From online storefronts, to inventory management systems, to financial dashboards, your customers, employees, and stakeholders interact daily with these digital solutions. And businesses that provide the best digital experience will automatically have a competitive advantage.
That's why the architecture these tools are built on is more important than ever. To succeed in a highly competitive marketplace, you have to build upon a robust and flexible ecosystem. A modern architecture should enable your team to react quickly to customer needs and rapidly changing market conditions. And that's why composable architecture has emerged as the future of business.
About composability and composable architecture
Composable architecture has completely disrupted the business application space. In 2020, during the pandemic's first wave, demand for eCommerce spiked and created a need for faster, more flexible, and more resilient digital experiences. Many businesses built on traditional monolithic architecture couldn't meet those needs.
So, what is composable architecture, and what makes it better than the traditional approach? Think of it this way:
In a monolithic architecture, everything is built around a large, unified code base. All bits of code are interdependent, and the code is essentially one giant monolith.
In a composable architecture, all application components are separate and combinable. The functions and services of each bit of code can be added to another or reused in different contexts. This code is more like LEGO blocks that can be swapped, replaced, or rearranged, as needed.
When changes are needed in traditional applications, the entire monolith might need to be rebuilt. But with a composable setup, you can replace an individual building block without rebuilding the whole project.
To put this in real-world terms, suppose you needed to change your eCommerce store's legacy content management system (CMS) to support faster website updates. With a monolithic application, every bit of code throughout the app might need to be reworked, leading to much rewriting and a lengthy testing process. But with the composable approach, just one modular component that handles content management needs to be revised. Composability creates a faster, more flexible architecture, enabling your business to stay agile, lean, and competitive.
What are the advantages of composability?
Composability is a core ideology of a new approach to digital experiences called MACH:
Microservices-based: Building applications on loosely grouped, specific services
API-first: Providing easy-to-use application programming interfaces for interacting with microservices
Cloud-native: Embracing the power, speed, and flexibility of the cloud over costly, on-premises infrastructures
Headless: Separating the front-end presentation layer from the back-end functionality for maximum composability
With MACH architecture, everything is pluggable, playable, and replaceable. In general, this makes world-class technologies more accessible, even if you don't have a world-class budget. This approach enables you to do more with less, scale quickly, and upgrade or modify your systems as your business grows and pivots. You're not bogged down with extensive code, rewrites, and lengthy testing phases.
Here are the top six advantages of MACH and the composable approach:
A competitive edge
In today's business environment, keeping up with the competition becomes a case of using the best tech for the stack. As your competitors adopt composability, you stay on par, allowing your marketing and products to speak for themselves.
Operational efficiency
A fully managed app on a SaaS platform, owned by your developers, equals flexibility and speed. App development and lower-effort maintenance become a service, not a tech obligation. The ability to plug new software into your app stack, make changes, and pivot as the customers and business changes relieve you of the technical debt associated with large, aging, monolithic apps.
Accelerated innovation
Innovating with a monolithic codebase becomes more challenging over time. On the other hand, faster development and rapid release schedules are prime benefits of MACH and the composable approach. New features, especially if they live in another composable tool, can be integrated and configured with minimum effort.
Cost-effectiveness
Integrating features from your other SaaS apps in the cloud is much cheaper than the headache of developing homegrown solutions. Integrating these services gives you the benefit of working with updated, improved technology, all as part of the SaaS app's cost.
MACH platforms like BigCommerce and Contentful often employ hundreds of individuals dedicated to research and development, ensuring these technologies remain on the leading edge—and all of this comes with a significantly lower cost of ownership.
Seamless Integrations
Composability allows you to integrate the services and functions of other cloud apps. If a SaaS app has a well-documented API, integrations are not as complex as you might imagine. The API-first approach means integrations are a case of endpoints, which can be simplified with iPaaS layers and visual connectors. This also means that stripping out old tech doesn't become bogged down in developer work with heavy technical debt.
Making a smooth switch to composability
If composability is the future of business and has so many advantages, you may wonder why everyone hasn't adopted MACH yet. The simple answer is that any transition from legacy technology can be long and painful—even as the technical debt of maintaining old monolithic systems adds up.
A quick switch to composability is one of those times when it's best to seek expert help. Codal's platform engineering team has years of experience helping our partners migrate to composable architectures. Whether replacing an aging content management system with a headless CMS or assisting developers as they learn the power of microservices, Codal ensures our partners get the best-in-breed solutions for their market sector.
Embracing composable architecture results in real-world benefits. Take a look at how we helped GOREWEAR consolidate separate online stores for five brands in 16 countries into one headless eCommerce platform.
