Wrapping Up: Is Composable Worth It?
We wanted to wrap this guide by considering the question: Is it worth it to replatform an enterprise system?
Composable is enterprise-ready
Of course, we can’t answer that question for your specific scenario, but there are two key points to take away:
Enterprise-ready tooling: It wasn’t until 2020 that we had the tools we needed to serve enterprises in the composable world. The space is still actively being developed, but the core is there and we’ve been seeing enterprises make the switch with success for the last several years.
Gradual migrations: This architectural approach is designed to be modular, meaning that you adopt it one piece and one page at a time. Replatforming may not ever actually end, but you can show results to leadership within months, and not years.
The business case for composable
You’ll find many benefits as you move through this content and through your journey to a composable architecture. These are a few of the top ones.
Scalability
Decoupling a system into smaller, independent services means scale can be addressed as needed, rather than holistically.
Agility
When the system is decoupled, each component can be upgraded individually. This makes it easier to adopt and upgrade gradually and independently.
Stability
In a monolithic architecture, a failure in one component can bring down the entire system. Composable system failures are isolated to individual services, reducing the impact on the overall system.
Collaboration and autonomy
Teams can work independently on different services, promoting autonomy, faster development, and more control over the tools and services they are using.
Tech flexibility
In a monolithic system, everything must be written in the language and with the tools available to the system. Each component in a decoupled system can use any language, tool, service, or framework that gets the job done.
Reduced DevOps
With monolithic systems, you need a DevOps team to manage running servers. In the composable world, the running parts are only running when they’re being used, and the underlying machines are typically managed by other services. This means that when something goes wrong, it’s often in the code — it’s faster to fix and monitor, and cheaper to staff for.