Composable Architecture in the Age of AI

As we all know, AI is the hot topic of the day, not just for Tech Teams, but for businesses and their associated humans across the globe.

A slightly less hot topic for most humans is Composable Architecture, but for Tech Teams (and by extension the businesses they work within) it’s not just a hot topic but a potentially significant shift in thinking. I’m going to take a leap and assume that most readers already know what AI is, but…

What is Composable Architecture?

Composable Architecture is a way of building your business services and systems from reusable modular components. It uses APIs to connect smaller system units to each other to create a comprehensive whole.

Why Have Composable Architecture?

Simply put, it makes your business more agile and adaptable. You’re not dependent on a single vendor to meet all your needs – you can use best of breed and best fit technology and/or outsourced services to meet the individual needs of your business.

For example, let’s say you have a single system that provides all your HR, Recruitment, Training and Finance functions. You want to introduce a new candidate screening section to your Recruitment function, but your current vendor doesn’t provide that and it’s not on their development roadmap for the next few years. Your options are either to live without it until the vendor catches up, or look for a new vendor that can provide all your HR, Recruitment, Training and Finance functions including the candidate screening. Sounds either tedious or expensive, depending on which option you choose.

With Composable Architecture, each of your HR, Recruitment, Training and Finance functions has its own system (or set of systems), seamlessly integrated with each other, so faced with the scenario above you could change your Recruitment vendor, or add a candidate screening component provided by another vendor, all without disruption to the other services or the expense of replacing everything.

How Does Composable Architecture Help My Business?

It makes it future-proof. As soon as there’s a new development, or a new product on the market that will do what you need faster and better (or cheaper), you can take advantage of it immediately. You can swap out an existing component with minimal downtime and get up and running with your shiny new tech quickly.

It makes it vendor-independent. If your current vendor, either of an in-house system or an outsourced service, isn’t keeping up with your needs or the needs of your customers, you can introduce a new system or service to meet those needs. No need for workarounds or additional manual processes – just find a provider that delivers on your requirement at the right price and get them on board and integrated and you’re ready to go.

It makes it fit your needs. You only invest in the tech that you actually need to run your business. No additional modules that you have to pay for because they’re part of the core package, but you don’t actually use. You can adapt, grow, scale, develop and optimise in line with the exact needs of your business.

It makes it robust. If you’ve got one system that does everything, and that system goes down for any reason, you’re landed with a huge reputational risk and potentially a huge loss of income. With Composable Architecture, if one component goes down, all the others can still continue to work independently and keep things ticking over.

It makes it secure. Separating services and systems increases the difficulty for any bad actors intent on getting at your data. Instead of having to gain access to a single system to get at all your data, attackers would need to get access to multiple different systems, each with their own independent security. It also enables you to quarantine the risk once it’s identified and isolate it to a single attack point.

What’s The Catch?

Composable Architecture dictates that your service components need to integrate with each other seamlessly. This means that you will need to invest in technology and skills that can manage those integrations.

The good news is that there are lots of vendors out there that provide integration platforms with capabilities to not only design, manage, and monitor your integrations, but also manage your data lineage and data dictionaries.

Having the right integration platform and the right people in place to design, implement, and manage your integrations is key to Composable Architecture success.

What’s AI Got To Do With It?

AI can be a key component of Composable Architecture at both ends.

At the front end it can speed up the design and implementation of integrations by completing analysis and coding at speed.

At the back end, it can learn from all of your system components. Everything that makes up your Composable Architecture can feed data into your AI model, so it can learn from all your services and systems and not just those provided by one vendor.

At Veran we understand the benefits that Composable Architecture can bring to your business, but we also know that it’s not necessarily the right answer for every business, or even every department with it. Our experienced functional and technical teams can help you assess what the right solution is for your organisation, that will give your users the best service and provide the optimal return on investment. The first part of the journey is understanding your individual business needs and what the future looks like for you.

Contact Becky@veranperformance.com for more information.