Composable architecture is transforming how we build web applications. Unlike monolithic systems, which tightly couple components, composable architecture promotes independent, reusable building blocks. This headless approach enhances scalability, flexibility, and time-to-market.
We’ll explore the fundamentals of composable architecture and its benefits in this guide. For a deeper technical dive, check out our comprehensive guide.
Breaking down composable architecture
Let’s get started with some of the basics of composable architecture. It has some notable differences over a monolithic or all-in-one platform that are worth exploring.
Defining composable architecture
Composable architecture has a few hallmark traits that make it unique when standing next to its monolithic counterpart. These distinctive traits include:
- Reusability: The ability to reuse pre-built code and application elements that help developers decrease web and application development time. These pre-built building blocks also ensure consistency and reliability across applications and services.
- Loose coupling: Composable architecture has loosely coupled modules, which means each module exists as a cloud-native self-contained program. These independent components in loose configuration enable you to restart, update, scale, replace, or modify each one without impacting the others.
- Future-proof: Outdated components in monolithic architecture make the entire ecosystem obsolete. It also becomes a tangled web of code as your business scales. Updates to independent modules of your composable architecture keep components current without affecting other parts of the system.
Developers and architects can enjoy the same functionality of monolithic systems with the observable benefits of flexibility and scalability. New features and practices are becoming available each day, making composable architecture an ideal solution for growing and large organizations.
Benefits of composable architecture
The combination of reusable components and reduced time to market makes composable architecture a better fit for many developers. Each feature is virtually a benefit in and of itself, but these stand-out perks are giving business leaders a compelling case for migration:
- Scalability: Scaling monolithic systems can be impossible, but with CA, you can optimize each service through application programming interfaces (APIs) to meet your needs and target scaling to support your high-traffic components without rebuilding your entire platform.
- Efficiency: The independent nature of composable architecture leads to shorter development cycles and more rapid deployment of changes and patches. CA supports sound code organization practices, improving functionality and maintainability.
- Flexibility: Composable architecture frees you from rigid backend systems, allowing you to pick the best solutions to get the job done. This flexibility also leads to rapid response to changing market demands, giving you greater adaptability to face changing trends and behaviors.
- Troubleshooting: CA’s loose coupling makes it easier to isolate and resolve problems quickly. Developers can diagnose and deploy a fix without disrupting other applications.
When you’re able to deploy, scale, and troubleshoot your tech stack with greater ease and in less time, you save precious time and money that you can invest elsewhere. You also free employees to focus on more important, customer-impacting tasks that are critical to operations. And this is just a glimpse into the benefits of this modern approach.
Building composable applications
Getting a sense of what makes composable architecture, well, composable, and the benefits of utilizing a CA model are only part of the equation. To really comprehend composable architecture’s impact, we need to delve into the practicalities of building websites and applications. Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, composable architecture offers a flexible foundation for scaling and adapting to evolving business needs.
Key practices for composable architecture
As with most business systems, best practices make the difference between success and failure. Migrating and deploying composable architecture also utilizes several best practices to ensure the success of each deployment, including:
- Well-defined interfaces: Support the modularity of individual components. More complex systems rely on clearly defined properties to integrate with the wider architecture without creating problems, such as downtime. These interfaces make it easier to debug and ship finished products.
- Strong dependency management: A dependency is a piece of software or a library an app relies on to operate. It contains pre-built code that developers incorporate, allowing them to save time and effort. Proper management ensures developers can build, deploy, and maintain apps predictably and reliably.
- Effective component communication: Deploy a defined set of rules for interfaces to follow in order to communicate with each other. As apps may have different coding languages, a component controller helps regulate inputs, calls, and outputs.
- Efficient state management: State management is crucial as apps grow in complexity. Maintaining knowledge of an application’s inputs across multiple data flows allows you to track complete transactions, leading to more efficient memory usage.
These best practices are vital because they help with adding new features (scalability), code management and maintainability, reusability, and performance. Unmanagement practices and ineffective state management impact performance, such as unnecessary loading or reloading and decreased responsiveness (slower programs).
