Editorial
The Gist
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Mindset over tech. Composability requires a cultural shift to succeed. Without executive buy-in, even the best tech won’t deliver its full potential.
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Leadership drives change. Support from top executives is crucial. A composable strategy only works when leaders champion the approach and integrate it across the business.
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Beyond IT silos. Composability should serve the whole organization, not just tech teams. True success comes when all business functions embrace and apply it.
Composability has become a hotly debated topic within the technology and business community. While the general premise and benefits are often understood, proper implementation remains a question.
According to a recent study from IDC and software platform Boomi, 57% of organizations report having a composable strategy in place, yet 54% of respondents cited a lack of executive/board-level understanding as organizations’ top barrier to composability.
Additionally, some respondents in the survey indicated their business does not understand composability at all. Here lies the heart of the issue. If significant portions of business stakeholders don’t support or even understand what composability is, how can an organization properly implement a composable transformation?
Table of Contents
- What Composability Really Means for Businesses
- How Companies Are Adopting Composability
- Making Composability Work Across Your Organization
- Buying Into a Composable Mindset
What Composability Really Means for Businesses
Since Gartner coined the term “composability,” discussions have largely focused on the technology principles within the MACH framework, which helps organizations build scalable, flexible and collaborative digital ecosystems.
To fully bridge this gap, organizations and key practitioners must understand that modern composability is less about the specific building blocks that comprise the technology piece and more about achieving desired business outcomes. In other words, it’s a shift in mindset that internal stakeholders and technology teams must adopt. Then, by using MACH technology, they can achieve the adaptability and scalability needed to keep pace with shifting market demands and customer preferences.
How Companies Are Adopting Composability
Recently, technologies that facilitate a composable strategy have become a leading framework and strategy for companies within sectors like retail, financial services, healthcare and marketing. According to the MACH Alliance’s 2025 Global Annual Research, 91% of organizations have increased their composable infrastructure within the past year.
While many organizations have adopted the technology, many executives and leadership personnel have yet to truly commit to the essence of composability. It’s one thing to build a technology stack that meets composable criteria, but it’s another thing entirely to have the composable mindset at the heart of an organization.
Organizations too often make technology decisions without fully evaluating how it will affect existing processes or identifying the people and resources that will be impacted. For an organization to truly embrace composability, the right people and processes need to be established first.
Position an Internal Project Manager for Success
At the very foundation, organizations must identify an internal project manager who both understands the composable mindset and understands the organization’s broader business objectives. This person must also be able to marry these two topics.
If an organization can’t identify an advocate to orchestrate the creation of a composable architecture that works in the organization’s best interests, the pieces cannot come together in a truly composable way. Piecing everything together across an organization is overwhelming without a project manager who understands how all the pieces fit.
Evangelize the Mindset to Key Organization Stakeholders
Once a project gets the go ahead, it’s important to gain the support of key organization stakeholders. Top-down support is essential to drive the cultural and operational shift necessary to embed the composable mindset. Organizations that build a composable mindset, backed by leadership support and a willingness to innovate with MACH technology, are well-positioned to accelerate adoption. These leaders become evangelists for the “why” and the “how” that are critical to a project’s success.
Understand the Horizontal Integration Across the Organization
After leadership support and organizational buy-in have been secured, composability must be integrated across the entire business, not just parts of it. It’s important for the internal project manager and project stakeholders to highlight the enterprisewide business cases that are allowed by composability rather than focusing on the specific capabilities and benefits of individual technology solutions themselves.
Related Article: Interoperability’s Role in Creating a Successful Digital Transformation Strategy
Making Composability Work Across Your Organization
For a closer look at how to implement a composable strategy, consider a food producer that needs to power a more efficient digital commerce operation. The company appoints a project manager, obtains C-level support and educates business users on the technology and approach.
Then, by shifting the focus to the cross-business use cases inside the organization, composability goes into action. For instance, new digital tools become resources for sales and customer service teams to enhance customer interactions. A new ecommerce platform becomes a way to streamline the shopping process and make it more intuitive for customers. New content management systems and product information management systems make it possible for internal teams to focus more time and effort on other areas of the business that need attention.
As each functional area and business team sees the mindset and practical benefits in action, composability sharpens the focus on each business use case.
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Buying Into a Composable Mindset
When the composable mindset is baked throughout the culture of an organization, not simply implemented within the technology architecture itself, companies can utilize the approach to create flexible, agile and innovative customer experiences.
While technology is more important to every organization than it ever has been before, making composability work requires more than just adding new tools. It demands an enterprisewide shift in strategy and execution.
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