Are Composable Applications the Future of Software Development?

Updated on :October 18, 2023

Abstract:
Composable applications help reduce the operational complexity of traditional workloads and increase the operational dynamism of next-generation services and applications. The cap potential to mix workflows throughout applications into one flow technique saves time and money. The composable applications are capable of efficiently developing new products and innovative solutions for enhanced productivity. It saves end-user time and decreases their additional efforts with the aid of streamlining the technique. The explosion of post-pandemic digital touchpoints and the soaring necessity to master change, be proactive, and instantly bring efficient modifications to the architecture have been the driving factors for composable applications.

This research by GoodFirms titled: “Are Composable Applications the Future of Software Development?” is aimed to let the organizations know about the recent developments in app development technologies as well as to help them in determining the importance of Composable applications for their business growth. This research also attempts to analyze how composable applications assist software developers in carrying out their operations. The study also analyzes the future of composable applications and how they could revolutionize the software development process.

Introduction

The target of composability is to make the consumer experience more sorted and easy by making workflows of applications flexible without requiring the consumer to manually tour among apps thus making a smooth and singular work environment. Composability eliminates the requirement for different workload-specific environments to be deployed and managed. Companies may construct and reconfigure systems without having to move real assets because of the nature of this software methodology. Companies can set up computing, storage, and networking resources on-demand based on an application's varying workload requirements. To do this, enterprises must implement the “composable enterprise.”(1)

The research aims to understand the key developments in composable architecture and how it impacts software app development. This report also provides all the details on how composable applications can bring a drastic upgrade for all the sectors adopting them. The study also investigates the types, top benefits, significance, and key players of composable applications. 

Composable Environment: 

(Composability, Composable Architecture, Composable Infrastructure, Composable Enterprise, and Composable Enterprise Workforce)

What is Composability?

Composability means the ability to interoperate the components within a design system. The purpose of composability is to;

  • Master change 
  • Opens up new possibilities
  • Derive new business scenarios
  • Agility
  • Adaptability

A composable business model has three components which are composable thinking, composable architecture, and composable applications. In terms of IT, composable applications are critically focused on by enterprises and CTOs (2).

Composable application structure

Source: Gartner

The three building blocks of composable business are business architecture, thinking, and technologies. 

Composable applications refer to the solutions that are allowing organizations to create applications that can be redeveloped and redeployed as per their business requirements. These composable applications are developed from the components of business-centric modules which make them easier to reuse the existing code, enhancing organizational value and improving the time to market new applications and products.

With the development and expansion of 5G, Composable applications got the fuel they needed to provide improved data transfers, experience, and flawless synchronization. 

What Are Composable Applications?

Composable applications are the emerging development process that promises to make a drastic enhancement enabling total freedom in resource utilization to meet a variety of constantly changing demands, thereby minimizing the cost and speeding up the process. Magnifying digital businesses require a plug-and-play architecture that allows them to pool resources, dismantle, swap, and re-assemble components – this flexibility to control the elements can be attained via composable applications. It is all about resilience, innovation, and adaptability, essential for modular businesses.

What Is Composable Architecture?

Composable architecture is a mechanism for scaling storage, databases, networks, and computation functionality with a high level of reliability and flexibility(3). The composable architecture framework will help to structure your app with understandable and predictable state changes. With the arrival of cloud-based technology, businesses gain agility and dexterity. Businesses are now attempting to replicate the same results using traditional IT infrastructure. This has resulted in a surge in the adoption of composable architecture.

What Is A Composable Enterprise?

Composable Enterprise is the trending concept coined by Gartner(4).

New operational theories have provided a way for scaling technology as companies evolve to suit changing client needs. Nonetheless, the rate of technological development has accelerated, putting pressure on businesses to adapt more quickly. The Covid-19 has highlighted the significance of digital transformation once again(5). As businesses have transitioned to distributed teams over the last year, they've realized the urgent need to migrate their tools to the cloud as well. Furthermore, since distributed teams have become the norm, workers' capacity to complete tasks effectively and efficiently has become increasingly vital.

A composable business aids in the comprehension and application of technical solutions making them easily adaptable to the changing business requirements. This can be achieved using two methods:

  • One is the dismantling of larger and more complicated enterprise components.
  • The second method is an API that would offer connectivity to these disassembled components and result in them being composable.

A composable enterprise is required if a company wants to be able to create and modify programs quickly and dynamically(6).

