EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A Bloor InComparison Paper

OutSystems Platform and Force.com:

Different PaaS for Different Players

This executive summary presents highlights from a comparison paper, authored by Bloor Research,*
detailing two different PaaS (platform as a service) solutions - OutSystems Platform and Force.com.

Market for High-Productivity PaaS

Organizations are increasingly looking for platforms
to help them build modern, effective, systems of
engagement that can be delivered quickly and
changed quickly. These platforms ideally offer the
following characteristics:

Platform characteristics
Choice of on-premises and public cloud-hosted
deployment and the ability to move between them at
will (including hybrid cloud implementations);
Lots of existing and satisfied customers, showing that
the platform is usable and effective;
Integration with Salesforce.com, the de-facto
market-leading CRM and related apps platform;
An open, non-proprietary stack, accommodating
both Java and .NET- with no lock-in to any particular
vendor/platform;
Embedded performance analysis services and
availability of process analytics services;
Extreme scalability and performance if needed
(No Limits, No Bounds).

Using cloud doesnt necessarily

(and shouldnt) mean giving up
control of your data and processing.
David Norfolk, Bloor Research

Development experience
Rich development environment (including remote
debugging and process analytics), enabling rapid
delivery of custom apps (which themselves can be
easily customised and/or extended); and providing
support for standard development environments
such as Eclipse;
Support for business-user development as well as IT
professional development;
Easy and effective integration with legacy
applicationseven including, e.g., mainframe CICS
and the like;
Support for just enough agile managed process; e.g.
DevOps.

This provides a context in which we can assess two different PaaS offerings with different backgrounds:
Force.com and OutSystems Platform.

*Bloor Research overview

Bloor Research is one of Europes leading IT research, analysis and consultancy organizations. We explain how to bring
greater Agility to corporate IT systems through the effective governance, management and leverage of Information.
We have built a reputation for telling the right story with independent, intelligent, well-articulated communications
content and publications on all aspects of the ICT industry.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

OutSystems Platform and Force.com: Different PaaS for Different Players

Force.com and OutSystems Platform

Solution Comparison and Analysis

Both OutSystems Platform and (possibly to a lesser

extent) Force.com are typical examples of high
productivity development tools; they abstract away
the complexity of conventional (third generation or
3GL) computer code, generating much of the routine
parts of an application from high-level declarative
statements, leaving the developer free to concentrate
on the high-value business logic. The caveat with
Force.com is due to its fairly conventional Apex
programming language, which is used when things
get more complicated than usual.

The numerical scoring of weighted capabilities which

forms the detail of this report is contained in the Data
Reference Appendix and summarised here in the form
of spider charts with dimensions of product effectiveness, including architecture, performance, ease of use,
and fitness for purpose; stability and risk; support and
coverage; and value of money.

Architecture
5.0
4.0

Value for Money

Performance

3.0
2.0

OutSystems

1.0

Force.com

0.0

Support & Coverage

Ease of Use

Stability & Risk

Fitness for Purpose

Bloors Summary of OutSystems Platform

There is no question in our minds that this OutSystems
innovation is a timely one. The era of the silod IT shop
is past and business success now increasingly comes
from minimising time-to-market, using agile,
app-based, user-centric computing. The cloud and
PaaS fits the emerging business automation model
wellbut businesses adopting these new paradigms
still need and expect choice.

In addition to its basic high-productivity capabilities

(allowing development of business apps at the visual
modelling and business logic level), its strong features
are providing a rich developer experience, without
limits, and with support for change management and
re-factoring; its capabilities for delivering a good
end-user experience; and the fact that it leaves control
in the hands of the organisation employing it (its
support for on premises and hybrid cloud, as well as
public cloud, deployments is an example).

Download the full Bloor report here.