In October 2024, the most innovative and exciting companies in the no-code and low-code space gathered in Paris for the annual NoCode Summit.
Several members of XRay.Tech’s team attended to learn about the latest developments in no-code, share our services, and get to know the people in our industry.
At the conference, XRay’s Doc Wiliams had the chance to talk with Sean Montgomery, co-founder and CTO of Xano, a no-code backend database focused on building through visual development.
They discussed the evolution of visual development, Xano's journey, and what's on the horizon for the company.
Here are some highlights from their conversation.
From Google Photos to visual development pioneer
Sean Montgomery's journey in technology spans 25 years, beginning with notable roots at Google. As one of the lead engineers on the original Picasa team and later Google Photos, Sean spent six and a half years at the tech giant before venturing out on his own.
"After that amount of time, I got my confidence to leave the nest," Sean explains. He went on to form a development agency, which he ran for about ten years. It was during this period that Xano began to take shape, initially as an internal tool.
"In the beginning, it was an internal tool just for us. Kind of like our secret weapon," Sean recalls. "But eventually it got so good year after year, with client-driven requests – we weren't making stuff up. The clients were demanding it, so it kept getting more efficient by client-driven demand."
What started as a strictly internal tool became the basis for Xano, a platform that makes it easy to create a no-code backend for an application.
Evolution from no-code to visual development
Today, Xano positions itself as the leader in backend visual development. Sean believes visual development represents the evolution of no-code, addressing some of the stigma associated with traditional no-code solutions.
"No-code kind of has a stigma where it's not good enough for traditional developers, but as it keeps evolving, it's clearly working. The productivity gains are through the roof, and it's kind of hard to ignore," Sean explains. "So we believe it's time to rebrand the movement."
Sean and the team at Xano believe that the term “visual development” better encapsulates the sophistication and capability of modern no-code tools, and makes it clear that the technology doesn’t need to exclude traditional developers at all.
Transforming business through standardization
One of Xano's key benefits is its ability to standardize development processes. Sean emphasizes how this standardization addresses a common challenge in traditional coding environments: "When you're talking about pure code, everyone kind of does it their own way, and everyone may be smart, but one developer does it their way and another one doesn't understand it."
Visual development solves this by providing consistent, visual representations of logic flows. "The nice thing about visual development is it always looks the same. You can see the flow diagrams, the loops. It means that it lowers the barrier of entry for other people to contribute – non-engineers, project managers. It's really great."
Real-world impact: a case study
Sean shared a compelling example of Xano's impact through their work with Heimstaden, a large enterprise company in the rental apartments sector. The company faced challenges with scaling their development team while maintaining quality.
"They have a large development team, but they needed to do more. And the issue is…hiring good developers is tricky," Sean explains. "So they needed to actually take a step back and become more efficient with less. They went from all-code to a no-code flow where they're using Xano... now they're actually able to do way more with way less and are moving faster than they ever dreamed."
Looking Ahead: Xano Script and AI Integration
Looking toward 2025, Xano is introducing exciting new developments, particularly with Xano Script. This new feature bridges the gap between visual and traditional development, offering a new way to add code to a backend database.
"We're making [Xano Script] literally look exactly like the visual development," Sean explains. "The structure is the same, which means that we spent a lot of time trying to compact a lot of information, but without making it cryptic."
The vision extends beyond just creating a new scripting language. Xano plans to leverage AI to transform Xano Script into functional syntax in other programming languages and vice versa.
“What we want to do is have the Al scan Xano Script and then actually turn that into other languages. So if you feel like ‘I can do amazing things with Xano, but I have this Python project where I need that’ – No problem.”
This two-way conversion capability could be particularly valuable for companies dealing with legacy code.
"There is so much legacy code that is so old but critically important for enterprise companies... Everyone's scared to touch it. Well, let's bring it into Xano and introduce that old code to visual development. All of a sudden, because the barrier of entry has been lowered, people can now understand what's going on and then start actually changing it instead of being scared of it."
With their visual development tools, Xano aims to give every company the ability to build and update effective products.
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Ready to transform your business with Xano or other no-code and low-code tools? XRay specializes in helping companies build efficient, scalable solutions using visual development platforms. Learn more about our services here on our site and schedule a free consultation call when you’re ready.
You can also explore our blog or our YouTube channel to learn more about automating your team’s daily work.
This interview was conducted by Doc Williams from XRay.Tech at the NoCode Summit 2024 in Paris.