What Do You Get As A Composable Enterprise?

The company can operate freely as per the forces of the market with a high degree of adaptability to various devices. The adaptability extends to other business operations also, as they are loosely paired thus making it easy to reuse.

Here the non-developers like marketers can operate solely as there is little or no code required, they don't have to rely on someone from the IT sector to assist them (7). More flexibility and coordination are among the advantages of a modular architecture combined with well-defined APIs.

How Does a Composable Model Come Into The Picture?

Every business carries out its operations to meet the requirements of its customers. Consumer experience is the top priority of composable business. Business capabilities that can be reused are done to cater to consumer demands.

The Composable Enterprise Workforce

To survive among business rivals, businessmen must adopt what many other organizations are lagging. Implementing composable applications can ease the workload of the workers and hence will improve the productivity and efficiency of the workers.

These are the ways how composable enterprises are changing the workforce:

  • IT and non-IT professionals should be working together to meet the common objectives.
  • All the workers (suppliers, tech-staff, and freelancers) must unite.
  • Adoption of new techniques is required to bring immediate change. 

Composable Infrastructure

It is a technique used to coordinate and manage the physical assets and also assist in the allocation and optimum utilization of the resources in a more cost-effective way.

Composable infrastructure grants computing, storage, and networking resources, emancipated from their physical locations and handled by software. It allows data center resources to be accessed in the same way that cloud services are(8).

There are various benefits of composable infrastructure such as

  • It helps to provide a flexible network for the data centers.
  • As all the resources are unified there is no underutilization.
  • Composable infrastructure is more cost-effective. As it unifies all the applications in a single fluid flow, helps to save both time and money for the organization.
  • It provides an experience that is the same as a web-based cloud which is more like on-premises.
  • Composable infrastructure is mobile so it can be operated anywhere and doesn’t have physical limitations as it can be operated via virtual machines or through cloud applications.
  • It is more responsive and agile; apps and services can be delivered at a faster rate.
  • Composable infrastructure works more smartly as it uses intelligent software which can allocate resources, can detect issues, and can provide appropriate solutions.

Significance of Composable Applications in Software  App Development

A composable application is an idea or concept that a useful block of an application may be separated from an entire application or process. This way one can construct successful new applications with higher capability and purpose. In the ever-changing digital era, businesses are continually challenged to innovate, adapt, and evolve.  This frequently entails accomplishing more with less, working quickly, and doing so as feasible. Composability refers to a company's ability to pivot swiftly.  During times of disruption, it aids firms in achieving digital acceleration, being more resilient, and innovating.

The more composability ideas and building blocks are integrated into your company, the more flexibility and agility it will have, which results in consistent execution and quicker response times. Composability also improves the agility and cost-effectiveness of businesses that have already invested extensively in them. Combining storage, network, and computation under a single user interface allows for more painless and efficient operations. Composability is advantageous for systems that include a range of modules since it streamlines and collects the most relevant workflows for users in a single go.

Why Composable Applications?

Purpose:

Creating functional blocks of applications that can be dissociated and re-created with better functionality for a greater purpose. Granular app construction enables complete business continuity. Such applications facilitate security and pave the way for continuous and simple operations with minimized failure points.

We have been noticing a transformation in how software is coded and consumed to increase business efficiency and reusability. The multi-cloud technology, infrastructure-as-code, and configurable multi-channel user experiences demand the applications be more flexible, configurable, and composable throughout the application stack.

With the rise of Software as a Service (SaaS), businesses got the opportunity to have access to an ever-expanding sea of point solutions. However, there has been an increase in the IT challenges too that are experienced by the businesses. The IT department along with CIOs are looking for newer solutions to continuously navigate through these IT challenges of digital transformation.

In addition, the global user spending on public cloud apps is expected to exceed $480 Billion by the end of 2022. A rapid 21% increase in the numbers as compared to the stats of 2021(9).  

A large number of software solutions are existing in the market which are quite good at handling the intended operations. However, these software solutions tend to have gaps when they are measured in terms of the unique processes and needs of an organization. When organizations keep on adopting new tools with these gaps then it leads to technical debt. With the increase in technical debt due to the adoption of new technologies by organizations, essential processes and teams deviate from their goals which leads to their reduced productivity.

