that researchers have documented an exponential growth curve of capabilities for ecosystem participants. McKinsey researchers describe the “network effect” unleashed by ecosystems as a paradigm shift in the business world. They estimate that digital ecosystems will account for 30 percent — roughly $60 trillion — in global revenue across multiple economic sectors by 2025.
In each case, the complementary benefits of alliances unlock a force factor that augments IT staff for support and training, blasting past the limits of developer time and budgetary constraints. More applications move through production and deployment and enterprises obtain business-critical ROI in record time. In this way, enterprises that utilize the prebuilt solutions and technology offerings of Mendix ecosystem partners and alliances enables such customers to reduce the total cost of ownership for digital solutions.
A stellar line-up of digital ecosystem partners
When selecting a low-code platform, enterprises should always examine the vendor’s strategy around technology alliance. The right partners using the best tools will make fast work of digital transformation goals including:
- Global or geographically targeted cloud-based deployment options
- Integrating AI tools with enterprise processes and applications
- Modernization initiatives that require clean extensions or integrations with core systems
- Unlocking siloed data and other customer information for improved performance, analytics, and user experience across a unified digital landscape
- Embedding high standards of governance, security, and reliability for all digital operations via trusted, blue-chip partners
Drilling down for a closer look at our ecosystem reveals the range of strengths each type of partner brings to the table.
A powerful pact between allies
Mendix’s strategic alliances with the world’s leading technology providers — including AWS and SAP — enable enterprise customers to easily integrate new capabilities and unite a complex software landscape to future-proof enterprise performance and operations.
With an implementation partner such as data warehousing leader SAP, enterprises can leverage Mendix to add customized layers of tailored extensions to the company’s tech stack, thereby keeping the core systems clean. As an alliance partner, SAP has created specialized, low-code connectors and components that speed up integration and unify the user experience across the firm’s software portfolio.
Our partnership with AWS further allows us to put critical capabilities in the hands of our end users. One example of this value exchange is the integration we recently launched between Amazon Bedrock (a fully managed service of trained AI services) and Mendix. This Mendix-AWS connector simplifies the process of integrating Generative AI into a Mendix-built application with a few simple clicks.
By democratizing access to GenAI, enterprise fusion teams are empowered to rapidly build smart applications with augmented AI capabilities. And that’s just one of nearly 30 AWS-Mendix connectors available in our marketplace, empowering our customers with a comprehensive, low-code approach to adopting next-generation capabilities.
Mendix’s alliance with open-source software specialists such as Red Hat illustrates a similar example of mutual benefits. Developers with specialized knowledge can compose adaptable solutions that they can customize for targeted uses.
With these alliances, the tangled knot of developing, testing, and deploying these solutions unravels. Enterprises reap the gains of continuous innovation, producing more targeted applications at a vastly reduced cost and with far less risk.
Teaming up with global system integrators (GSIs)
Building out enterprise-ready software at the transformational level, by its very nature, is hugely consequential. CIOs evaluate potential GSI partners against an array of risks and rewards related to data security, costs, ROI, competitive standing, and brand reputation.
Mendix’s GSI partners include Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others. They combine Mendix’s best-in-breed development platform with their own domain expertise, proven track record, and implementation capabilities to transform global business processes across every economic sector. And they have the capacity to stay the course with enterprise customers over the long term.
In a league of their own — local system integrators (LSIs)
Like GSIs, the LSIs provide solutions for mid-size and smaller enterprises. These local parts act on a regional scale and typically have a lot of technical expertise. And, like GSIs, the LSI might be a value-added platform reseller. With smaller staffs and more targeted domain expertise, a local SI partner can offer organizations a range of services, including low-code Centers of Excellence for additional developer training and support for Mendix-built applications.
Ecosystems power up an exponential curve of value
The successful business ecosystem enables its participants to optimize costs and resources. It mitigates adoption risks for the entire network while hastening value creation and business revenue. Targeted collaborations across networks of trusted partners have upended yesterday’s rules of divide and conquer.
To put it simply: Working alone, we might go faster. Working together, we master.
