There's a lot to be said for tapping the skills and enthusiasm of non-IT employees by allowing them to create the special-purpose apps they need to get their jobs done efficiently.

But experience shows that while these efforts can be very successful in the short to medium term, issues can arise. This can get worse if the apps are used by people other than the individuals who created them (and their immediate co-workers).

These issues can include security concerns, shortfalls in updating the apps, work duplication, and organisational silos.

The company says this will help organisations cultivate and scale their own home-grown community of citizen developers without sacrificing software quality, consistency, or governance.

"We have always been focused on model-driven [software]," said Pegasystems founder and chief executive Alan Trefler. "The model has become so complete that people are able to do amazing things."

Enterprise Low-Code Factory provides users with pre-defined templates that can be turned into custom apps, plus 'guardrails' that let users produce their own apps while giving IT control over their broader use.

It is already in use at certain customers, said Trefler.

"Low code" doesn't mean "no skill", so Pegasystems will provide educational resources including Pega Academy courses, video tutorials, help documents, and Pega Community articles.

The Factory's dashboard gives users quick access to the apps they use most, the apps they are building, and the ecosystem of approved apps built by others to enable better software reuse, plus links to those education resources.

As part of the Pega Infinity digital transformation suite, the Pega Platform low-code app development environment takes advantage of digital process automation, including AI and robotics. These back-end processes with Pega's customer engagement applications to enable superior customer experiences regardless of channel.

"Enterprise Low-Code Factory encompasses three decades of learning from model-driven application development so businesses can immediately roll out low code organisation-wide," said Pegasystems CTO and vice president of product marketing Don Schuerman.

"Whether you’re a businessperson, developer, or designer, you now have the potential to become a maker within your own organisation to create applications that innovate. At the same time, IT managers can rest easy knowing they can balance control and collaboration through repeatable governance processes."

Schuerman added "We provide a low-code environment for enterprises to deploy at scale" as Enterprise Low-Code Factory is easily adopted by people on the business side of the organisation while providing IT with strong governance and controls.

Enterprise Low-Code Factory is scheduled to be available by the end of Q3 2019 for Pega Platform customers with current support contracts.

Disclosure: The writer attended PegaWorld 2019 as a guest of the company.