Why openness and composability win in modern enterprise architecture

An overwhelming 89% of IT leaders say their strategy is to adopt a fully composable enterprise architecture. It’s easy to see why.

As the pace of technological change quickens, enterprises are pushing to become more agile, and make more effective use of artificial intelligence. But the complexity of the enterprise stack is standing in their way.

There’s the sheer number of applications modern enterprises use. (Yes, SaaS sprawl seems to have peaked, but consolidation efforts are slowing.) There’s also the prevalence of hybrid cloud and multi-cloud architectures – with 89% of organizations deploying a multi-cloud strategy, and the majority using at least two public clouds.

Then there’s the added complexity that comes with the move toward distributed systems, unlocked by microservices and containerization. At the same time, the modern data stack has grown more sophisticated, bringing with it the need for a strong and effective data governance framework.

All these factors make the modern enterprise IT stack an ever-evolving, often unruly beast. One that can’t be contained within the bounds of static, monolithic architecture.

The limits of traditional enterprise architecture

Traditional enterprise architecture was born in another age. A time before cloud, SaaS, and DevOps. A time when change often posed a greater risk than standing still, and business leaders needed ways to increase stability and control.

Those priorities, largely unrecognizable today, were built into enterprise architecture diagrams and brought to life in monolithic systems, siloed enterprise applications, and rigid process landscapes. The aim was to nail down the IT stack, rather than to shape its ongoing evolution.

But times have moved on and the limits of traditional enterprise architecture have become impossible to ignore. You’ll recognize two of the main symptoms:

• Long migration timelines. With its focus on control rather than enablement, traditional enterprise architecture struggles to move quickly. Try to migrate to a new system at speed and the business is hardwired to push back, often requiring lengthy approvals.
• High integration costs. In legacy enterprise architecture, every integration is a custom job. Adding a new system means investing in integration platforms and point-to-point connections that are costly to create, test, and maintain.

In these ways and more, trying to innovate with legacy architecture is like trying to ride a bike with the brakes on. But your architecture doesn’t have to slow you down: if it’s open and composable, it can help to make continuous adaptation and improvement a way of life.

Why composability matters now

The central ideas of composable, open enterprise architecture are far from new. As technological change has accelerated, and the enterprise stack has evolved, CIOs and other IT leaders have rethought their architecture in response. They have:

• Introduced modular components – so their organizations are able to reuse solution components again and again, and swap in new components that work with those they already have. These modular components include process logic, AI agents, data connectors, and user interfaces. Compared to building and replacing solutions from scratch, it’s a much more efficient, agile approach to innovation.
• Created the conditions for continuous (not episodic) transformation – by using open technologies, and making sure interoperability comes built-in, rather than requiring one-off integration projects.

More recently, enterprises have begun to extend composability beyond IT’s domain and into the wider business.

Towards the composable business

The core principles of composability remain the same, even when applied outside of IT. It’s still about creating what you need with building blocks that can be easily combined, adapted, and reused.

It’s just that, when we’re talking about the wider business, it’s not composable technology that’s being rapidly designed and adapted, taking advantage of modular capabilities. It’s the business’s end-to-end processes.

By applying the composable mindset to the way that business and operations teams design and run processes, enterprises are able to boost business agility, flexibility, scalability, and resilience. They’re also able to shape-shift to meet the latest challenge, rapidly developing a new capability or adopting a new technology.

Such composability was once a nice-to-have competitive advantage, but it’s rapidly becoming a must-have. Why? Because the success of Enterprise AI depends on it.

The role of of open architecture in making Enterprise AI work

With its devotion to the monolithic application, siloed operations, and rigid processes, old-school enterprise architecture stands firmly in Enterprise AI’s way. Whereas composable, open architecture propels it forwards. Here’s why.

Enterprise AI needs real-time access to system and process data from across the business, from systems of every kind: legacy, on-prem ERPs to cloud-based CRMs, document repositories, and everything adjacent and in between.

Connecting every new AI agent or tool to the data it needs through point-to-point integrations is slow, expensive work. The kind that actively discourages AI experimentation. But take a composable approach, and connecting your AI applications and agents to the data they need becomes much simpler.

The composable data foundation

Instead of multiple integrations, a composable approach draws from a single, abstracted data foundation. In the Celonis Platform, this is what the Celonis Data Core provides. Acting as a composable data layer, it lets your business extract, cleanse, and harmonize data from any source. You can add, change, or extend those data sources over time, evolving your system architecture without disrupting your process models.

• Meet the Celonis Data Core

Composable AI solutions

To maximize AI ROI, businesses must be able to compose modular, adaptable solutions, using the platforms and tools of their choice. Moverover, those AI applications and agents must understand how the business runs.

The Celonis Context Model (CCM) – the heart of the Celonis Platform – provides exactly this. Built on process data and business knowledge, the Context Model delivers three critical dimensions: hindsight (what happened and why), insight (what's happening now), and foresight (what should happen next through AI predictions and recommendations).

Acting as a living digital twin of business operations, it sits on top of the Celonis Data Core, providing the operational context – a combination of real-time process data and vital business intelligence – that AI solutions need to work effectively. The Context Model makes this intelligence readily available through its APIs and connectors.

Providing an objective, accurate view of end-to-end business operations, the Celonis Context Model also helps organizations identify Enterprise AI's most impactful use cases.

• Learn more about making processes work with Celonis

How to build composable enterprise architectures

This operational context layer, provided by the Celonis Context Model (CCM), is a key component of modern, composable enterprise architecture. Once it’s in place, you can begin building composable solutions and processes – and adapting them on the fly. Let’s break it down.

Composing processes. Composability means being able to build new process models, and adjust existing ones, as the needs of your business evolve. The Celonis Platform gives enterprises the tools to analyze, design, and operate processes in a modular way.

Composing AI agents and AI-driven apps. Composability and openness should go hand in hand when you’re building AI agents and apps. The Celonis Platform’s structured, end-to-end build experience makes it easy to create modular AI solutions in Celonis, or in the app-building solutions of your choice.

Driving flexible enterprise orchestration. The way you operationalize new process designs and AI agents should be open and flexible, too. The Celonis Orchestration Engine lets enterprises orchestrate AI-enabled processes while using existing tech investments and automations.

• Find out more about how Celonis enables you to build composable solutions

Making continuous improvement a team effort

One enterprise that’s already laid the foundations for the composable enterprise is Deutsche Telekom Services Europe. It uses the Celonis Platform to connect data from more than 10 source systems, creating an objective view of its processes that aligns teams across the company around the same business goals.

Ready to develop your composable business architecture?

Today, composability and openness aren’t just technical choices, they’re key business enablers.

As the bedrock of modular enterprise architecture, they grant the freedom to rapidly rebuild a business – from its AI agents and apps to its business processes – while always using the best possible tools for the task. To continually reshape and reinvent, guided by business needs.

And, as the pace of change continues to accelerate, that’s only getting more valuable.

• Want to dive deeper? Read our guide to building AI-ready enterprise architecture
• Speak to our experts about unlocking business composability with Celonis