MARKET NOTE

Microsoft Power Fx Promises to Disrupt the Low-Code

Development Landscape by Standing on the Shoulders of
Microsoft Excel
Arnal Dayaratna

EXECUTIVE SNAPSHOT

FIGURE 1

Executive Snapshot: Understanding Microsoft Power Fx, the Low-Code

Programming Language Based on Excel

Source: IDC, 2021

March 2021, IDC #US47552521

IN THIS MARKET NOTE

At its March 2021 Microsoft Ignite conference, Microsoft announced details of Power Fx, an open
source language for low-code application development that is based on Microsoft Excel. As a formula-
based language that is based on Microsoft Excel, the syntax of Power Fx is highly familiar to millions of
busines professionals all over the world. Like Microsoft Excel, Power Fx instantly refreshes
calculations immediately in much the same way that an Excel worksheet recalculates the output of
formulas and calculations subsequent to an update to a relevant cell. Meanwhile, Power Fx is already
the language used to develop Microsoft Power Apps' canvas apps.

One obvious question about Power Fx is why a specialized language would be required for a low-code
development platform. The answer is that, while drag and drop applications have been fantastic for a
limited set of use cases, they often require an additional layer of nuance and sophistication for more
complex scenarios and development-related operations. Put differently, Power Fx extends the
functionality of Microsoft Power Apps by empowering developers to use an Excel-based, formula-based
language to add more functionality to visually guided development workflows.

IDC'S POINT OF VIEW

Overview
Power Fx is significant for the reasons discussed in this section.

It empowers low-code developers to add more nuance, sophistication, and functionality to visually
guided application development: this could mean, for example, the addition of advanced analytics-
driven triggers that would otherwise be difficult to program using a low-code development platforms.

Power Fx appeals to professional developers by enabling them to edit applications in source code
editors such as Visual Studio Code. This capability for professional developers to use familiar code
editing tools is likely to accelerate the adoption of Microsoft Power Apps among professional
developers.

The adoption of Microsoft Power Apps by professional developers sets that the stage for rich and
meaningful collaboration between line-of-business (LOB) developers and professional developers and,
thereby, creates a foundation for LOB developers to seamlessly benefit from the efforts of professional
developers who use Power Fx. For example, a line-of-business developer who needs to embed
machine learning algorithms into an application may benefit from a collaboration with a professional
developer who has experience with machine learning.

All this means that Power Fx provides a medium for enhanced collaboration between professional and
LOB developers and, as a result, has the potential to progressively contribute to the enhanced
education of LOB developers. This streamlined collaboration between professional developers and
LOB developers becomes possible because both developer segments are, literally, using the same
language to create digital solutions.

The adoption of Power Fx on the part of professional developers has the potential catalyze the
development of innovative and original digital solutions. Moreover, professional developers are more
likely to make requests to the open source governance framework responsible for the evolution of
Power Fx that leads to notable enhancements and upgrades. Deepened usage of Power Fx on the

©2021 IDC #US47552521 2

part of professional developers has the potential to change the demographic of full-time developers by
increasing the share of full-time developers who are low-code developers.

In the case of part-time developers, Power Fx provides a rapid on-ramp to low-code development that
can be uniquely customized to the specificities of the use cases and business operations that part-time
developers are seeking to digitize. The familiarity of resources such as business analysts, data
analysts, project managers, and risk and strategy managers with Microsoft Excel positions them to
rapidly build enterprise-grade applications that can be shared and reused across a multitude of
devices. As a result, enterprises stand to benefit from a quantum leap in digitization as a result of
Power Fx to the extent that part-time developers are more likely to begin building low-code
applications that leverage the formula-based logic and syntax with which they are familiar as a result of
their longstanding usage of Microsoft Excel.

Growth of Low-Code Developers Worldwide

According to IDC's worldwide low-code developer forecast, the share of low-code developers out of
the worldwide population of application developers is forecast to grow as shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1

Worldwide Low-Code Developer Share of Full-Time and Part-Time Application

Developers, 2021–2025 (%)

Developer Share Type 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

Low-code developer share of 10.2 15.6 21.2 26.7 31.9

full-time application developers

Low-code developer share of 38.6 41.9 47.1 52.3 58.0

part-time application developers

Note: See Pivot Table: Worldwide Low-Code Developer Forecast, 2021–2025 (IDC #US47519021, March 2021) and Pivot
Table: Worldwide Developer Forecast, 2020–2025 (IDC #US47056920, December 2020) for details.

