The power of composable platforms

If the past few years have taught businesses anything, adaptability is everything. The global economy has been rocked by disruptions. From the COVID-19 pandemic to supply chain breakdowns, energy crises, and rising inflation. Also, include the increasing pressure of digital transformation, and you have an environment where companies either evolve quickly or risk falling behind. So, the question is: Is your IT infrastructure built to handle constant change?

The answer for many forward-thinking enterprises lies in composable platforms.

A composable platform enables businesses to develop digital infrastructure that is modular and interchangeable, where all the various components integrate and work together. While providing flexibility, scalability, and resilience in this unpredictable world. According to Gartner, the organizations using composable technology by 2025 will outgrow their competitors by 30% in revenue growth. This is a testament to the agility and efficiency this architecture brings to your IT systems.

Let’s explore what a composable platform is, how it works, and why it’s becoming essential for businesses looking to stay ahead in a rapidly shifting digital landscape.

• What are composable platforms?
• How does composable platform work?
• Why is having a composable platform thrilling?
• Benefits of composable platforms
• Composable platforms in e-commerce
• inriver: Adopting composable architecture

What are composable platforms?

Composable platforms are an architectural approach that enables organizations to assemble and reassemble various modular components to create customized applications and services. This modularity allows businesses to adapt swiftly to changing market demands and technological advancements. Organizations can design systems tailored to their specific needs by leveraging interchangeable building blocks, promoting innovation and operational efficiency.

How does composable platform work?

Composable platforms operate by integrating discrete, self-contained modules through well-defined APIs. Each module does one thing and can be designed, deployed, and scaled independently. Decoupling ensures that changes or updates to one module will not impact the system as a whole, making the system more stable and flexible.

In an e-commerce application, for instance, inventory, payment, and user authentication are managed by independent modules. These modules communicate with each other using APIs, allowing for easy interaction and data sharing. This setup allows companies to update or replace a single module without affecting other modules, allowing for rapid response to new requirements or technologies.

Why is having a composable platform thrilling?

Embracing a composable platform offers numerous advantages that can significantly impact an organization’s success:

• Enhanced Flexibility: The modular nature of composable platforms allows businesses to tailor their systems precisely to their needs. This facilitates quick adjustments in response to market shifts.
• Accelerated Innovation: By integrating new modules or updating existing ones independently, organizations can experiment with new features or services without overhauling their entire systems.
• Improved Resilience: The decoupled architecture ensures that issues in one module do not cascade into others, enhancing system reliability and uptime.

LEGO is an example of a composable platform. It transitioned to a composable, headless commerce platform to better manage surging online traffic and order volumes.

This shift enabled them to handle up to 2,000 orders per minute during peak times, a feat that would have overwhelmed their previous monolithic system. LEGO experienced a 46% revenue growth a year after adopting this approach.

Benefits of composable platforms  

Adopting a composable platform provides several key benefits:

• Flexibility: Organizations can mix and match modules to create bespoke solutions, aligning with their unique requirements.
• Speed of Development: Developers can work on individual modules concurrently, reducing development time and accelerating time-to-market.
• Reduced Total Cost of Ownership: Businesses can reduce development and maintenance costs by reusing existing modules and only developing new ones as needed.

A report by Pogo Linux indicates that traditional enterprise data centers often operate with resource utilization rates between 12-% and 8%, whereas composable platforms can achieve a 2-to-4-fold increase in utilization. This significant improvement leads to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) due to increased IT efficiency and waste reduction.   

By shifting from static architectures to dynamic composable infrastructures, IT departments can avoid overprovisioning and reduce underutilization of data center hardware, thereby decreasing operational expenses.

Composable platforms in e-commerce

A composable platform allows companies to select and integrate best-of-breed components—such as payment gateways, inventory management systems, and customer relationship management tools—tailoring their technology stack to specific needs. This modular approach enables rapid adaptation to market changes and customer preferences.

Recent data underscores this trend: as of March 2023, 72% of U.S. retailers had implemented, with an additional 21% planning to adopt them within the following year.   

This shift reflects a growing recognition of the limitations inherent in traditional monolithic e-commerce platforms, which can be inflexible and slow to adapt.  

The benefits of composable platforms in e-commerce are significant:

• Personalized Customer Experiences: The combination of different modules helps businesses customize the shopping experience to the customer’s preference.
• Scalability: As demand fluctuates, organizations can scale specific modules up or down without impacting the entire system.
• Rapid Integration of New Technologies: E-commerce platforms can quickly incorporate emerging technologies, such as AI-driven recommendation engines or advanced analytics tools, by adding or updating relevant modules.

However, embracing this composable strategy would involve careful planning and adequate understanding of integration processes to hinder the system from smooth operation. Despite the above-mentioned challenges, the composable platforms have been seen to be an investment in agility and long-term growth for e-commerce businesses.

inriver: Adopting composable architecture  

By embracing modularity and flexibility, organizations can enhance their agility, drive innovation, and respond effectively to market disruptions.  

At the core of any successful composable strategy is data. A structured, consistent, and easily accessible product information. inriver’s Product Information Management (PIM) system is built for you. Our composable PIM solution ensures businesses can manage, enrich, and syndicate product data effortlessly across multiple sales channels. We keep your product information up-to-date and optimized for every touchpoint.   

As a certified MACH Alliance member, inriver is built to support the future of composable commerce. Providing businesses with the scalability, agility, and interoperability needed to succeed.