post
December 16, 2021
Composable Architecture
You’ve heard of 3D-printed houses, furniture, and even body parts. This hyperautomated “future” tech is already here, but it’s still nascent. And the value has yet to be fully realized.
In traditional manufacturing, a factory would deploy machines designed to build specific parts of a product. A table, for instance, would need separate machines to build the legs, the top, the custom screws, and so on. The manufacturer would have to plan production carefully to be sure they had enough of each part to produce complete orders. But what happens if the table leg machine dies? No other machine is designed to build table legs, so the entire production process is halted.
3D printing removes this obstacle. Powered by renderings of just about anything, these machines pivot quickly to make vastly different products or product components. In the table example, a single machine could make all of the parts necessary to complete a single table. Or it could just make legs. Or legs and tabletops. Or screws and tabletops. You get the idea.
Now apply this to computing. Even modern computing requires different hardware for different software applications: a computer server to house databases, a separate computer for building and maintaining a website, yet another computer for handling customer service communications. What’s worse, applications are written for specific hardware and specific operating systems.
Composable software architecture is designed to work on all computer systems. Not only does this level the playing field (with complex business software no longer under the purview of enterprises), but it reduces overhead and massively increases productivity. With all software accessible on a single computer set in the same operating system automations become limitless. Check your email, create detailed 3D drawings, automate finance management, and reprogram smart home devices on a single system. Even better? Automate workflows across all of these platforms so manual work is cut to almost nil.