Ioan Jacob, is the founder and CEO of FLOWX.AI, a revolutionary AI Application Modernization Platform for enterprise mission-critical applications. It’s a contemporary event-driven platform built on a microservices architecture. It uses the preferred industry standards for process modeling, business rule management and integrates as easily with legacy systems as with the most recent APIs and RPAs.
What initially attracted you to computer science?
I’ve at all times been captivated by the concept of leverage—the thought of force multiplication. Computer science, to me, represents the last word tool in amplifying the most useful capability of individuals: the human mind.
It offers an incredibly rapid path from idea to realization—a trait that has propelled the exponential surge in innovation over the past 50 years. This power of rapid transformation and impact is what initially drew me to computer science.
Now, with FLOWX.AI, we’re redefining how mission-critical software may be built—which implies now we have a possibility to spice up the expansion curve itself. Our world runs on enterprise software – banking, utilities, agriculture, defense – enterprise software undergirds our civilization. And there’s a lot leverage to bringing the perfect technology to the enterprise, because that impacts so many lives downstream, and for this reason we predict we may be so helpful to the world. Today we’re spending trillions of dollars to construct, run and maintain that layer of technology.
So, give it some thought: what if we could make constructing enterprise software orders of magnitude more efficient?
This may enhance vital services like banking, utilities, or defense—making them more interconnected, user-friendly, and more efficient for people to make use of. And, perhaps much more importantly, with the resources freed up we could considerably speed up the pace of innovation.
Imagine, for instance, a world where government agencies can quickly develop and deploy advanced AI systems to streamline public services, improve healthcare delivery, and address pressing social issues. By optimizing enterprise software development, we will unlock a brand new era of technological progress and societal advancement.
We’re not only a part of the tech revolution; we’re redefining its boundaries of what’s possible.
You previously Co-Founded Qualitance, a platform that designed technology and products for Fortune 500 corporations and startups. What was considered one of the more interesting projects that you simply worked on, and what did you learn from this experience?
We were involved in a spread of digital transformation projects at Qualitance with each Fortune 500 corporations and startups.
This experience brought us to an important realization. Despite the rapid evolution in consumer digital products and substantial investments by large corporations, there was an enormous gap in constructing and taking digital solutions to market, especially in mission-critical and core business areas like banking.
This challenge was (and still is) especially pronounced within the financial sector, but is equally prevalent across all enterprise sectors.
We understood the necessity for digital transformation platforms to supply capabilities on three key dimensions which might be today difficult the enterprise:
- Integration – it must have the opportunity to integrate seamlessly with existing complex technology landscapes – from heritage mainframe architectures to modern systems
- Rapid modern digital product development – with the ability to reply to market needs and regulatory requirements in almost real-time. There’s tremendous competition and the IT and business teams need to construct modern digital products that provide excellent user experience quickly and affordably,
- Robustness – reliability, scalability, security: because enterprises handle mission critical workloads, these are non-negotiable requirements.
These observations are on the core of constructing FLOWX.AI. Our focus is on empowering large enterprises to quickly and efficiently develop and modernize digital platforms, while integrating seamlessly capabilities of any existing or recent systems.
When did you first realize that the present methods of software development are broken and never scalable?
Complexity within the enterprise world has increased exponentially, and so have costs and the time it takes to get products to market.
That is what I’ve experienced working alongside many talented teams within the enterprise world for greater than a decade. I even have seen how with the ability to develop robust and good software stays incredibly expensive—despite the access to amazing talent and the proliferation of technologies designed to unravel the issue.
Before FLOWX.AI, the one options for developing digital within the enterprise were either inflexible vertical solutions or massive custom development projects attempting to mix together multiple technology platforms.
In consequence, teams within the enterprise world are constrained by lack of flexibility to construct what they need and are limited by proprietary programming languages and legacy systems. This, coupled with the rise in complexity, is holding essentially the most talented teams back. These teams get sucked into tedious and low-return work that hardly, marginally moves the needle. Spiraling IT costs together with diminishing returns is considered one of the hardest challenges enterprises face. This was particularly evident inside large financial services organizations.
I can not emphasize enough how frustrating that is for everybody within the space. It’s depressing for engineers who should do tedious and unexciting work. It’s keeping business leaders back because they will’t provide their customers with the intuitive, scalable, and connected services they need. So that is what we responded to. We had been working side by side with these people. Actually, we had been these people throughout our careers. So we actually understood them and we desired to fix this problem, to offer them back the control of their technology, of their business.
