I recently had a fascinating conversation with Andrej Koelewijn (Senior Product Manager at Mendix) and Maurits Elzinga (Senior Product Manager at Mendix, focusing on GenAI, Developer Experience and Extensibility) about how Mendix is embracing AI and what that means for organizations building the future today. As Business Unit Lead Data, AI & Automation at Xylos, this is exactly the kind of conversation I’m energized by: honest, technically based and without marketing haze.
Three insights that have stuck with me.
1. With AI, low-code becomes more relevant than ever
The biggest misconception I still hear too often among Enterprise IT Leaders is that AI and low-code would be each other’s competitors. Maurice summed it up succinctly, “It’s not low-code or AI, it’s low-code and AI.” And he has a point. Precisely because low-code operates at a higher level of abstraction, it only becomes more relevant in an AI-driven world.
Tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude Code generate thousands of lines of code at lightning speed, but someone still needs to understand, validate and manage that code. For that, a visual low-code model is a lot more accessible than an avalanche of technical boilerplate. Low-code and AI reinforce each other. So AI in low-code is not a contradiction, but the layer that makes AI manageable for the average organization.
2. Governance and traceability are the real bottleneck
Many organizations succeed in setting up AI pilots. Building an agent, running a proof of concept, generating enthusiasm in the boardroom: they succeed relatively easily today. The real challenge is in the last mile, the journey from pilot to production.
Andrej pointed out a recognizable problem. Companies are suddenly surprised by their cloud bill because agents are burning tokens unchecked without anyone remembering which agent is doing what and why. Mendix is therefore actively working on monitoring dashboards, traceability and auditability for AI agents, so that as an organization you keep a grip on what is running in production. Perhaps not a sexy topic, but certainly a fundamental one. Because without that control, scaling is no longer growth; it becomes a risk.
3. Data governance is the foundation, and that problem is older than AI itself
Fragmented data, silos, ambiguity about which dataset contains the golden truth: these are challenges older than AI itself. What is new, however, is the tooling to make it more manageable and the urgency to finally get it right.
Mendix integrates ontology and graph technology (via RapidMiner) to semantically connect data from different sources. This way, an AI agent not only finds data, but also understands how that data relates to other data. I personally have seen this type of technology grow for more than a decade, in an evolution that runs from academic research to industrial application. We are really ready for it now.
What touched me most in this conversation
The shift from “subscribe to innovation” to “subscribe to innovation, security and governance” as a proposition. This is not a marketing slogan, but a response to what is going on in the boardroom today. Cybersecurity, sovereignty over data and control over what AI generates: these are no longer side questions. We’re even seeing a movement back toward on-premise solutions, indicating the level of concern around compliance and data security.
At the same time, internal “competition” is increasing. Vibe coding, citizen development, agents that anyone can build: the threshold to put something together yourself has never been lower. So the question is not how do we stop that, but how do we channel that creativity into a platform where governance, security and quality are guaranteed. After all, building fast without guardrails does not solve the problem, it only moves it.
That is exactly the space where Mendix and Xylos are building together.
Thank you Andrej Koelewijn and Maurits Elzinga for the open and engaging conversation.
Ready to bring low-code and AI together in your organization?
Want to know how Mendix combined with a thoughtful AI approach can make the difference for your business? Xylos would be happy to help you set up a platform where innovation, governance and security go hand in hand. Get in touch for a no-obligation discussion with our experts.
About the author
Peter Verrykt is Business Unit Lead Data & AI at Xylos and guides organizations in turning data into concrete business value. He helps companies look beyond technical implementations and deploy data and AI as a foundation for better decisions, greater agility and sustainable growth.
