Reasons why fusion development is the new norm when it comes to building IT applications/software solutions:

Business users and non-IT users adding requirements to the IT backlog and waiting for the IT team to fulfill it is a story of the past. With the pace at which the businesses are growing and changing, the IT team will find it challenging to deliver to the rapidly evolving business. Fusion development with the Power platform is an approach to combining the worlds of the citizen developer, the professional developer, and the other parties instrumental in building and using applications to further the objectives of the business.

 2 key personas or groups -

• Citizen developers or makers: Individuals who are at the forefront of a job; individuals who understand the business process in detail with some or no IT background
• Pro-developers: professional IT developers
   

Fusion development is focused on bringing these two groups together by providing low-code/no-code tools to citizen developers to build their applications & automation to support their business productivity while offering a rich spectrum of extensibility points and tooling capabilities providing the professional developers a great experience for extending the platform - making Power Platform a truly no-cliffs platform.

This blog post is focused on reasons why the Fusion development gives organizations a competitive edge!

#1 Meet business demands faster:

In the world of low-code/no-code, IT development is not dependent completely on the IT team/professional developers. Citizen developers can build apps quickly with a drag-n-drop UI and pre-built UX components which can then deploy in one click across iOS, Android, Windows & web, OR automate processes. In the case of complex apps or automation, a citizen developer can still accelerate the business need quickly by building an app/automation, and working with a professional developer to fill the gaps.

 With better context and more hands at work, fusion development helps meet the business demands much faster!
 

 #2 Save on app development costs:

Accelerating solution development naturally reduces cost (Time is money!). Our research shows that organizations can reduce the app-making cost up to 74% by simplifying & accelerating app development, process automation, ERP extensions, Azure solutions like Mixed Reality & IoT, Power Virtual Agent chatbots & others.

 #3 Integrate key data via connectors:

Today, citizen developers can connect to over 450 services via standard and premium connectors that are pre-built on the platform. Sometimes there are scenarios where they need the business capabilities that are not available as pre-built connectors but rather access capabilities developed by professional developers in-house. In such cases, professional developers can create custom connectors - a wrapper around a REST API (Private or Public) that allows Power Automate or Power Apps to communicate with that REST API.

• Azure API Management enables professional developers to publish their backend service as APIs, and easily export these APIs to the Power Platform (Power Apps and Power Automate) as custom connectors for consumption by citizen developers - Export APIs from Azure API Management to the Power Platform | Microsoft Docs
• Create custom connector using the wizard - You can use the Custom connector wizard to create a custom connector from an OpenAPI, Postman definition, or from scratch

With this flexibility, Pro-developers can focus on their core development efforts and make data/services accessible to citizen developers for their/team's productivity for building apps and automation.

#4 Reusable components and custom AI models for win-win: 

When it comes to designing the user interface in Power Apps, there are in-built controls available for citizen developers to easily drag & drop within Power Apps studio. However, when there are fancy/complex UI requirements, pro-developers can focus on building high-quality, independent UI components using tools they're familiar with. These components can be used and reused by citizen developers by simply importing them into their Power App studio. 

 Refer: Home | PCF Gallery (you can download and use community-built components as well!)

More details on Power Apps Component Framework - Power Apps component framework overview in Microsoft Dataverse - Power Apps | Microsoft Docs

Power platform also has a list of pre-built and easy to train & use AI models available within the platform called the AI builder. However, when there are more complex/sophisticated AI needs, data scientists/Pro-developers can focus on building these advanced AI models using any language, framework, or tooling outside the Power Platform. These external AI models can be imported into AI Builder within Power Platform to consume it as part of the low code development experience.

 Refer: Bring your own model into AI Builder - AI Builder | Microsoft Docs

 #5 Easily extend features that work with Azure:

Power Platform has standard connectors to various Azure services like – Azure SQL database, DevOps, Azure AD, Cosmos DB, Data Lake, Data Factory, App Insights and so on... While pro-developers can focus on working on these core Azure services, citizen developers can easily connect and use these services to build apps and automation via low-code/no-code.

 #6 Protection with seamless management:

With Power Platform, citizen and pro developers can collaborate seamlessly with streamlined app lifecycle management while maintaining governance and security for low-code apps with GitHub, Azure tools, and a Power Apps Center of Excellence toolkit

Variety of tools and capabilities are available to help fusion development teams build low-code apps, automation, and bots faster and at scale, including:

• Command Line Interface (CLI) support for source code files and packaging.
• Native Microsoft Power Platform Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code integrations.
• A new Visual Code extension for Power Apps portals development.
• An application lifecycle management (ALM) accelerator for citizen developers and pro-developers.

Refer: Microsoft Power Platform is the best way for teams to build together - Microsoft Power Platform Blog

In summary, with fusion development, you can enhance the experience around -

Project - Rapidly build a proof of concept or an MVP to get your project started and also accelerate your project development overall while reducing cost. 

Product: With Power Platform being a truly no-cliffs platform, enterprise solutions/applications can be built using the components/capabilities available in the platform and it can be easily extended with Professional development where required.

Practice: The fusion development approach also develops a practice within the organization where anyone/everyone has the opportunity to contribute to building quality solutions with seamless collaboration.