Composability is for everyone.
What do N26, Alibaba and the city government of Antwerp have in common? At first sight, the global fintech, Chinese e-commerce giant and Belgian government institution are entirely different organisations that compete in separate industries.
What they have in common though and where their success stems from is similar practices when it comes to designing their internal architectures. All three organisations are early business visionaries and have adopted componentised approach, also known as Packaged Business Capabilities (PBCs).
In its Innovation Insight for Packaged Business Capabilities and Their Role in the Future Composable Enterprise 2019 research, Gartner defines Packaged business capabilities (PBCs) as "software components that represent a well-defined business capability, functionally recognizable as such by a business user." You can download the Gartner report here.
According to Gartner's strategic inputs "Fixed application experiences no longer meet business and customer requirements. Application leaders managing their organization’s digital transformation must prioritize the architecture of the composable enterprise and packaged business capabilities to succeed."
Organisations that adopt PBC-based application architecture develop greater digital dexterity and are advancing toward the composable enterprise.
Gartner also offers a number of recommendations for application leaders for strategic business change in their organisations, including:
- Develop mastery in API management, integration, business-IT collaboration and democratised tooling.
- Develop a prioritised roadmap to renovate or replace critical legacy systems.
- Reject any new monolithic solutions proposed by vendors or in-house developers.
- Transform the culture toward business-led technology innovation.
Businesses across various industries adopting API-centric, pure SaaS solutions are able to deliver on the expected business agility and benefit from a fast pace of modernisation and business innovation. The risks of not adopting PBCs-based architecture outweigh the difficulties linked to the adoption of the composable enterprise strategy.
Legacy technology constraints can undermine even the best innovation strategy. Many organisations are hamstrung by system complexity and are unable to take advantage of new tools, and are quickly losing their competitive advantage.
Because enterprise architecture is now more strategically important than ever, adoption of agile component-based architecture will enable enterprises to take a step toward future-proofing their businesses to support innovation.
Source: Gartner, Innovation Insight for Packaged Business Capabilities and Their Role in the Future Composable Enterprise, Yefim Natis, Dennis Gaughan, Mark O'Neill, Benoit Lheureux, Massimo Pezzini, 11 December 2019.