Composable Enterprise - The framework for your IT-driven business of the future

Many companies today want a faster time-to-market, more flexibility, scalability, etc. for their office automation and IT services. Investments are often made in IT for this, such as a “migration to the cloud” and “microservices”. However, the result is often that IT services become more complex and more expensive, instead of being able to take advantage of the anticipated benefits. What causes this, which aspect is missing from the implementation and what can companies do to achieve the benefits? This is where the Composable Enterprise comes in, as a framework to manage this transition.

In this session, I will:
- Elaborate on the Composable Enterprise concept and how we get to it
- Define the value of applying composable architectures in your IT-driven business
- Share how I applied Composable Enterprise in projects, and what I learned from it.

Transcript

1. The Composable Enterprise The framework for your IT-driven business of the future
3. Your presenter • Principal Consultant with Team Rockstars IT • Loves solving complex, strategic IT challenges • Passionate about collecting and sharing knowledge about improving IT in organizations • Adept with cloud-driven software development in general • Frequent Conference Speaker Edwin Derks Principal Consultant / Composable Enterprise Architect
4. A simplified view of traditional IT Let’s start with…
5. Email CRM HR Office Identity Printing Customized Software 1 Customized Software 2 Firewall DMZ Integration Disaster Recovery Infrastructure Back-up Off-site Hosting IT Services Office Automation An Enterprise Architect’s view of a business
6. IT infrastructure in practice Email CRM HR Office Identity Printing Customized Software 1 Customized Software 2 Firewall DMZ Integration Disaster Recovery Infrastructure Back-up Off-site Hosting IT Services Office Automation Do you recognize: • Tight Coupling • Scalability conflicts • Data inconsistency • DR and back-up strategy gaps ?
7. Email CRM HR Office Identity Printing Customized Software 1 Customized Software 2 Firewall DMZ Integration Disaster Recovery Infrastructure Back-up Off-site Hosting IT Services Office Automation Who owns… what? CxO IT Manager Product Owner ? Do you recognize: • Misaligned ownership • Out-of-sync backlogs • Incompatible interfaces or protocols • Feature gaps
8. Let’s move to the cloud and build Microservices The solution?
9. Monolithic Application Database Micro Application Data- base Micro Application Data- base Micro Application Data- base Are you familiar with: • Cloud migration and adoption • Distributed transactions • Eventual consistency • Unclear source of truth • Distributed monolith • Duplicated data • Misaligned responsibilities • Back-up complexity • Complex release trains • Exponentially increasing maintenance • Increased cost on development and infrastructure • Version inconsistency and Incompatibility • Observability and security gaps The perils of a moving to the Cloud and Microservices
10. Microservices alone can’t solve these problems Align composability of business and IT The solution: Composable Architectures do!
11. Composable Enterprise to the rescue
13. “By 2023, organizations that have adopted a composable approach will outpace competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation.” -- Gartner
14. 1. Enterprise Vision on digital transform ation 3. Enterprise Integration Platform 2. Business Development Teams Packaged Business Capability The three ingredients for realizing a PBC
15. Packaged Business Capability • Represents one single, specific unit of business, and only that! • Self-sustaining business unit with mandate and governance to manage itself • No direct dependencies on other PBC’s
16. 1. Enterprise Vision on digital transformation IST SOLL • The enterprise IT roadmap for the modularization and digital transformation of the organization • Includes strategic aspects of the desired business and IT alignment
17. 2. Business Development Teams Complicated Subsystem Teams Enabling Teams Platform Teams Stream Aligned Teams • Dedicated teams for developing PBC’s • Functional driven teams for generating business value ◦ Can be considered Dev(Sec)Ops • Technical driven teams for sustaining business on IT infrastructure • Can be considered PlatformOps
18. 3. Enterprise Integration Platform • Scalable infrastructure as a service ◦ Maintained by platform teams • Provides models for PBCs to adopt the infrastructure based on their technical capabilities and needs for support, e.g. ◦ Fully managed ◦ Landing zone only ◦ Infrastructure only • Governed by a competence centre for sustainability of knowledge, consisting of different kinds of expertise ranging from technical to legal Competence Centre Logging Integration Monitoring Database IAM File Storage CI/CD Configuration Messaging Authorization Packaged Business Capability
19. Competence Centre Enterprise Integration Platform The result is a composition platform that levers full advantage of flexible and scalable IT • Governance and mandate are fully contained with the PBC • Integration platform provides security and solves cross-cutting IT concerns • Internals of a PBC are abstracted away behind interfaces, API’s and channels • Every PBC is treated the same within the infrastructure: the leveled playing field IT Services Off-Site Hosting Office Automation External APIs External System Outbound communication Service Mesh Internal API’s Ambassadors Composition Platform External System
20. Key Takeaways: Composable Enterprise DIY 1. The IT landscape must follow the business goals and strategy for which it is set up 2. Responsibilities must be contained within a PBC and exposed via API’s 3. Every aspect of the IT landscape must be performed or used by the right people with the necessary knowledge 1 2 3
22. “The future of IT is composable” Gartner
23. I’m happy to answer your Questions in the Q&A
24. Edwin Derks /in/edwin-derks/ e.derks@teamrockstars.nl Let's connect! @edwinderks @edwinderks@mastodon.social