Why Unqork Just Became the First Enterprise-Grade Dev Platform to Provide Open-Source Spec

By Bassam Chaptini, Co-Founder and CTO, Unqork

From Unqork’s inception in 2017, we’ve done things differently. We were determined to overcome our customers’ most persistent blocks to digital transformation, whether they rely on traditional coding or low-code/no-code solutions. To do so, we engineered the world’s first completely code-free application development platform. 

Now, we’re shaking things up again by becoming the first provider of a full-stack development platform for building mission-critical apps to make our platform spec open source. Right now, you can access our runtime spec—an open-source standard that powers complex, feature-rich, enterprise-grade apps—on GitHub. 

It’s all part of an exciting new release, starting with Vega—a new suite of features and a next-generation codeless runtime offering both enhanced user experiences and improved performance. The release also includes everything from robust support for composite apps and case management solutions to gen AI-powered development productivity tools.    

Unlocking IP, unleashing innovation

Historically, low-code/no-code and other SaaS providers have tried to create a “moat” that locks in customer IP and data. Unfortunately, that means their customers can find themselves locked into an ecosystem that holds them back from the next level of innovation that their business requires. 

That method clashes with Unqork’s core values.  Our company was founded to remove blocks to innovation, not impose them. Our customers have always owned their IP, and now we’re taking the next step with Open Source Spec, which makes our state-of-the-art codeless spec publicly available. 

How Open Source Spec benefits our customers

We engineered Unqork’s codeless platform to entirely remove coding from the equation. By contrast, low-code/no-code requires some, and often a great deal, of manual code (and often multiple languages requiring multiple runtime specs) to create complex, enterprise-grade apps. 

By entirely removing code and making development entirely visual, the Unqork platform doesn’t just speed development and unlock business/IT collaboration. It also eliminates the often crushing cost of maintaining legacy software. Unqork handles enterprise-grade security, compliance, and upgrades on an ongoing basis, so our customers can focus on delivering innovation.

Today, anyone can explore our new state-of-the-art runtime spec, peer-review our work, and—perhaps mostly importantly—create their own innovative solutions built on our code. Our JSON-based standard represents applications across user interfaces, business logic, data management, & more! And it is built on web standard technologies and an open standard to ensure our customer’s applications are both best-in-class and future-proof.

By making that spec publicly available, everyone who currently works on or benefits from our codeless platform can expect the value they derive to increase, thanks to: 

• IP owned by our customers. Open Source Spec not only provides transparency and a greater assurance of portability but also increases our customers’ confidence that they own their IP.
• A more robust, secure platform. Open Source Spec enables technologists to conduct peer reviews that lead to a better, more secure platform. 
• A more future-proof platform. Before investing in any solution, decision-makers don’t just want to know that it will meet their needs today, but that it will also grow and scale along with an ever-changing tech and competitive landscape. Now, Open Source Spec encourages the development of an even more feature-rich ecosystem to meet future business and technological challenges. 
• A more feature-rich platform. Now, technologists can build on our spec to render new apps, capabilities, or experiences that are not currently supported by our platform. This means Unqork customers have access to an open ecosystem that will only become more feature-rich and secure as adoption increases. 
• More productive developers. Unqork’s spec is a powerful development tool built on web-standard technologies, as opposed to a SaaS development platform that requires significant, bespoke training. Open Source Spec provides a catalyst for developers to innovate new solutions faster by starting with a blueprint of source code. 
• Faster migrations & acceleration of generative AI/LLM. Open Source Spec enables specialized companies to build models for accelerating migrations. They can also create solutions using generative AI and LLM that build on our codeless spec. 

At Unqork, we don’t believe in lock-in. We want our customers to own their own IP. And we built our codeless platform to make this possible. Open Source Spec not only advances that goal but will ensure that our platform continues to drive innovation for years to come.

Read more about our Winter 2024 Platform Release features here.