Following the composable architecture best practices also make it easier to communicate and collaborate with others. Clean code facilitates more rapid deployment and streamlined debugging and testing.
Tools for building composable apps with Netlify
To support building composable apps, Netlify built its platform on three components: Connect (your data source), Core (your front-end cloud), and Create (your visual editor). These powerful tools empower organizations of all sizes to build and scale with unprecedented agility.
In addition to these tools, Netlify supports serverless functions, which are provider-hosted server solutions that reduce infrastructure requirements. Likewise, Netlify believes in an incremental build philosophy, where designing, coding, and testing happen a little bit at a time to ensure proper functionality and stability.
Netlify’s platform future-proofs applications with a build, deploy, and run support system. Major corporations are already benefiting from Netlify’s composable architecture, including Nike’s 10x faster project deliveries, Cornerstone’s 92% better performance, and Riot Games’ 65% reduced bandwidth usage.
You can experience the Netlify platform for yourself by requesting a demo. Enjoy higher developer productivity and get more done in less time with Netlify.
Putting composable architecture into practice
Putting composable architecture into practice can seem complicated. It can also invite resistance from some team members, especially those accustomed to and already working on monolithic systems.
Getting started with composable architecture
Now that you’re considering if composable architecture is worth the effort, it’s time to look at what it takes to get started. You can break down the process into five straightforward steps:
- Prepare for the transition: Define your goals, analyze your current monolithic systems, and verify your team’s expertise. During this step, you should build a business case for the CA model.
- Define your priorities: Transition in stages to minimize disruption to your current systems and workflows. Decide which systems to move first and which ones to keep in your legacy architecture for a while longer.
- Find your platform partner: Netlfy’s robust toolkit and expert support help you create a plan for your composable architecture migration. Contact us to get started.
- Decide on your strategy: Choose a deployment pattern, such as the strangler pattern with individual apps for each function. A parallel adoption takes the strangler method and uses each architecture simultaneously to compare old vs. new. Or, try a domain-driver design (DDD), which supplies new code functions to standalone apps instead of a monolithic code base.
- Don’t go at it alone: Building complex composable architectures often benefits from expert guidance. Explore our Agency Directory to find experienced professionals who can assist with your migration.
Tips for transitioning to a composable approach
For all the benefits composable architecture provides, there will undoubtedly be some pushback. Stakeholders, investors, senior leadership, and even developers counter with several legitimate concerns, but here’s how you can navigate the most popular ones:
- Our current monolith is adequate: Evaluate whether this is true or not by asking profound questions, such as “How much time and money do we spend on maintenance?” “How much do we spend on our servers?” and “Could developers be working on more essential projects?”
- Composable architecture is complex: Composable architecture can be complex if deployed all at once. However, once migrated, the process of maintaining, scaling, and deployment becomes easier and more cost-effective. Remind stakeholders of incremental migration and the ROI of investing in complex projects.
- Migration is time-consuming: A digital transformation may take time, but it also takes time to maintain and upgrade monolithic architecture. Once you migrate, a provider can handle the server-side infrastructure while developers work on essential projects, saving time in the long haul.
- Don’t undo the work we’ve already done: Acknowledge the work your team did to get your tech stack to its current point. Position the change to CA as a constant push forward, enabling your company and team to remain competitive and innovative far into the future.
The move to composable architecture doesn’t force developers to take on more work. Instead, it makes these teams more efficient, leading to less work over time.
Build modern websites and apps faster with Netlify
Composable architecture for modern web applications provides a level of flexibility and scalability not found in monolithic models. We could spend all day talking about the benefits and features of composable architecture, as it is our bread and butter, but this brief introduction should give you the inspiration you need to introduce the practice in your organization.
Composable architecture allows you to customize your tech stack by connecting multiple open-source or API-driven apps to manage your systems. These apps include everything from headless content management systems (CMS), ecommerce platforms, and other business logic programming.
Netlify’s platform is ideal for building and deploying composable architecture, thanks to serverless functions, reduced infrastructure demands, and a toolkit that supports developers working in a variety of frontend frameworks and programming languages. Get started with Netlify today or explore more of our resources to get an even deeper understanding of composable architecture.
