How Build.One Used OpenEdge to Create a Leading Low-Code Platform

Build.One is one of Progress’ longest-serving OpenEdge and Corticon partners. Learn more about our partnership with the company, how they use Progress products, and what this means for the future.

On October 7, 2021, German TV personality, serial entrepreneur, and venture capitalist Frank Thelen made headlines when he announced that his VC firm, Freigeist Capital, was leading a seed investment into Build.One, a cloud-based platform designed to create low code business applications. Thelen is well-known in Europe for being involved in tech and venture capital, became familiar with the company, and began to dive deeper into their platform.

Together with his experienced team, he supports the company in all business areas, starting with the successful rebranding from Akioma to Build.One shortly after the investment.

What Does Build.One, Well, Build?

The Blueprint technology is one of the main differentiators. When building an application, a wide range of predefined objects can be selected from a repository and configured. These configurations are then stored not as code, but as metadata. In the end, every application in Build.One consists out of the configurations that we call the Blueprint. With this technology, a number of advantages come into play: when a browser wants to draw a screen from this application the Build.One Rendering-Engine interprets the configurations and creates the front end code in real time.

The technology can be used in several environments, including on a desktop, browser, mobile or even a tablet. Customers don’t always have to invest in a frontend that eventually becomes legacy. Build.One takes care of new technologies and keeps the Rendering-Engine up to date.

In case an application requires a more complex business logic, developers can add professional code (‘Pro-Code’) to the application. Thus, application development becomes quite flexible.

"Since this technology didn't exist, we developed it ourselves to build our ERP system and other applications for our customers with it," Build.One CEO Mike Liewehr said in a press release. "When people started asking us how we managed to develop such complex applications in such a short time, we realized that the Blueprint technology itself was a product companies needed, and that's how Build.One was born."

How is this sophisticated technology built? Through a combination of several software components, but one Progress product stands out among the rest. In fact, Progress' OpenEdge, DataDirect, Corticon and Kinvey all serve as backbones of Build.One's product.

Liewehr has been working with the company for more than 10 years, with his most recent position at the company being Executive Partner. Considering his tenure with the company, Liewehr understands the product inside and out and the longtime partnership between Build.One and Progress.

Progress and Build.One’s Long-Term Partnership

Over the last quarter of a century, the company's partnership with us has resulted in several unique use cases. Some of which have been added as functions to the core of the Build.One platform, the Blueprint layer. The most recent example is Build.One implemented Coriticon.js to enable its customers to improve upon UIs that are being implemented on customer-built applications.

As a long-term partner, we are proud to be part of this success story and of the recent big steps taken by Build.One, namely the investment and the rebranding. It is something to celebrate and reminisce on the accomplishments and a chance to look forward to the future of how we, meaning Progress and Build.One can grow and scale together.

Klaus Gudat, Principal Key Account Manager at Progress, has personally known Liewehr for 20 years. Much like the Build.One CEO, Gudat is also in the front row observing what is to come next. A German native, Gudat knows the positive impact an investor like Frank Thelen can have on a technology company. He is confident that users of Build.One will notice how its use of OpenEdge has been successful for them for so long that it will grow interested in potential customers.

"The next generation is a mix of technology and OpenEdge is one of the main building blocks of Build.One. This will bring new partners as new end users to the old batch mode," said Gudat of the longtime partnership. "The most interesting part for Progress is we have a high number of applications that are still desktop-based. In the long run, there will be competition, and if these partners want to survive with OpenEdge, they have to go to the cloud or have a cloud offering."

What is next for Progress and Build.One? It looks like the sky is the limit, but one thing is for sure, Liewehr is going to be leading a prominent company in the low-code space, powered by Progress.

Are you interested in learning more about OpenEdge for your organization? Click here to see how you can enable your company to start building applications or leverage the cloud for important projects.

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