What was the genesis story behind FLOWX.AI?
We had been working on the platform that ultimately became FLOWX.AI for over a decade. We had this massive feeling that we’re sitting on something incredibly powerful, but we couldn’t quite put our finger on it.
Then, during a gathering with Revolut’s team in London, it hit us. After we learned that Revolut’s business was built on top of Barclays core banking system, we realized that we had on our hands a platform that would enable any bank to develop robust and exquisite mission-critical systems at a speed that was orders of magnitude higher.
Then, our first customer, the biggest bank in Southeastern Europe, adopted our technology and commenced using it as their default digital development platform for a big a part of their business— constructing digital platforms that were facing each customers and employees—from your complete in-branch onboarding for each retail and company banking to asset management platforms. Witnessing the speed at which they were in a position to develop confirmed we were indeed on the verge of a brand new revolution. With the identical team and existing systems, they were in a position to develop in several weeks what used to take a yr or more with FLOWX.AI.
Our innovation is the FlowX AI Core, enabled by a scalable, robust, and open architecture. Our AI Core is the first-ever enterprise AI that may cohesively model technology, business processes and business rules, and user experience. We now have been big believers for a very long time now in the facility of AI to reinforce and speed up human potential, and now we have brought it to fruition throughout the core of our platform.
What are a few of the current problems with how enterprises are currently viewing code generation?
The challenge with automated code generation is the perception that it’s—or that it must be—universally applicable, especially in handling complex systems. While effective for easier applications, it often falls short in additional sophisticated environments. This is not just a limitation of the technology itself but stems from the intricacies in creating detailed specifications that such systems require. Automated tools, unlike human engineers, lack the nuanced understanding crucial to bridge and fill in specification gaps, adjust complex logic, and manage deep integration and decision-making processes.
Furthermore, there is a risk in underestimating the worth of human input and expertise. Although automation can speed up certain development processes, it hasn’t yet evolved to completely grasp and manage the complexities of advanced systems.
At FLOWX.AI, now we have taken a rather different path. Our approach leverages AI to boost, not replace, human expertise. We deal with using AI to reinforce human capabilities, ensuring that the event of complex systems is just not just accelerated but additionally precisely tailored to specific business requirements. This strategy goals to strike a balance, harnessing the speed and efficiency of AI with a “human-in-the-loop” approach, retaining the critical insights and adaptableness of human oversight.
Why is replacing coding with no-code or low-code tools not the answer?
The restrictions of no-code tools stem from their inherent simplicity which, while user-friendly, fail to satisfy the precise and sophisticated needs of large-scale enterprises. Low-code also lacks the complete power and control of the widespread programming languages—and further, it creates a resourcing constraint, having to seek out or upskill resources. And what businesses need is the liberty and suppleness to construct and innovate. That is why we brought together generative AI with no-code visual design on an open BYOC architecture which may be prolonged with any programming language.
Nevertheless, the main target of digital product development goes beyond coding. It encompasses the creation of efficient processes, intuitive products, and seamless user experiences. This holistic approach is significant in addressing the multifaceted challenges of enterprise solution development.
FLOWX.AI was built to satisfy the end-to-end needs of constructing digital twins for enterprise businesses. We don’t just deal with coding; we leverage the facility of AI to help in accelerating constructing complex, bespoke enterprise solutions that consider all elements of the digital product development lifecycle.
Could you share your views on the advantages of making a hybrid of low-code and coding?
Making a hybrid of low-code and coding may be very powerful since it offers a singular mix of efficiency, flexibility, and customization. It provides speed, while still enabling complete control over what people construct.
This is a component of what we provide. Our approach integrates AI, no-code, and coding techniques to construct comprehensive digital solutions. I can break this down into 4 predominant areas:
- AI-Generated Baseline: Today, the FlowX AI can generate around 60% to 80% of the event process. This AI layer quickens the creation of fundamental components—process, code, user experience—significantly, reducing initial development time.
- No-Code Visual Development: With visual design interfaces, we allow for quick assembly and modification of applications, enabling rapid prototyping and accelerated iterative development loops. This often takes completion to 90-95%.
