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Technical Writing
  I  
March 9, 2023
  I  
xx min read

Composable Architecture: Everything You Need to Know

Adopting a composable architecture could be your company’s key to serving up an unmatched user experience. It’s no secret that digital transformation helps deliver a consistent, personalized experience to consumers – yet only 7% of businesses have adopted a digital-first approach.

Why, you ask? Because in order to be successful, companies have to conquer transformation across an entire digital lifecycle. Luckily, implementing a composable architecture can do just that.

Do you want to discover digital solutions that guarantee flexibility, scalability, and an impressive customer experience? Composable architecture can help you future-proof your business and create consistency across all digital platforms, ultimately taking your business to the next level.

Quick Takeaways

  • Composable architecture consists of services, applications, and features that act as modular building blocks and communicate through APIs, or application programming interfaces
  • Benefits of composable architecture include consistency, flexibility, efficiency, maximized sales, content reuse, and more
  • It is based on MACH: an acronym for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless
  • Large, advanced organizations are most likely to benefit from adopting a composable architecture

This type of structure is most beneficial to large organizations that want to implement innovation, achieve omnichannel goals, and add value to the customer experience.

What Is It?

If you’re already familiar, then you know the term refers to flexible services, applications, and features that communicate via APIs.

Each component acts as an individual building block. This allows you to use the best technologies to efficiently create new digital tools, software applications, and platforms without needing to change your entire system.

What Does Composable Architecture Do?

Companies use composable architecture to assemble the best technologies for their business, creating the best customer experience possible. The best technologies for your company will depend upon the needs and nature of your business.

illustration shows different components of the customer experience
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This prioritizes the customer experience. Since each individual component can be easily replaced, composable architecture is a great option for companies that value cutting-edge customer service and consistency in the digital experience.

Benefits of Composable Architecture

Enhanced flexibility and efficiency aren’t the only reasons why composable architecture is on the rise. Other benefits of composable architecture include:

  • Maximized Sales. When customers are satisfied, they keep coming back for more. An enhanced customer experience is guaranteed to increase sales.
  • Affordability. This structure allows companies to save money on things like site maintenance, and instead focus their budgets on growth opportunities.
  • Content Reuse. The ability to quickly reuse independent building blocks of information allows companies to easily create new content. This maximizes employees’ time and effort, allowing them to focus on other subjects that need attention.
  • Consistency. 60% of consumers expect brands to be consistent across all platforms. Composable architecture ensures a consistent experience for consumers without the need to continuously update content.
  • Future-Proofing. Composable architecture makes expanding into new markets or adapting to the latest trends easy. With the flexibility to choose and change content components, you can start to scale your business.
  • Integrations. With less time spent on creating new content, developers can focus on building integrations, creating new sales channels, swapping data between applications, implementing third-party services, and more.

Composable architecture allows businesses to optimize their system and enables employees to focus on complex details that promote growth.

Composable Architecture and MACH

Composable architecture is derived from MACH architecture: a set of principles that focuses on building the best technology platforms with modular content. MACH is an acronym that stands for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless:

  • Microservices: Individual business systems or services that are created, deployed, and managed independently.
  • API-first: All microservices are exposed through an API, or application programming interface, in order to communicate with one another
  • Cloud-Native SaaS: Cloud-native applications promote easy growth, quick development, and enhanced flexibility without needing to update systems manually

Headless: A decoupled frontend and backend allow for design freedom when connecting sales channels or creating the user interface

Illustration of the MACH acronym

When each component is easily pluggable, scaleable, and replaceable, businesses have the freedom to curate a set of the best technologies specifically designed for an ideal customer experience.

Composable vs. Headless Architecture

It’s easy to confuse composable and headless architecture since they’re so closely related. Although, headless is simply a part of composable architecture.

Headless architecture has a separated frontend and backend that communicate through APIs. The frontend controls the user experience, and the backend controls the structure and stores data. This allows companies to easily develop web applications that work for several channels.

It also has a separated frontend and backend, but its backend is further broken down into several components, called microservices.

diagram shows comparison between headless and composable architecture
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A headless architecture makes room for more flexibility than composable architecture, since developers and content creators can work independently to make changes. In most cases, companies start with a headless approach, and then move towards a composable approach.  

Who Benefits From Composable Architecture?

When it comes to ecommerce solutions, a composable architecture isn’t your only choice. Small companies with straightforward business models won’t necessarily benefit from it as much as large organizations.

In most cases, composable architecture best fits companies in the following situations:

  • Businesses with a marketplace operation
  • Large, international brands
  • Manufacturers that produce complex products
  • Telecommunication, finance, and automotive companies
  • Advanced companies with multiple sales channels
  • Companies that offer IoT-based solutions

A composable approach to architecture is ideal for companies that value innovation, omnichannel opportunities, and digital services that enhance the customer experience.

Foundations For The Future

Composable architecture could be the key to building an efficient platform that guarantees flexibility and consistency. By updating your company’s approach to architecture, you can enhance both the customer experience and your sales revenue.

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