Composable applications come in handy in such situations. They are useful for business organizations and IT firms in building the functional foundation of the applications from existing building blocks of an application which can be interchanged, tweaked, and used as per the organizational and consumer needs. By critically assembling the components into a fully customized application, businesses can capitalize on the effectiveness of their SaaS apps while improving their organizational values. Through this, they can properly adapt to the dynamic and ever-changing market conditions along with fastly responding to the customers.

How to Create Composable Business Applications?

Developers generate the building blocks (these blocks can be subcomponents, components, widgets, packaged business capabilities, and even complete solutions) that will become applications during the creation stage of composable app development. The idea is that the application's building blocks will be modular.

For decades, there has been a shift toward modular architecture. As application requirements and feature functionality have grown more complex, businesses have found it necessary to divide distinct components of a program to ease development and lifecycle maintenance.

Decoupling backend and frontend functionality was the initial step, followed by adopting microservices, which separated business capabilities into discrete code sets. Micro frontends have lately made it possible for apps to become modular from end to end by dismantling the final monolith: the frontend. A composable business starts with using modularity principles from start to finish, starting with your infrastructure and concluding with your frontend. This implies structuring the components of your program around distinct business tasks and needs rather than thinking of them as a whole.

During the creation phase, your team concentrates on developing modular building blocks for applications that may be used to meet the needs of your present applications and future applications. Once created, these capabilities and solutions can be packed and posted to a shared hub for curation.

Key Players in the Composable Applications Market

A lot of major organizations are either engaged or likely to engage in the global composable applications and infrastructure market. These include

Dell Technologies: Dell has developed their Active system manager for enabling service-centric IT and the pooled resources. In addition, ASM is also useful for the organization in boosting their flexibility as well as resolving work-load-specific problems(10). 

HP Enterprises: HP Enterprise in 2019 announced that they are merging their HPE Synergy, HPE Primera Storage, and HPE composable rack to expand their application composability and intelligence offerings. This is enabling the customers as well as organizations to deliver their offerings from a cloud platform. This improves the flexibility in the applications and service level with agility like cloud computing(11).

Nutanix Inc: Nutanix is a US-based computer software organization that is also engaged in the development of composable infrastructure and applications. The company recently announced the development of the Nutanix Era in association with HPE ProLiant servers for providing effective and properly managed hybrid cloud services and composable applications to their consumers. The Nutanix Era allows business executives and consumers to effectively deploy the applications and databases in minutes for getting benefits of agility, elasticity and using capabilities of the cloud(12).

Apart from these organizations, there are several other firms that are investing in composable applications and infrastructure such as Liqid Inc, NetApp Inc., Lenovo Group, Western Digital Corp, etc. 

Positive Outcomes of Adopting Composable Applications

Composable application is one of the latest technology trends that is capable of multiplying digital innovations and businesses in the next few upcoming years (13). Composable apps are the quick fix that enables businesses to quickly scale digital creativity and innovation by creating applications that can be redeveloped and re-deployed based on changing business needs. Businesses are incorporating end-to-end modularity into their infrastructure. These benefits range from low code, enhanced productivity to leveraging IT better.

Here are the few advantages of adopting the composable applications:

advantages of Composable applications

#Results in increased efficiency

Composable applications enable organizations to update the fragments of their applications separately from a single application. Following this technique increases the efficiency of each application thus resulting in the whole effectiveness of all the applications.

#Re-arranging and reusing the common components

As the business has to adapt to a rapidly changing environment as per the demand of the customers the need for building new applications tasks can be simplified by just rearranging the common components and just adding the new components as per the requirements.

So we can conclude that every company and application leader should be aware of the benefits of adopting composable apps. With the evolution of technology, applications change. Business leaders must comprehend the benefits of each technology so that their organization can fulfill the customer’s needs so that they can grow furthermore, establishing themselves as industry leaders.

#Low code 

Low code is the biggest benefit that an organization can achieve through composable applications. Composable applications are usually low code due to which they can easily resolve the complex problems of businesses that require several technologies. Therefore, businesses can easily connect different software silos together in an effective manner. 

The majority of development aspects such as mainframe systems, databases, etc. can be managed properly. Low code will be one of the most important technologies to invest in a business in the upcoming years(14).

composable application environment

#Growing demand in the development of new products and services

With the arrival of Covid-19, people including non-tech professionals get the opportunity to serve the pandemic-induced needs of people and businesses. As per Gartner Inc, 80% of the products and services will be built by non-technology providers by the end of the year 2024. In addition, more than $30 Billion in revenue will come from the businesses and offerings that didn’t exist prior to Covid(15). 

