Gigabit January 2019

DIGITAL DISRUPTION
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acquired Mendix for US$730mn in
cash. Den Haan believes that this
signifies how low-code development is
here to stay. “It’s important to note that
Siemens is investing more into Mendix
over the next three years than they
bought the company for. This is one of
the biggest investments in the lowcode
market to date. The physical and
digital world are quickly converging,
you can no longer imagine a product or
company that doesn’t have software at
its core and I think Siemens has
recognised this. If you don't grow as a
company and become a software
company you will quickly become
irrelevant. I think that is what digital
transformation is all about – it’s about
transforming your company to
becoming a digital native.”
Take Zurich Insurance, who used
Mendix’s low-code development
platform to build a so-called ‘face
quote app’ to encourage young people
to enter the insurance market. “They
had a wild idea whereby they wanted to
allow people to take a selfie and use
artificial intelligence (AI) to identify the
age of the person so that they could
give them an age-appropriate quote.”
Using Mendix’s platform they built the
app quickly and more recently they’ve
been nominated for an innovation
award based on this application. Most
importantly though, den Haan, points
out that although Mendix is a technology
vendor, housing a technology
platform is just a small part of what it
“It’s not about
technology. It’s
about enabling
the business to
grow faster, to
reinvent itself, to
add something
to the market”
—
Johan den Haan,
Chief Technology Officer, Mendix
JANUARY 2019