What is a composable enterprise and how to build one

Let's take a closer look at what a composable enterprise is, how to become one, and what benefits this transformation can bring. No more time to waste: let's dive into the world of composable business.

In IT terms, a composable enterprise is a business that can quickly reorganize its IT resources, including infrastructure, applications, data and services, to adapt to changing market needs quickly and effectively.

More specifically, according to Gartner, a “composable enterprise” is a company built on a structure made of easily interchangeable elements. This modular setup lets the company quickly change course as needed or in response to external or internal factors, such as shifts in customers' values and interests.

You can think of this kind of company as a Lego build, where every piece can easily be moved, replaced or removed as needed. A traditional company, by contrast, is more like a concrete building: hard to change and evolve.

In IT terms, becoming a composable enterprise through a digital transformation process means replacing legacy, monolithic applications with systems built on independent yet easily integrated components. By assembling and disassembling these components, a composable business can respond quickly to market changes.

According to Daryl Plummer, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, “the composable enterprise is the natural acceleration of the digital business we live in every day. It delivers the resilience and agility that modern times demand.”

Let's look at a few examples to understand it better.

Italian companies that have built their digital transformation on a composable approach include:

1. Intesa Sanpaolo: Italy's largest banking group based its new project for a more modern, digital bank on an IT infrastructure built around a composable system.
2. Enel: one of Italy's energy leaders built the IT architecture of its app on microservices and containers, embracing the world of composability.
3. TIM (Telecom Italia): Italy's largest telecom operator recently announced a plan to standardize the mobile network industry by building new API-based services, the heart of every composable architecture.

Likewise, global IT giants such as Microsoft, Google and Meta use, support and promote composable architecture.

In short, these companies apply the principle of composability in IT to quickly create, integrate and reorganize their digital resources. This allows them to be agile, innovative and competitive in an ever-evolving market like the digital one.

Again according to Gartner, making a company composable means transforming it around three key concepts:

1. Composable technologies: Adopting composable technologies means using tools and technology solutions that are modular, scalable and interoperable. It means choosing technologies that are easy to orchestrate and integrate with one another, so you can respond to market needs right away. Examples include API-based cloud services and SaaS (Software as a Service).
2. Composable thinking: Adopting composable thinking means treating every part of the business as a component. It means applying the principles of modularity, independence and integration to individual business processes. The idea is to plan and design what to compose and when, exploring new opportunities and solutions along the way.
3. Composable business architecture: Creating a composable business architecture means transforming the company's structure to make it flexible and quick to adapt to changing customer and market needs. This includes defining agile processes, creating autonomous teams, setting clear goals and KPIs, and implementing scalable, modular technology platforms.

To sum up, and unsurprisingly, becoming a composable enterprise requires adopting a composable architecture. If you're not familiar with the concept, check out our guide on what composable architecture is and how to put it into practice.

By combining the three pillars of composability described above, a business becomes able to quickly embrace new trends and is always ready for the opportunities and challenges the market brings. And that's just one of the many benefits this approach can bring to a company. Let's explore them all!

A company built on a composable IT architecture can enjoy several advantages over its competitors. Here are the most important ones.

A composable vision lets companies explore new components, in the form of innovative services and solutions, quickly and efficiently. This encourages the search for the technologies that best fit the company's digital goals. The composable nature of the IT architecture makes integrating new elements immediate, encouraging experimentation with new technologies.

Modularity is a key principle of the composable approach: it means treating business processes and projects as independent modular blocks. When market needs change, you simply reorganize the various business components around the new goals, without making complex, costly changes to the entire ICT architecture and organization. This makes a business faster at handling change and more agile in responding to market opportunities.

Orchestration is the ability to effectively coordinate and manage the various business components. In a composable business, leadership uses orchestration to allocate resources, technologies and skills to reach business goals. This makes it possible to maximize the value generated by combining the different business modules, ensuring effective operations management and a clear strategic vision.

A composable architecture is a mosaic of different, easily replaceable technologies, solutions and services. This leads to a drastic reduction of the vendor lock-in typical of monolithic technologies, which become extremely hard to abandon once adopted. If a component stops working, no longer fits the company's goals or is no longer needed, you simply remove it or replace it with something better suited. As a result, the whole company becomes more resilient to market disruptions.

A modular tech stack lets companies adopt new technologies more flexibly and gradually. Because the various business components are modular and interconnected, parts of the system can be added or replaced with new technologies without making substantial changes to the entire architecture. This keeps companies at the forefront of technological innovation.

Overall, a composable enterprise is more competitive, innovative and resilient than its competitors. At the same time, embarking on a digital transformation journey to embrace composable architecture on your own is complex and risky. That's why you need the support of an experienced digital partner with a proven track record, like Cantiere Creativo.

Here is one of the many case studies where Cantiere Creativo helped Italian and international organizations successfully adopt a composable approach.

In this article, we've learned what a composable enterprise is and why it represents the future of business. In particular, we've seen that to become composable, a company needs to transform its technology architecture to make it more modular and made up of independent components. Only a composable company can easily adapt to a market that is evolving faster than ever.

Being able to evolve and adapt to new needs without overturning the company's structure means being more efficient than the competition. Unfortunately, this transformation isn't easy and requires the support of a team of experts. That's where Cantiere Creativo comes in: a technology partner that offers more than just development and goes beyond mere consulting.

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