People are rapidly forming their businesses in order to satisfy the growing demand of consumers and other businesses which traditional businesses failed in the meeting. Due to this, there is growing competition in the markets between technology providers and non-technology providers. These non-technology providers include developers, AI systems for software development, data scientists, etc. who are developing IT and low code-driven composable applications. Composable applications can assist these non-technology providers in easily serving their customers i.e both businesses and individuals. Through composable applications, these non-technology providers can develop new and innovative applications with assistance from the foundational blocks of existing apps.

#Packaged Business Capabilities

Packaged business capabilities (PCBs) refer to the software solutions developed around a particular business function. These are the collective applications with several data schema, APIs, events channels, etc., that can break down as per the business needs. Companies are rapidly adopting digital transformation to improve their business efficiency and productivity drastically. PCBs come into play in such conditions; they enhance business processes' flexibility and help create a more streamlined and smoother workflow. PCBs allow businesses and people to no longer get bounded by the traditional application suites; instead, they can use the best modular technologies for eliminating any restrictions and issues of their app development processes. 

#Development of enhanced Intelligent systems

With composable applications, Enterprises can develop innovative and new intelligent applications which can easily automate the workflow as well as to adapt to the changing conditions and needs of the market. In addition, businesses can also compose dynamic applications with the assistance of composable application technology for better exploring, utilizing, and analyzing data(16).

#Seizing new opportunities

Composable applications allow the development of new applications from existing code or applications. This improves the productivity and efficiency of the businesses in serving different clients in an effective and efficient manner. In addition, composable applications provide flexibility, agility, and resilience to the developers as well as new applications due to which businesses can easily improve their ability to build, assemble and reassemble in order to rapidly seize the opportunities in the market(17).

Challenges Rolling Out Composable Applications

  • Challenge for the infrastructure
  • Access to the infrastructure
  • Identifying the right skills set for the development of composable applications, the design, and the management of it.

Best Practices in Composable Application Development

  • Establish a clear strategy
  • Plan for a strategic outcome
  • Analyze the cost and security involved
  • Work on the scalability
  • Implement

Future of Composable Infrastructure and Applications

The composable infrastructure and applications market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20.21% by 2028. The composable applications market was valued at $3.29 billion in the year 2020 and is expected to grow up to $14.35 billion by the end of 2028. This huge growth is expected in several segments such as BFSI, IT, Healthcare, manufacturing, etc. all across the world(19). 

Composable applications are known for delivering quality-based applications that can be reused and redeployed in no time. These applications can bring new and improved opportunities to enterprises if properly implemented in the business processes.  There is a high need for businesses to invest in composable applications and infrastructure in the present challenging times. They need to implement composable systems in order to improve their productivity and speed along with service delivery.

Market growth factors for composable applications:

Efficient and Simple 

In the present time, composable applications are offering a less complex environment to businesses in utilizing a single model all across the organization. It is also preventing the wastage of investment which occurs due to investing in staff training as well as to provide a better learning environment. Composable applications also ensure continuous and constant delivery of IT services and applications(20).

An increase in the number of businesses will lead to a surge in composable applications

A huge number of new applications came into existence after the improvements in traditional applications. These new applications demand responsiveness and stability which can be accomplished through composable applications. With the assistance of a template-driven approach, composable applications can address the delay in provisioning time which ensures that the resources are available when needed. Due to this, businesses can achieve strategic advantages instead of experiencing growth problems.

Key Findings

  • Composable applications help reduce the operational complexity of traditional workloads and increase operational dynamism.
  • It saves end-user time and decreases their additional efforts.
  • The target of composability is to make the consumer experience more sorted and easy.
  • Composability also improves the agility and cost-effectiveness of businesses. 
  • Businesses can also gain agility and dexterity through composability.
  • The non-developers like marketers can operate solely as it is little or no code required.
  • Composable apps are the quick fix that enables businesses to quickly scale digital creativity and innovation by creating applications that can be redeveloped and re-deployed based on changing business needs.
  • Composable applications eliminate the need to rely on a single system that could become obsolete in the future.
  • The advantages of composable apps in terms of digital transformation are their capacity to increase developer productivity.
  • Composable applications are the concept in which a functional part of an application can be dissociated from the complete application in order to build a better application with more functionality.
  • Composable applications bring several benefits to the performance of organizations such as efficiency, flexibility, reduced serving time, reduced deployment time, etc. 
  • Composable applications can be developed for almost all industries. But, BFSI, IT, Healthcare, manufacturing, etc. are the ones that are utilizing this technology.
  • The ability to easily reuse and redeploy is also strengthening the composability applications market.
  • Businesses are committing to composable applications for reducing their deploying and serving time to their consumers.
  • Evolved habits of consumers and businesses which were not fulfilled by the traditional businesses are leading to a growth in the composable applications market.
  • Companies like HP, Dell, Nutanix, etc. are highly active in the composable market segment.

