“Low-code” software development platform provider Appian Corp. is branching out into the contact center with a new version of its product catering specifically to their needs.

The company announced it’s also updating its main offering, enabling users to add new artificial intelligence capabilities to the applications they build. The announcements were made during a keynote today by Appian Chief Executive Officer Matt Calkin (pictured) at the company’s annual Appian World event in Miami.

Having launched its initial public offering last year, Appian has become one of the leaders in the rapidly emerging field of low-code software development. The company’s main product is a software-as-a-service offering tailored for everyday business users. With Appian’s platform, users can quickly and easily create software applications for a range of business purposes, even if they don’t have any programming experience. Simple as the name suggests, the low-code approach involves piecing together software components with company data to build customized apps in a matter of minutes.

Among the updates to its platform, Appian is adding native AI-based sentiment analysis capabilities that are designed to better inform users and improve their decision making. Appian now also enables “no-code” integration with the three main public cloud providers, Amazon Web Services Inc., Google LLC and Microsoft Corp., allowing users to build apps that take advantage of their AI and machine learning systems.

Appian is also making it easier to create “beautiful and engaging” user interfaces, with numerous designs that can be built via a simple drag-and-drop tool.

Finally, there’s an update under the hood that may benefit more experienced users. With the Appian 18.2 release, the company is making it easier to run Appian apps in Docker containers, which separate the software from the underlying hardware and operating system, essentially meaning it can run on any platform. Appian said that by running inside containers, its process engines gain a four-times performance boost, allowing apps to meet higher levels of customer demand.

The updated platform is a “crucial enabler for enterprises to build their next-generation applications,” said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research Inc. “The combination of AI, business process management and robotic process automation, together with low-code capabilities, makes Appian a key enabler for CxOs who want to build new applications for their enterprises.”

In addition, the company is touting an entirely new product called the Appian Intelligent Contact Center Platform, which allows contact center teams to create more specialized apps. It comes with all of the attributes of the main platform, along with some new AI capabilities that can be beneficial to its target market. For example, contact center teams can now create apps with integrated AI sentiment analysis capabilities. This AI can guide contact center workers based on the context of their customer interactions and recommend next actions to help them land a sale or deal with the customer’s problem.

Finally, Appian said it’s launching a new version of its mobile application into beta, with more styling and user interface design controls.

The company said both of its new products will be available starting in June.

Image: Appian/Facebook