OutSystems CEO Woodson Martin - “AI needs governance, not froth”

Global One Conference, the annual event of low-code stalwarts OutSystems, begins with customer stories and then, as new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Woodson Martin takes the stage, he continues to not only talk about customers, but also leaves the stage to let the customers do the talking. Martin says of this course:

I'm trying to position OutSystems as a company that is not frothy, but a company about customer success with the latest technology that is measurable, governable, and fits right into your architecture.

There are, of course, new technology announcements at the Lisbon, Portugal, event, changes to licensing, and the word ‘excited’ gets used a great deal. This being 2025, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and agentic are the dominant themes of presentations, discussions, and announcements, but to use Martin's vernacular, it is less frothy and rooted in the concerns that our digital leadership community - the diginomica network - shares with us.

The new product announcement is OutSystems Agent Workbench, a platform for creating and managing AI agents in enterprise departments, data, or workflows, providing a technology for managing the governance, integration, security, and scaling of agents. Since January, OutSystems has been working with a panel of customers in financial services, science, property, and technology to fine-tune Agent Workbench. On stage, CEO Martin says of the impact of AI on ground forces:

The race to be AI first is on, and the pace of change is unprecedented, and many feel it is happening to them, rather than through them.

With AI code generation, the pace couldn't be imagined a year ago, but it is ungoverned, fragile, and IT will struggle to manage, but these are the problems OutSystems was built to solve.

The second major announcement is that OS11, the low code application development platform, is being extended indefinitely, and that a new roadmap is available. In addition, OS11 and OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC) are to be offered as a single offering, which they call a unified platform. There has been speculation that OS11 would be mothballed and that users would be made to switch to ODC. With many CIOs having significant application estates on OS11, this has been causing concern. On stage, Vice President (VP) of Product, Pedro Girao, says:

There will be no forced migrations and no compromises. You will be able to build and redeploy with complete continuity. OS11 is the foundation of your success and your future.

He adds that all users and data will be shared across OS11 and ODC, without the need for migration. Martin adds:

The last thing we want is obstacles to the use of our latest technology. An app object is the same whether it is on OS11 or ODC; it is your choice. We are waiving the license fee of $20,000 until the end of the year, and will extend it if you publish an agent. AI Workbench is on general availability within the ODC personal edition.

Chief Information Officer (CIO) of OutSystems, Tiago Azevedo, describes in an interview Agent Workbench as a natural evolution of the Low Code platform OutSystems is best known for, and as a tool that will enable his peers to create an agent-oriented architecture in much the same way they developed a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) when Application Programming Interface (API) technology arrived.

Providing governance

OutSystems believes it has a role in providing governance to agents in the enterprise. Martin describes it in his keynote as trusted governable systems that create business value. Thus backing the rise of agents, but positioning his firm as the prefect every CIO needs in this new playground. Luis Blando, Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO) of OutSystems, says of Agent Workbench on stage:

It provides a holistic view over the entire agent lifecycle, so you can start to trust your AI with a unified platform for creation to orchestration and connect the agent to your data portfolio or third-party tools.

In our interview with CEO Martin, he says of the governance role:

The focus is to convince the customers and developers here that they have both the skills, background, and existing assets in terms of data, APIs, and now the tools that they need to build the agentic future for their companies.

Adding this is not a 'you need new tech' approach:

I'm trying to stay away from the 'this is a revolution' and throw the baby out with the bathwater, because I haven't met a single CIO that tells me that they need to redevelop everything. They want to innovate, drive better customer experiences, and growth with what they already have.

That reality and letting customers do the talking is central to Martin's first performance at the One Conference as CEO. He says of the editorial line:

We focused our keynote on real stories, as there is so much fluff and gobbledygook out there. In tech, we get very excited about the technology that we introduce. But making it real for the customer is actually what we are meant to be doing.

Just days before Martin and I meet, a group of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) tells me that CEO and vendor hype around AI and its ability to change the organization is increasing cybersecurity risks. Staff morale is collapsing, and therefore their ability to care about intrusions. I ask him about the responsibility of the C-suite towards the AI hype:

It is easy to look at the world today and see there is a lot of irrational leadership behaviour. We see it in politics and in the commercial sector. A period of sobriety is coming because many of the things that we value still matter. 

The froth that we are all swimming through right now won't hold us up. Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I don't think things will change as much as some of the headlines say. Most families and businesses still operate the same way, but we have a lot of out-of-touch leaders stretching in directions without a lot of solid ground.

He is not discounting the role of agentic AI, but is calling for a more reasoned discussion that will enable agentic to fit into the reality of organizations and the lives of people:

The future will look much like the past, and things like corporate information security are about systems and grounded in culture. It is very likely that AI will play a role in what we all do, but if you just push for AI, there will be no tangible business outcomes.

Beyond IT

Martin and agentic will give OutSystems an opportunity to move beyond IT in terms of sales and opportunities. This is something the CEO will have seen and been part of in an 18-year career with Salesforce. He says of this:

I do think the history of OutSystems is a company that sells technology to IT buyers with a limited budget and a very long backlog. So I think there is an opportunity to expand the appeal of OutSystems by adding a go-to-market that is about selling the outcome to business stakeholders that own a Profit and Loss (P&L). Some of this will be horizontal.

Two of the most common uses of OutSystems technology are the development of staff onboarding applications and loan/mortgage applications and approvals, so it is pretty obvious where the company will begin its business line outreach. He says:

There is an opportunity to have a conversation with the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) and Chief People Officer and sell the outcome, not just through the intermediary of IT. Obviously, we need to bring them with us. We see an opportunity to package up repeatable processes, as I am not sure the future is packaged software, but well-trained, contextually aware agents.

My take

With the rise of vibe coding and ChatGPT bots, proponents of Low Code could be worried about their future, but in Lisbon, OutSystems strikes a positive note, rooted in customer understanding. Perhaps there is some home match confidence of being in Lisbon, but governance will become increasingly vital to CIOs, especially in the wake of so many global cybersecurity incidents.

Martin brings a levity to the debate and the role of leadership in the AI age, which is feeding the divide between those on six-figure salaries and those who are not, and therefore just making ends meet. The C-suite must not only deliver technology, but must also bridge these dangerous divides. Martin seems to understand that.