Power Apps vs. SAP Extension Suite (discontinued)

PowerApps is well suited for "quick-wins" and fast prototypes of business solutions. It also is beneficial for situations where business partners and developers work together - it allows the business folks to provide a "quick-and-dirty" prototype which is then fleshed-out by developers that are trained experts on the platform. The interactive and easy to understand representation of the solution allows business partners to "see" the solution and add, remove, or correct aspects of it themselves. It provides a common view and understanding of the actual solution across business units and tech teams. PowerApps, being a low-code\no-code platform is not well suited for business processes that require many complex computations or large amounts of custom code - such as solutions that are better architected as Web Site or "full-blown" desktop solutions. There are solutions that are just not easy or quick to accomplish in a low-code\no-code platform. Enterprise Architects should know the difference, however business partners often try to create a solution and only when stuck because it becomes too complex do they engage a tech team for assistance - at which point there are sunk-costs involved and hinderences to re-platforming the solution

The adoption of SAP Extension Suite is growing significantly and it has become a strategic platform for our company. SAP Extension Suite will most likely meet the requirements of most companies to get beyond small workgroup apps and tackle more strategic requirements. The most important thing that SAP Extension delivers is a single UI for development effort for web and mobile deployment.

Incentivized

• Power Apps has formats that are pre-built that don't require any coding which makes it easier to achieve your vision. This does become a challenge if your App needs don't fit into that format.
• We deal with a ton of data so the fact that you can connect to any data source in addition to their pre-stablished data connections makes the process a breeze.
• The online learning resources and tutorials are helpful as well for those who are tech savvy.

Incentivized

• Reduces the length and cost of system development and integration
• Empowers developers to acquire a new skill to deliver applications and other services efficiently
• Enabled the innovation team to transform the way services are accessed and delivered
• Ensures scalability of apps used simultaneously by thousands of customers

Incentivized

• More complicated to understand in comparison with Nintex Forms.
• Complicated to find errors.
• Using PowerApps for SharePoint Forms is a bit complicated by setting up the start and load scenario with a lot of JavaScript.
• Load values, change them by code, and save them back could be easier. Actually quite complicated to handle a lot of variables.

Incentivized

• It was a bit of a hassle to configure at first but once setup it's easy and fast.
• At a certain time they removed key items used in pipelines to force upgrades.
• The new UI though works well feels less intuitive than the previous one.

Incentivized

PowerApps is a great solution and I have spent the last year familiarizing myself with the platform and building custom applications to complete a whole range of tasks such as asset management, custom invoice generation, and item restriction tracking. We as a company have barely begun to scratch the surface of what can be achieved with PowerApps.

Incentivized

The community forums are extremely responsive to questions asked, there is a good body of online documentation and many community posts to draw from. Although the platform has changed, which means some of the posts are out of date and the solutions provided aren't relevant. Of relevance, I read over 400 articles plus documentation to get this first app built in SharePoint, move it to SQL and make it work exactly the way it should.

Much cheaper, much more customizable, and easier to use. There is not much of a learning curve and the licensing cost is much cheaper. PowerApps does one thing very well, whereas other platforms are mediocre. There is much more customization possible for your in-house workflows that you can build yourself vs using NetSuite engineers to build it for you.

Incentivized

We have been able to work in a much more agile way with SAP Extension Suite, and there is a lot of excitement that developing with this platform is significantly faster. SAP Extension Suite is the perfect fit to build great-looking applications that work on any form factor, be it [a] smartphone, laptop, or tablet, and within budget.

Incentivized

• It has given us a focal point for development. We now have the possibility of connecting to mobile and the default SharePoint online interface isn't always easy to manipulate. PowerApps has given us an opportunity to improve our user experience.
• An improved user experience has given us a better shot at compliance. When users don't fight the environment, they don't gravitate towards workarounds or non-compliance.
• As lists and libraries change, the platform scales pretty well.
• Having users with the capability to create their own forms and tools has dialed back the app dev need (there is a balance though) and distributed power to the process architects and people who actually need the solutions in the first place—much more efficient model of service delivery: self-service.

Incentivized

• Faster development cycle due to native integration with SAP products
• Negative short-term ROI due to the lack of training material and significant differences with the previous version of the same tool (SAP Web IDE)
• Tighter integration with corporate programming guidelines since SAP Extension Suite offers great integration with DevOps pipeline solutions

Incentivized