Outsystems ONE 2025 – Reflections and Key Takeaways

Two inspiring days have come to an end — it’s now time to digest what we saw and reflect on what it means for the future of Outsystems (and ourselves).

TL;DR

Agentic AI was the dominant theme — autonomous AI is coming to Outsystems.

O11 will not be deprecated — its lifetime has been extended indefinitely.

O11 and ODC will coexist — clients can choose the right architecture.

Personal Environments are now available for ODC.

Agent Workbench has gone GA.

If you know me, you know I’ve had serious concerns about the platform’s direction after some strategic decisions Outsystems made. This year’s event relieved many of those fears — I’ll explain how.

I also sensed the same unease across the community — many developers I spoke with shared concerns about Outsystems’ future in this new AI-driven era.

I was so eager to attend that I spent two vacation days on it — instead of sleeping in or enjoying the beach, I got up at 6 a.m. to make sure I didn’t miss a thing. And I’m glad I did.

Don’t take me wrong but…

I believe that, to be prepared for the future the best way it is to anticipate it.

I tried to attend keynotes and technical sessions, mostly were about AI hype. I think it’s fare enough to summarize the event in the following topics:

Agentic AI

We’re already living the AI revolution
Agentic AI was the dominant theme of the event. In short, this is the kind of AI that can act autonomously, making decisions, performing tasks, even coordinating workflows without constant human intervention.

If you’re not embracing this shift, you’ll be left behind — and Outsystems is making it easier to get on board.

When I made the transition from “high code” (e.g. C#) to low code with Outsystems, my goal was to invest deeply in a stable platform instead of chasing new stacks. But low code also means more guardrails — you can’t do everything arbitrarily. That constraint becomes an advantage when integrating AI: the platform can enforce safe, consistent patterns.

With code generation under platform control, AI tools start to narrow the gap between junior and senior developers — perhaps eventually enabling even non-developers to build meaningful apps. This is a bold claim, but the seeds are already there.

O11 life time extended “indefinitely”

O11’s “end of life” decision reversed
This is a big win for many in the community. Until now, Outsystems had signalled that customers needed to move off O11 and migrate to ODC, with support for the older platform phased out. That worried many: migrations are costly, risky, and often disruptive.

Years ago, many clients already invested heavily to migrate from Traditional to React within Outsystems, with real performance gains. Now, however, they faced yet another forced shift — not only technical effort, but additional licensing and training costs.

The good news: that decision has been reverted. O11 will remain alive, will continue to receive feature updates, and will coexist with ODC. Clients can now choose which architecture makes most sense for each application — without fear that O11 will be abandoned.

Platform Unification (O11 and ODC)

Platform unification: coexistence not coercion
Finally, Outsystems seems to have recognized that pushing all clients to a new architecture isn’t the answer. Many developers and clients were comfortable with O11, and it doesn’t make sense to force a one-size-fits-all shift.

The architecture decision should be driven by what best suits the project — not by product mandates. Considerations like licensing, developer skills, maintainability, and migration costs all play a role.

For developers, this reverses a feeling of stagnation; for enterprises, it undoes a sense of betrayal. Many were seriously considering leaving the platform altogether.

With this new approach, clients gain the flexibility to choose where to start new apps, and are free from anxiety about O11 being deprecated or left behind.

Outsystems Personal Edition

Personal Edition extended to ODC
One of the decisions I’m most glad about is that Personal Environments will now be available for ODC — something that should have been done from the start.

It always seemed illogical that developers could spin up personal O11 environments, but not for ODC. That limitation hindered experimentation, learning, and adoption. With this change, every developer can freely test, prototype, and build in ODC — no barriers.

Wrapping it up:

Painful decisions were reversed.
ODC and O11 will coexist.
Personal environments are available for all.
Agent Workbench (and related tooling) has gone GA.

Outsystems heard the community — and for once, we got the platform direction many of us were hoping for.

But the work doesn’t stop here. It’s now on us, as developers, to use these new freedoms and tools wisely. I’m committed to pushing what’s possible — prototyping, testing, and sharing learnings with all of you.

Let’s do this together.