Source: IDC, 2021

IDC forecasts that close to 60% of part-time application developers will be low-code developers by
2025 and, that correspondingly, roughly one-third of full-time application developers will be low-code
developers.

Meanwhile, the population of full-time low-code developers grows with a CAGR of 51.5%, in contrast to
32.6% for part-time low-code developers. Full-time low-code developers are expected to grow more
rapidly than their part-time counterparts because the adoption of low-code tools among full-time
developers is lower than it is for part-time developers at the outset of 2021 — this means there is
greater opportunity for low-code development platforms and tools to gain traction among full-time
developers.

©2021 IDC #US47552521 3

This forecast — developed in March 2021 — prognosticates meteoric adoption of low-code development
tools and technologies among both full-time and part-time developers. That said, the release of Power
Fx has the potential to accelerate and deepen the adoption of low-code technologies even further.
Notably, Power Fx promises to expand the segment of part-time developers dramatically and similarly
to redefine the definition of a full-time developer such that full-time developers are defined not by their
proficiency in coding and scripting but rather by their competence in building digital solutions. This
expansion of the total addressable market of full-time developers and part-time developers promises to
increase digitization-related skills within the contemporary workforce and transform the nature of
corporate labor to the point whereby every knowledge worker becomes a developer in some way.

Significance of Power Fx and Its Open Source

As such, the real significance of Power Fx is that it has the potential to transform hundreds of millions
of Excel users worldwide into low-code application developers by transitioning Excel-based models
and calculations into fully fledged applications as opposed to discrete Excel-based solutions. By
rendering the transition from Excel to low-code development seamless, Power Fx has the potential to
dramatically accelerate the adoption of low-code development solutions, and particularly its Microsoft
Power Apps' platforms. Microsoft plans to extend Power Fx into a consistent language across the
Power Platform in ways that reinforce its extensibility and relevance for a multitude of low-code
development modalities. In becoming extensible across all Power Apps modalities, Power Fx has the
opportunity to render low-code development de rigueur among business professionals and, thereby,
profoundly transform the contemporary labor force by accelerating the transformation of business
professionals into low-code developers. As with any open source project, the success of Power Fx will
depend on its ability to evolve to meet and exceed the needs of users. For example, contemporary
applications are increasingly expected to demonstrate intelligence with respect to user interactions,
either by means of pattern recognition, the ability to recognize voice, have conversations or by another
means. Similarly, contemporary applications are also expected to demonstrate awareness of the
location of a user and to deliver delightful user experiences that are responsive across a multitude of
devices.

PowerFx can support AI/ML workloads because of its support of record, image, multiline text, and
other complex data types for both input and output. For example, the
FaceMaskIdentifier.Predict(Camera1.Stream).Prediction function can be used to perform real-time
classification of an object identified by a camera. This capability to identify model objects for AI/ML use
cases means that Power Fx can support AI/ML analytics without requiring developers to switch
languages or leverage complex API integrations. Meanwhile, the open source developer community
has an opportunity to expand and enhance Power Fx's support for AI/ML even further.

Herein, Microsoft's decision to open source the language used for its drag-and-drop–based canvas
apps gives the worldwide developer community the opportunity to contribute to its evolution and endow
it with the functionality it needs. Given that the language has the potential to capture developer
mindshare among the hundreds of millions of users of Microsoft Excel, worldwide, the open sourcing of
Power Fx is likely to require skillful management and oversight from Microsoft with respect to topics
such as the prioritization of user requests and the development of a repeatable release cadence that
can demonstrate backward compatibility with existing releases.

Microsoft and the relevant open source governance organization that manages the evolution of Power
Fx will need to make some tough decisions about the range of use cases that the language supports.
The boundaries of the language's capabilities will be determined by its universe of users and

©2021 IDC #US47552521 4

contributors. That said, Power Fx is a game changer not only in the landscape of low-code
development solutions but also with respect to its potential to radically democratize development and
enable the addition of layers of nuance and sophistication to low-code applications.

LEARN MORE

Synopsis
This IDC Market Note takes a look at Microsoft Power Fx, the low-code programming language based
on Excel. Power Fx has the potential to transform hundreds of millions of Excel users worldwide into
low-code application developers by transitioning Excel-based models and calculations into fully
fledged applications as opposed to discrete Excel-based solutions. By rendering the transition from
Excel to low-code development seamless, Power Fx promises to dramatically accelerate the adoption
of low-code development solutions in general, and its Microsoft Power Apps platform in particular.

©2021 IDC #US47552521 5

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