Conclusion

Mobile app development is one of the fastest-growing technology segments which is continuously expected to grow in the upcoming years. Among the mobile application segment, Businesses with composable applications and technologies are also expected to grow in the few upcoming years. Since composable applications allow the development of improved applications with better functionality, a lot of key IT players such as Dell, HP, etc. are investing in composable technologies for improving their business processes as well as services in the upcoming years. 

However, there are several market factors that can influence the growth in the composable applications market. These factors should be taken into consideration by the business organizations in order to acquire the required growth and sustainability in the market. Every organization today requires an intelligent composable enterprise with the ability to adapt and reinforce itself by shifting trends(21)

Looking for application development companies

Businesses that use composable design may quickly build innovative apps that support a wide range of business objectives. Businesses all around the world are spending substantially on composable applications to improve focus and purpose. 

Businesses ready to invest in composable applications can be creative and adaptable to transforming business demands. It can enhance focus and generate the purpose of survival in the face of uncertainty. 

Would you not take the chance if you had the power to acquire information that would prove to be vital for the future of your business? That is what a composable business architecture will help you to achieve.

References:

  1. https://www.gartner.com/en/doc/465932-future-of-applications-delivering-the-composable-enterprise
  2. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-keynote-the-future-of-business-is-composable
  3. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/composable-business-support-system-bostjan-keber?trk=articles_directory
  4. https://www.gartner.com/en/doc/465932-future-of-applications-delivering-the-composable-enterprise
  5. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/11/18/the-composable-enterprise-a-flexible-approach-to-digital-transformation/?sh=5711f83f17c3
  6. https://congress.openfuture.world/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/04/EN-Composable-Enterprises-Sensedia.pdf
  7. https://a-teaminsight.com/the-composable-enterprise-improving-the-front-office-user-experience/?brand=rti
  8. https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.10911
  9. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-08-02-gartner-says-four-trends-are-shaping-the-future-of-public-cloud
  10. https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/blog/a-practical-view-of-composable-infrastructure/
  11. https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2019/11/hewlett-packard-enterprise-advances-the-cloud-experience-through-intelligence-and-composability.html
  12. https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2021/06/nutanix-and-hewlett-packard-enterprise-announce-expanded-partnership-to-accelerate-hybrid-cloud-and-multicloud-adoption-with-new-database-as-a-service-offering-delivered-through-hpe-greenlake.html#:~:text=San%20Jose%2C%20California%20and%20Houston,solution%2C%20bundled%20with%20HPE%20ProLiant
  13. https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/insights/top-technology-trends
  14. https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2020/cracking-low-code.html
  15. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-06-10-gartner-says-the-majority-of-technology-products-and-services-will-be-built-by-professionals-outside-of-it-by-2024
  16. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9458990
  17. https://congress.openfuture.world/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/04/EN-Composable-Enterprises-Sensedia.pdf
  18. https://l7informatics.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Composable-Architecture-Enables-Digital-Transformation-for-Data-Driven-Organizations-by-John-F-Conway.pdf
  19. https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2021-11-22/composable-infrastructure-market-size-worth-14-35-billion-globally-by-2028-at-20-21-cagr-verified-market-research
  20. https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5448376/global-composable-infrastructure-market-by?utm_source=BW&utm_medium=PressRelease&utm_code=4zqs5p&utm_campaign=1603406+-+Insights+on+the+Composable+Infrastructure+Global+Market+to+2027+-+Featuring+NetApp%2c+Dell+Technologies+and+TidalScale+Among+Others&utm_exec=jamu273prd
  21. https://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/MuleSoft-LeadingtheEmergingComposableEnterprise-REPORT.pdf
     

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