The Basics: Defining Digital Transformation and Enterprise Architectures

Global businesses of every size are increasingly concerned about two interrelated themes – productivity and competition. More specifically, 41% of midsize companies are concerned about competitiveness, while 39% of large enterprises are worried about improving productivity. 

As a result, businesses are constantly seeking ways to become more agile, responsive, and innovative. At the most basic level, digital transformation refers to leveraging technology to accomplish this.

Some of the most common digital transformation initiatives include:

But how do these initiatives come into play within creative operations?

While each software provides its own set of features and benefits, when integrated into other peripheral technologies that support the supply chain, those benefits are amplified as users’ data, information, and assets can pass seamlessly from one system to the next. This allows brands to obtain a 360° view of their content and identify further productivity and performance gains.

For example, by integrating a Product Information Management (PIM) and DAM together, product data such as size, color, and SKU can be attached to an asset within the DAM, improving content discoverability. To take it a step further, integrating a CMS into a DAM would allow brands to take the product data, and the asset and publish to a website, all through one automated workflow.

For this connectivity to be possible, how a technology is architected is incredibly important.

Why are enterprises shifting from monolithic architecture?

While monolithic systems can seem like an easy answer, they become difficult to scale and adapt to meet changing business needs. 

System maintenance continues long after the software is implemented, and making even a small change to the system requires additional customization work that is both extensive and expensive (two things we don’t want to hear!). This time-consuming process can quickly become a drain on resources. 

Purchasing monolithic software solutions from a single vendor can also lock you into a lengthy contract, limiting your ability to switch providers. Limited interoperability can also prevent these types of solutions from being integrated with other systems in the tech stack. 

Of course, this is extra painful (and costly) if teams aren’t using all of the suite’s products or features.

This lack of flexibility can hinder enterprise innovation, as monolithic software vendors’ innovation efforts likely vary across individual products in the suite, with some products receiving more attention than others. 

Ultimately, the drawbacks of monolithic architecture increasingly conflict with the agility favored by IT teams and developers today.

As a result, composable architecture, sometimes referred to as the “composable approach,” is gaining popularity among enterprises. 

In contrast to monolithic architecture, composable architecture is a system made up of individual, independent, but integrated components or pieces of software, each serving a specific purpose.

Features of composable architecture:

Composable System

How components interact in a composable system

This example of composable architecture illustrates a content supply chain and common solutions within enterprise MarTech stacks. Digital asset management (DAM) underpins the entire composable architecture, touching each peripheral solution as content, (meta)data, analytics, and more pass from system to system.

While the above diagram illustrates a simplified version of composable architecture, it is important to note that what makes composable architecture so attractive is that any combination of technologies can be configured to create a tailored solution that aligns with a business’s unique needs. 

Why transition to composable architecture? 

The composable approach to enterprise architecture began with the rise of SaaS (software as a service), followed by the delivery of SaaS through the cloud, and strengthening with the emphasis on MACH (microservices, API-first, cloud-native, headless) principles to drive digital transformation.

Composable architecture supports the next wave of digital transformation, providing the foundation for businesses to become more agile, efficient, and innovative in today’s competitive market.

The primary advantage of composable architecture for businesses is the ability to select the most cutting-edge technology for each part of their content supply chain. 

With monolithic suites, some features may lack innovation as they are not the product’s main focus. Additionally, features within the suite often go unused by teams, but all of this is still included in the overall cost of the system.

With composable architecture, brands can utilize technology from various vendors that their teams actually want to use and seamlessly integrate these solutions. They can leverage the latest in AI and automation to streamline workflows and processes, leading to a more efficient use of resources. 

Further, the modular design of composable architecture allows teams to easily add or replace modules to adapt to changing business needs without impacting the rest of the modules within the ecosystem. This design is also helpful in isolating any issues to specific modules, making system maintenance easier for technical teams to manage and less costly.

Composable is the Future of Digital Transformation

Shifting to composable architecture is becoming increasingly common as enterprises focus on digital transformation to optimize business strategy.

As digital transformation involves fundamentally changing how organizations use technology to streamline operations and enhance customer experiences, composable architecture supports these goals by allowing companies to build a flexible, scalable, and customizable technology ecosystem.

By transitioning to composable architecture, enterprises can overcome the limitations of monolithic systems, such as scalability issues, being tied to a single vendor, and the burden of maintenance for costs and resources. This shift enables organizations to remain agile, responsive, and competitive in an ever-evolving digital market. 

Embracing composable architecture is about more than updating technology; it’s about successfully aligning IT capabilities with business strategies to drive efficiency and meaningful outcomes across operations.