AI may be everywhere, but scepticism is rising. Citing a recent MIT Press article that revealed an alarming 95% of AI pilots fail, Richard Davies, OutSystems’ Director of Strategic Customers (APAC), challenged IT Leaders to look beyond the hype. “Almost every company is exploring these technologies,” he said, “but it’s not usually the technology itself that causes failure. It’s the human element – how projects are approached, supported and governed.”
To illustrate the point, Davies zeroed in on the two areas of AI making the biggest waves in software development today: agentic AI and vibe coding. Both have the potential to radically reshape how enterprises operate, but without proper structure and oversight, they can lead to chaos.
AI agents have the power to transform work by coordinating workflows, making decisions, and automating complex processes. Yet most organisations stumble when trying to put them into practice. Davies identified four recurring obstacles:
According to Davies, the OutSystems AI-powered low-code platform enables IT Leaders to tackle these challenges head-on. Its Workbench tool makes it significantly easier to embed agentic AI into existing applications, turning complex ideas into practical, scalable solutions.
On the data front, OutSystems creates a unified view across disparate systems, enabling real-time or near-real-time access regardless of original location or format. This not only improves data quality but also minimises the need for heavy ETL processes, storage duplication, and unnecessary replication, delivering greater agility, stronger security, and lower costs.
Just as importantly, the platform enforces centralised AI governance. By consolidating oversight, it builds a single knowledge base that can be applied consistently across multiple use cases and value streams. And safe adoption is further supported by requiring human oversight in automated workflows. Built-in tools enable real-time tracking of time, cost, and token usage, ensuring a measurable ROI and facilitating incremental improvements without introducing chaos.
Finally, OutSystems empowers businesses to maintain trust and accountability by enabling dynamic, personalised user interfaces. These interfaces support human review at critical decision points, ensuring that AI augments workflows without removing people from the loop.
Vibe coding, which utilises natural language prompts and generative AI to spin up applications rapidly, is one of the buzziest concepts in tech right now. And the speed with which they create prototypes is awe-inspiring. But Davies was quick to point out the risk of overhyping it as a standalone tool.
“There’s a misconception that anyone can build full enterprise apps using vibe coding,” he explained. “The truth is that enterprises need more than rapid prototypes. They need end-to-end lifecycle coverage, with security, governance, and integration baked in.”
The principles behind OutSystems’ enterprise-ready vibe coding include:
Davies also highlighted that OutSystems addresses the business and IT collaboration dilemma with Mentor, an AI-powered suite of tools that generates requirements documents and production-ready, cloud-native applications from plain language input. Crucially, these apps aren’t throwaway prototypes; they’re functional, secure, and built to scale. Mentor goes beyond simple vibe coding.
For Davies, the message is clear: the power of AI must be matched by discipline, governance, and the right platform. OutSystems’ AI-powered low-code approach provides exactly that – enterprise guardrails that enable organisations to experiment, scale, and innovate safely. By embedding AI within a controlled, low-code environment, IT leaders can transform its disruptive potential into future-ready, resilient applications that are suited to an unstable world.