- Bring-Your-Own-Code (BYOC) for Customization: The remaining bits, which require specific and detailed customizations, are handled through traditional coding BYOC in any programming language. This permits for the creation of highly tailored solutions, ensuring that the ultimate product meets the precise needs and specifications of the shopper.
- AI-Assisted Development and Optimization: our AI helps enterprise teams maintain consistency over time as they modify and update functionality and experience, but additionally suggests improvements—from technology to process and user experience—and monitors and identifies problems in real-time.
The important thing advantage of this hybrid approach may be seen especially with regards to making changes and maintaining the software. Teams developing on FlowX.ai can add in only just a few weeks recent functionality that will typically take years so as to add to an existing system. That’s because we offer features that help users easily make modifications and since our platform encapsulates many of the complexity, handling non-functional requirements corresponding to scalability and security. In consequence, any code that should be created or modified lies in additional isolated components, providing for more control and testability. This setup makes it easier to vary, track and audit changes, but additionally to check things – resulting in an enormous reduction in effort and maintenance.
Ultimately, combining AI, no-code, and traditional coding, balances speed and ease of use with the flexibility to create highly customized and sophisticated enterprise solutions since it blends the speed of gen AI with the accessibility of visual design and the complete power and control of programming languages.
More importantly, this approach frees up engineers from quite a lot of tedious tasks and ongoing maintenance, so innovation doesn’t stall.
How will AI augment engineers versus replacing them?
Our belief is AI can’t and is not going to replace engineers, it’s going to augment their capabilities. The basic human element in engineering involves sophisticated pondering and problem-solving, areas where human intellect and creativity are irreplaceable. AI is adept at handling about 80% of tasks, particularly those which might be repetitive or considered low-value. AI excels at efficiently processing routine work with speed and accuracy, ultimately enabling them to deal with higher-level problems and modern solutions.
This can be a net-positive for engineers. The important thing moving forward is to work out tips on how to create a synergistic relationship where each complements the opposite, resulting in a more productive and modern engineering environment. This approach underscores a future where AI and human intelligence work in tandem, each playing to their strengths to realize greater outcomes in the sector of engineering and beyond.
Are you able to discuss the modern application modernization platform that FLOWX.AI has developed?
FLOWX.AI is the primary ever unified platform for end-to-end enterprise digital development, with an open architecture that makes it easy to develop and extend further – with any programming language.
On the core of the platform there’s an intelligent orchestration layer that may integrate fast any – literally any type – of existing system, through the intelligent integration layer. On top of the orchestration layer teams can develop modern digital products again very fast – through our AI-powered omnichannel user experience layer,
As I discussed previously, FLOWX.AI brings together AI-assisted development, low-code / no-code in addition to full coding capabilities. This mixture provides enterprises with a versatile, scalable and robust platform they will use to construct and take applications to market.
We built FLOWX.AI in response to lack of innovation in application development. Traditional methods are sometimes too rigid and price prohibitive. No-code solutions, while promising in theory, have often fallen short in meeting the precise and sophisticated demands of contemporary enterprises. Vertical point solutions are inflexible and hard to customize and develop further – they’re not designed for continuous development.
Our customers are achieving remarkable results. As an illustration, a lot of our customers can integrate around 20 systems in only 4-6 weeks and develop, construct, and launch complex digital solutions like digital mortgages inside 8 to 12 weeks.
Why is that this solution in a position to scale so well?
FLOWX.AI is built on a state-of-the-art, elastically-scalable, event-driven architecture, which relies on microservices and containerization. Using microservices architecture further enhances scalability by allowing for the independent scaling and updating of various parts of the appliance without disrupting your complete system.
This fully cloud-native framework ensures agility, resilience, and scalability, crucial for handling the dynamic demands of enterprise-level digital product development. It is usually an infrastructure-agnostic architecture, which may be deployed in any cloud / multi-cloud / hybrid cloud setup or on-prem.
It also provides high availability and fault tolerant deployment setups, that are vital for maintaining uninterrupted service in mission-critical applications.
The mix of microservices and containerization in an open architecture positions FLOWX.AI as an excellent platform for enterprises seeking to innovate rapidly while maintaining high standards of reliability and security. This architecture not only supports the present technological needs of enterprises but additionally positions them to effortlessly adapt to future advancements and challenges within the digital landscape.