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The future of business is composable. According to Gartner, more and more businesses build their organizations with modularity. Everything can be swapped, from product offerings no longer relevant to technologies that no longer fit your stack.
But what does composability mean for SaaS products? In this article, you’ll learn what composable architecture is and how this approach can help you scale your SaaS business quicker.
Composable architecture is a new way to do software design. In this approach, developers combine small, self-contained software units to build complex products and digital experiences.
Imagine composable architecture like Lego blocks for developers. You can re-use the same pieces to build new solutions, which makes it much easier to roll out new features or products and seize market share quickly.
It’s not to be mistaken with The Composable Architecture (TCA), a well-known example of this approach, developed by Point-free. TCA is a framework for Swift – a programming language for Apple app development (iOS) – and comes with a library of tools to build modular, testable applications.
In this article, however, we will focus on composable architecture as a wider software development movement.
For many modern-day software builders, the traditional approach to development no longer works. A monolithic architecture with everything in one single codebase is difficult to maintain. One part of the codebase must be updated, and you run into dependency after dependency. Ultimately, you’re updating the entire application just for a straightforward change.
MACH is a group of principles and technologies that modernize the architecture of enterprise apps. It fits perfectly with the idea of composable architecture. MACH stands for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless. Let’s look at each of these principles and what they mean.
Microservices are small, independent services you can couple together to build software applications. Each represents one business capability, whether it’s authentication, search, recommendations, or data analytics. You can develop, deploy, and scale each little piece independently.
In short, developers have way more flexibility to change or scale certain application parts, without affecting other parts. For an in-depth look at the benefits, consider exploring the microservices advantages in detail.
In API-first applications, the Application Programming Interface (API) is designed before the actual software and user interface. This also means the API can often do more than the user interface. New features are added and documented with the API first, followed only later in the user interface.
As a result of prioritizing APIs, it will become easier to build a unified user experience because certain software components are clearly defined.
Cloud-native is a way to build and run responsive and scalable apps anywhere, whether in public, private, or hybrid clouds. An app is "cloud native" if built from the ground up to exist in cloud environments. Cloud-native apps are more scalable, flexible, and easily manageable with automatic updates.
If your architecture is “headless”, it means the front-end is decoupled from any backend logic. So, no matter which programming language or framework is used, how certain things are presented in the front-end can vary across devices or use cases.
Organizations building their apps with modular building blocks have saved countless hours on development and maintenance.
From a technical point of view, using a composable architecture has many advantages for engineering teams.
Although composability has many advantages, it comes with some challenging side effects as well. If you’re considering a modular approach to building apps, here are the most common pitfalls to watch out for.
Shopify uses composable architecture to deliver a highly customizable e-commerce platform. Integrating microservices and APIs, Shopify enables merchants to tailor their online stores with modular components, such as payment gateways, inventory management, and advanced analytics. To maximize earnings on Shopify, you can just grab one of the many existing plugins and components in their marketplace.
This flexibility allows Shopify to continuously roll out new features and integrate with third-party services, giving merchants full control over their store’s tech stack while maintaining scalability and adaptability.
Netflix relies on composable architecture to efficiently manage its large user base and streaming infrastructure. Through the use of microservices, each responsible for specific business capabilities like user authentication, data monetization, content recommendations, and video streaming, Netflix can independently scale and optimize different parts of its platform.
This architecture allows Netflix to deploy updates rapidly and ensure better user experience without affecting the overall system's performance, enhancing both scalability and resilience in managing global demand.
Peloton, known for its connected fitness products, leverages composable architecture to deliver a seamless, personalized workout experience.
By integrating various APIs, microservices, and modular components, Peloton ensures that different parts of its platform – such as live streaming, user profiles, leaderboards, and subscription management – can evolve independently.
This allows Peloton to quickly roll out new features and update specific parts of their service without disrupting the entire platform. The modular design enables Peloton to maintain high scalability while adapting to its users' growing demands for personalization and interactivity.
Spotify utilizes composable architecture to provide a seamless and personalized music streaming experience to its global user base. Spotify decouples key functionalities such as music recommendations, user playlists, and real-time streaming.
Each module operates independently, allowing Spotify to quickly introduce new features like personalized playlists or podcast integration without affecting other parts of the platform.
