Composable architecture and No-Code platforms are two powerful trends that are reshaping the way software is built and deployed. Together, they can help organizations not only create and maintain software more efficiently with a higher degree of flexibility while reducing complexity but also help to quickly innovate and differentiate in the marketplace. This is exactly what redSling brings together for enterprises.
Technology has become such an integral part of our lives so much so that Google and Uber have become verbs in our common vocabulary. With the life cycles of technologies getting shorter by the day, there is pressure on organizations to adopt new technologies quickly or else risk being obsolete. The role of the technology function is not just about maintaining stability while responding to change but also to enable change and innovation to stay competitive and open up more opportunities.
Composable Architecture
Composable architecture is a software design pattern that emphasizes the use of small, reusable Lego-like components that can be easily assembled to form more complex systems. With composable architecture, each component should be pluggable and be able to be replaced and easily scaled to meet business needs. Each component of the development stack and microservices should be easily integrated with other components. This modular approach helps to make the software more maintainable, testable, extensible and scalable. Developers can focus on building individual components and services while dealing with less complexity. This allows them to work faster, with fewer errors and less downtime, and it makes it easier to replace or update components as needed.
Gartner has identified several key principles of composable architecture:
Modularity: Composable architecture emphasizes the use of small reusable components that are easily assembled to form more complex systems.
Loose coupling: Components in a composable architecture are loosely coupled, meaning that they should be able to function independently with minimal inter-dependencies.
Abstraction: Components should be abstracted away from the underlying infrastructure and technology stack so that they are reusable and portable and reusable.
Standardization: Components should be built to standards to ensure interoperability for easy integration with other systems.
Automation: Composable architecture should be built with automation in mind to reduce the time and effort for build and maintenance.
Reusability: Composable architecture inherently should be reusable and discoverable within a catalogue of assets or a marketplace and well aligned with business capability and company strategy.
Composable architecture can help organizations achieve greater levels of flexibility by allowing them to easily swap out individual Lego pieces of software components as needed, without having to rebuild or replace entire systems. This makes it easier to respond to changing business requirements, adapt to new technologies and scale the software to meet changing demand.
No-Code Platforms
No-Code platforms allow users to create software without writing any code. These platforms typically provide an intuitive, visual interface that makes it easy to build and deploy software quickly. By eliminating the need for traditional coding, No-Code platforms can help organizations with limited technical resources build software faster and more affordably. They also can help to democratize the development process by making it easier for non-technical users to create and maintain software.
No-Code platforms provide several benefits including lowering barriers to entry by eliminating the need for traditional coding. No-Code platforms can help organizations with limited technical resources build software more affordably and quickly. Some of the features of No-Code platforms are:
Intuitive Visual Interface: No-Code platforms typically provide an intuitive, visual interface that makes it easy to build and deploy software quickly. This allows organizations to get new software products and services to market faster than traditional development methods.
Increased productivity: With No-Code platforms, development teams can focus on designing and building the software, rather than spending time building complex security or integration, workflows from the ground up. The focus is to use pre-built security protocols, access controls, integration options, connectors, and templates that can be easily configured and customized by users to connect different systems and enable automation. This increases developer productivity and reduces the time required to build and maintain software.
Greater flexibility: No-Code platforms provide a high degree of flexibility, allowing organizations to create, test, and deploy new software features and functionalities quickly and easily. This can help organizations to be more agile, adaptive, and experimental with new ideas to react to the market.
Improved collaboration: Many No-Code platforms provide the ability for non-technical business users to create or work closely with IT teams to address business needs by working together in an agile manner. This helps to democratize the development process and makes it easier for different teams within an organization to collaborate on software development projects.
Lower costs: No-Code platforms typically have a lower upfront cost and a lower total cost of ownership than traditional development methods as they don’t require developers to write code, resulting in cost savings.
Greater scalability: By creating modular, reusable components, organizations can build software that can scale more easily as business requirements change. In addition, No-Code platforms are cloud-based thus allowing them to automatically scale resources as needed to handle increased load.
Less dependency on specialized skills: No-Code platforms allow users to create software without needing highly specialized technical skills. For example, separate resources for database, security, front-end, integration, mobile etc are not needed which makes these platforms accessible to a broader range of users.
A Powerful Combination
When you combine the two trends, the result is powerful. Organizations can now create software faster, more affordably and reduce complexity dramatically. This makes it so much easier to innovate and experiment with new ideas without the traditional time and cost constraints.
No-Code platforms are an enabler of composable architecture because they provide the tools and infrastructure needed to rapidly create, assemble and deploy modular, reusable components. No-Code platforms provide visual drag-and-drop interfaces, pre-built libraries, easy point-and-click integration and templates that make it easy for users to create and assemble these modular components that can easily be assembled to form more complex systems without writing any traditional code.
No-Code platforms enable a MACH architecture approach of Microservices, API-first, Cloud native and headless composable architecture to create modular, reusable components that provide flexibility with software development for not only easy stability and maintenance but for scalability and innovation. Several technical features enable No-Code platforms to support composable architecture:
Modularity: The ability to create small, reusable components that can be easily assembled to form more complex systems is a key feature of composable architecture, and No-Code platforms typically provide a way to create these modular components. This can include drag-and-drop interfaces for building forms, workflows, complex logic, UI elements, security and integration features. Some platforms even offer mobile development.
Abstraction: No-Code platforms typically provide an abstraction layer that hides the underlying infrastructure and technology stack, making it easier to build and deploy software without needing to worry about the details of how it works.
API and SDK: Many No-Code platforms provide APIs, and SDKs and support the configuration of many integration protocols that can be used to create custom integrations and extend the platform’s capabilities. This allows organizations to build custom and connect it to other systems without writing traditional code.
Automation: No-Code platforms typically include automation features like continuous integration and deployment that can be used to automatically build and deploy software reducing the time and effort required to build and maintain software. This includes features like previewing build, automatic testing, deployment to other environments and scaling.
Workflow and Process Management: No-Code platforms include workflow management features to automate complex business processes, such as approvals, escalations, and notifications.
Security and Permissions: No-Code platforms provide robust security features and access controls to protect data and applications, such as user authentication and access control mechanisms, encryption and decryptions, OTPs, hashing algorithms, security certificates etc to ensure the platform can support enterprise-grade solutions.
Data and Analytics: Some No-Code platforms include built-in data management and analytics capabilities like data visualization and data pipeline, enabling the created software can process and analyse large amounts of data.
With these technical features, No-Code platforms support composable architecture and make it easier for organizations to create and maintain software more efficiently and effectively.
Examples of composable architecture include creating composable UIs that integrate with underlying products and pricing catalogues to create new product and service sets for the market quickly. With a No-Code platform and a composable architecture, a business analyst, an end-user, or a marketer can quickly and easily create a new application or feature, test it with customers and iterate on it and have a new product or service ready to be launched. This can help organizations to be more agile, adaptive and experimental with new ideas which can be beneficial in a competitive market. Of course, in organizations, the right models of asset management, governance and principles can be set forth to ensure compliance with regulatory and security standards.
Conclusion
Many businesses realize that their monolithic architecture is preventing them from delivering great innovative products and services quickly with excellent customer experiences with continuous availability. Business needs to be composable and this needs to be supported by underlying software being composable by breaking down applications and processes into manageable Lego-like pieces. No-Code platforms help bring composable architecture into reality much more easily and quickly!
