Statement by João Abril de Abreu, from OutSystems

Name: João Abril de Abreu
Name of the company: Outsystems
Business area: Information technology
Position in the company: Innovation and Academic Relations Manager
INESC TEC Centre(s) with which the company collaborated: HASLAb – High-Assurance Software Laboratory
Project manager (INESC TEC): José Orlando Pereira
Title of the project: RADicalize

1. What is your professional background with INESC TEC? (when did it start, how did it developed,…)

We started to collaborate with INESC TEC in 2016 under the RADicalize project, which is funded by the Portuguese Government.

2. Briefly describe the main projects you have carried out in collaboration with INESC TEC.

This is the second phase of the collaboration in the RADicalize project. In the first phase, INESC TEC helped us assessing and using the Containers’ technology in the best way possible. In the second phase, we were developing a way to integrate Big Data sources in OutSystems applications, using a low-code approach.

3. What are the significant outcomes about these projects that you can highlight?

The Big Data sources have massive amounts of data that are poorly structured and that have different formats, which makes them hard to use. With the help of INESC TEC, we created an easy and efficient way to develop enterprise applications that consume these data without the need to write any kind of integration code.

4. What is your opinion on your experience working with INESC TEC?

INESC TEC’s know-how in this area allowed us to quickly find a solution that we didn’t know it was possible. The technical expertise of INESC TEC allowed us to prototype and to validate the solution, that is, the collaboration gave us a lot of effective value.

5. What is the possibility of future collaborations with INESC TEC?

In another completely different project, we’ll continue to work with INESC TEC in the assessment of the usability and the learning curve of the development platform OutSystems. This is a very poorly explored area and we hope to achieve very interesting, and most importantly, useful results for OutSystems.