What is a composable application and why is it the future of software

So let's take a closer look at what a composable application is, who builds and adopts them, the benefits they bring, and whether they really are the future of software. Let's get started!

A composable application is software built by integrating small, independent parts called "components." These components are also known as PBCs (Packaged Business Capabilities) and are usually developed and tested by different teams, run in separate environments, and then assembled to create the final application.

According to Gartner, composable applications are built from modular components designed with specific business goals in mind. In other words, they aim to increase business efficiency by leveraging APIs, the tools that let different software systems talk to each other, and microservices.

From a technical standpoint, composable applications are therefore generally based on a microservices architecture, in which the various components run in isolated environments and communicate through standardized APIs.

This approach to software development has many advantages, because it lets you reuse functionality from internal applications or external services and bundle it together to improve existing systems. In essence, you take reusable PBCs from different sources and compose them as the market requires to maximize results and return on investment.

It all comes down to choosing the right components and integrating them into a composable architecture, which significantly cuts development time and improves the maintainability and scalability of business systems.

In an ever-faster market, where timely changes are needed to keep up with users' constantly evolving needs, having modular, composable, innovative and adaptable solutions makes the difference. Composable applications make it easier to develop new products efficiently, make a business more productive and streamline business processes. Welcome to the composable enterprise.

Now let's look more closely at what a composable application is through some examples and case studies.

Types of applications that follow a composable approach include:

• API-based cloud SaaS services (Software as a Service): solutions used through online platforms that expose their features and/or data via APIs, such as DatoCMS, for example.
• Headless libraries: tools that package specific capabilities into components that are easy to integrate into existing software. A good example is Snipcart, a headless service for building e-commerce quickly and efficiently.
• Web applications built on component frameworks: technologies such as React, Vue.js and Angular encourage development by composing small, independent components.

As you can see, what these technologies have in common is that they use the power of APIs and/or the principle of composability to offer functionality other software can draw on.

Italian companies that have successfully embraced, developed or used this kind of application include:

Bending Spoons: one of the best-known software houses in the world, based in Milan, built many of its apps with Tempura, a technology that takes a holistic approach to iOS development based on a composable architecture.

Intesa Sanpaolo: Italy's largest banking group launched a project to build a more modern, digital bank by adopting highly composable applications.

Yoox Net-A-Porter: one of the most profitable fashion groups in the world built its e-commerce platform on a composable microservices architecture, achieving high scalability during traffic peaks such as Black Friday.

Similarly, IT giants such as Microsoft, Netflix, Google and Meta support and build composable applications.

A composable application lets a company quickly and easily assemble software components developed in-house or bought on the market.

This brings several advantages, including:

Composable software can be modified, updated, expanded or scaled down flexibly to keep pace with changing business and customer needs. Specifically, it lets you add or remove components without radical changes to IT systems. Selecting new PBCs also encourages research into and discovery of technologies that best fit the company's digital goals, fostering innovation and simplifying digital transformation.

Building small components speeds up development. Instead of building large monolithic applications, developers can focus on developing and testing smaller, independent services. What's more, you can always buy a component online when needed and integrate it into your architecture, cutting the time it takes to design and release new digital products to the bone.

Being able to reuse or adopt existing services and components removes the need to build a system from scratch. As a result, this leads to an overall reduction in IT spending on development, maintenance and evolution.

Most monolithic technologies become extremely hard to abandon once they are adopted and integrated into business processes. This is known as vendor lock-in, and it holds back any business that wants to evolve quickly. Composable applications, by contrast, are a mosaic of technologies, solutions and services that can be dropped, replaced or added at any time.

By nature, anything modular is more resilient and fault-tolerant. That's because each service lives in its own environment, so a failure in a single component doesn't bring down the whole application. It can, of course, have a significant impact and degrade the features offered to users. But it will never cause a total crash, as would happen with monolithic software.

According to a Dataintelo report, the future of software is composable. By analyzing hundreds of companies worldwide and forecasting technology trends through 2028, the report found that the composable applications market is expected to grow by 20.2%.

In 2020, the composable applications market was valued at 3.3 billion dollars and it is expected to grow to 14.4 billion by the end of 2028. This huge growth, spreading worldwide, is forecast across several industries, including healthcare and manufacturing. According to the report, the trend will keep growing and become one of the most common aspects of technology.

That's why companies should start investing in composable applications and infrastructure right away. To avoid being caught off guard, they need to start adopting these systems now to improve productivity and the speed at which they deliver their services. The risk of being overtaken by competitors is too high to ignore this technology philosophy.

In short, future-ready companies apply the principle of composability to software to quickly assemble, integrate and adapt their applications. That makes them innovative, agile and competitive in an ever-changing market like the digital one.

It's now clear that a company with a composable software architecture has nothing to fear from the future. At the same time, building or adopting a composable application on your own is complex and risky. That's why you need an experienced digital partner with many projects under its belt, like Cantiere Creativo.

Here are some case studies of public and private organizations that relied on Cantiere Creativo to build a successful composable application:

• WinePlatform: by building an application made up of different components, Tannico, the company behind the project, can now launch custom e-commerce stores for wineries all over Italy in just a few hours of work.
• Italian Tech Week: the custom website, built on composable technologies, let the event handle more than 3 million visits in a few days without any slowdowns.

• L'Officiel: by adopting a composable content management system like DatoCMS, editors from more than twenty newsrooms can now work from a single shared platform to create localized content for dozens of websites.

In this article, we looked at what a composable application is and why it represents the future of software. Specifically, we saw the positive effects this technology approach has on a company through real-world examples. We then dug into the benefits and advantages these applications can bring to small, medium and large businesses.

Building composable applications may not be easy, especially if you're new to this world. The risk of not knowing where to find the right software components, or how to build and integrate them, is high. That's where Cantiere Creativo, a technology partner with dozens of success stories, can help!

Thanks for reading! We hope you found this article useful. Feel free to contact us with any questions, comments or suggestions.