This modular approach not only enhances scalability but also ensures a consistent user experience across different devices and operating systems. With composable architecture, Spotify can maintain agile product development cycles while keeping its backend flexible and efficient.
With a composable architecture, it becomes easier to add new functionalities that aren’t necessarily core to your platform. However, these add-on functions can be a huge value-add for your customers, leading to higher satisfaction, more expansion revenue, and a higher LTV.
Especially with powerful low-code software that exists today, you can simply plug in new building blocks in days, instead of months. Below, you’ll find 5 examples that fit perfectly into a composable stack.
Auth0 is a drop-in solution for authentication and authorization for web apps. You can manage social logins, single sign-on, multi-factor authentication and more, all from a central dashboard.
It integrates seamlessly with your existing stack, allowing your DevOps team to maintain security best practices without building a custom solution.
Luzmo is an embedded analytics platform that adds reporting capabilities for end-users to any SaaS product. Build interactive dashboards with simple drag and drop, and integrate them seamlessly as a component in any web app or SaaS platform.
You can even embed a full BI interface so that customers can mine insights according to their specific needs.
Contentstack is a headless CMS, which fits perfectly with the idea of composable architecture. Contentstack takes care of content creation, storage, and delivery via API. But how you present that content is completely up to you and your development team! Use any front-end technology you like to integrate content where and how you want.
Algolia is a cloud-based tool for adding search functions to websites and SaaS applications, without having to build it from scratch. It’s a modular component that integrates seamlessly into any tech stack and scales independently as you need more (or less) search functionality.
Twilio lets you add communication capabilities directly into any software application without building them from the ground up.
Whether you need a chatbot, or send 2FA passcodes, or notifications via SMS and other channels, Twilio takes care of your communication across the entire customer journey. And it comes with plenty of automation options too.
In the ever-evolving landscape of SaaS, open-source technologies play a pivotal role in driving digital transformation. Platforms like GitHub provide access to vast repositories of open-source projects that can streamline development processes. Developers often rely on tools such as SwiftUI to create adaptable and responsive user interfaces, essential for delivering seamless customer experiences across devices.
For many SaaS applications, maintaining efficient business logic is critical to ensure smooth concurrency and performance. A common design pattern used to handle state management in Swift-based applications is the reducer pattern, where developers define actions and their resulting state changes in a clear, maintainable way. This is often paired with observable objects to track real-time updates within the app’s struct-based models.
Moreover, integrating dynamic data structures such as enum can simplify conditional logic and make the codebase more scalable. Storing and sharing these code elements in a repo on GitHub allows teams to collaborate more effectively, ensuring that their business logic and application frameworks remain flexible and scalable.
With digital collaboration becoming the new norm, professional platforms like LinkedIn also contribute to this transformation by fostering communities around open-source projects and sharing best practices for SaaS development.
SaaS builders who are using a composable architecture are speeding up their product development drastically. Instead of spending months on developing an add-on, they go live with new features in days by using plug-and-play building blocks.
If you're looking to add interactive analytics in record time, consider Luzmo for seamless integration into your tech stack. Get in touch with our product experts to see how our composable analytics can enhance your SaaS offering. Or better yet – start a free 10-day trial and experience it firsthand!
A monolithic architecture is a traditional model where all components are interlinked and dependent on a single codebase. In contrast, composable architecture breaks down the application into independent, self-contained modules, enhancing adaptability and scalability.
Composable architecture allows SaaS companies to develop and deploy new features faster, improve scalability, and provide a better user experience by enabling tailored solutions. It also reduces time to market and enhances the ability to respond to changing market demands.
Challenges include increased complexity in managing multiple services, the need for robust API management to ensure seamless integrations, a potential learning curve for development teams, and the necessity for reliable connectivity between modules.
Microservices are the building blocks of composable architecture. Each microservice represents a specific business capability and operates independently. This modularity allows for greater flexibility and scalability within the application.
Yes, companies like Shopify, Netflix, and Spotify use composable architecture to build scalable and adaptable platforms. They leverage microservices and APIs to offer specialized functionalities while maintaining overall system integrity.
Experience the power of Luzmo. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
