Microservices: The game-changer for composable DXPs and modular content

Highlights

You'll learn: 

Understanding microservices: The backbone of composable DXP and modular content.

• Unlike monolithic structures, composable DXPs combine separate services into a custom solution, improving user engagement.
• A composable DXP links multiple products that organize your assets into editable modules, making them easy to find and update.
• Micro frontends, a modular approach to building user interfaces, enables you to break down their interfaces into smaller, more manageable units.

Act now: Understand how microservices and composable DXPs can shape your digital experience journey. Request a demo to see it in action.

Keep reading to learn more!

A composable DXP integrates best-of-breed solutions, while modular content is a content creation and management approach that focuses on small, pre-approved units of content that may be rearranged and reused to create marketing assets across channels. Both complement the other, offering you a solution you can control, adapt, and scale. 

Microservices have become an essential cog in the wheels of composable DXP and modular content because they offer many of the things that make them tick. But what are these qualities?

Understanding microservices as the foundation of composable DXP

Microservices are crucial to composable and modular content, enabling you to scale digital experiences while you remain agile. 

Once upon a time, you would have one system with a code base that couples all your business functions. However, it was not flexible, scalable, or fault-tolerant. Also, you had to deploy the whole system to update one small part of the system.

Microservices changed that. It loosens the application based on business logic, creating small, separate services that interact via APIs and use separate resources. That autonomy enables you to modify, update or even remove a single part without disrupting the entire system.

Basic concepts of microservices

Service independence: Each service is specific to a process within the system, giving you granular control. That modular setup enables DXPs to adapt to users' needs. 

APIs and communication: Since they are API-first, you can integrate or combine several services to create a tailored digital solution. It also uses tools like service mesh, gRPC, and message queues to manage service interaction. 

C/CD pipeline: The CI/CD pipeline enables continuous integration. So you can test, develop, and deploy rapidly and on demand. It promotes agility and reduces the risk of failure.

Service discovery and load balancing: Microservices rely on service discovery systems to locate and interact with other services. A load balance enables the system to distribute requests evenly among instances of each service so that each one runs as it should.

Fault tolerance and resilience in microservices: A fault in one service does not affect the others or the system as a whole. That enables you to adapt, manage, and scale a composable DXP and modular content. 

Containers and orchestration tools: Container tools like Docker enable you to deploy and scale microservices and manage their lifecycle with tools like Kubernetes. 

These basic concepts enhance modular and composable digital experience platforms (DXPs). Also, microservices work in cloud-native environments, enabling you to build, test, and deploy solutions in the cloud. 

Emma, the sleep company, is a typical example of a business that chose microservices-based DXPs via MACH, enabling them to speed up campaign launch by eight times and improve collaboration between business, tech, and marketing teams.

Achieving agility with composable DXP and modular content

You can achieve agility by combining an agile approach with the flexibility of a composable DXP.

Agile development: Teams can deliver quick incremental changes or updates to modular content management systems. This approach enables them to always refine modular units, ensuring the digital experience platforms remain responsive.

Ownership: Teams take ownership of their work. In the context of composable DXPs, this encourages innovation as they can experiment with new ideas for designing modular services.

Continuous delivery and integration: Teams work to automate the testing and deployment of new features or services. That ensures they can enhance the DXP and deliver updates and products faster.

Continuous feedback loop: You can achieve an agile composable DXP by creating consistent feedback channels with stakeholders, including users. That enables you to collect insights that you may use to enrich the digital experience platform.

How microservices enable businesses to adapt and innovate 

Tech diversity: You can use the most suitable tech stack to develop a service. This flexible approach allows teams to use the best emerging technologies.

Faster time-to-market: Microservices use a modular approach that speeds up work. So, you can test, develop, and deploy new features or updates and release new products faster.

Agility through decoupling: Team members can work on separate decoupled services and share data, speeding up development cycles and iterations.

Scale: Microservices enable you to build scalable systems. You can scale each separate service based on demand, so you assign resources only where they are needed rather than to the whole system. 

More productivity: Microservices support modern DevOps practices, enabling teams to own the whole lifecycle of services. 

Microservice architecture in modern software development

Unlike monolithic systems, where you develop applications as a single, integrated unit, microservices split them up. It promotes agility by enabling teams to iterate and work on individual services. Hence, you can release updates as often as needed. 

You can scale each service on demand, which saves resources as you do not need to scale the whole system. Other benefits are fault isolation, continuous delivery, and the flexibility to use new tools. 

Application agility through modular architecture

To achieve agility, know its benefits and how to implement it. A modular architecture breaks down applications into smaller, independent modules that you can develop, test, and deploy quickly.

Benefits of modular content approach

Microservices adoption: Modular content aligns with the concept of microservices, which split applications into more minor services. It increases agility and aligns with DevOps, leading to faster content creation and greater customization.

Increased agility: A modular architecture enables innovation and rapid iteration. Teams can make changes to individual modules without disrupting the entire system. 

More flexible and scalable: Splitting applications into smaller, autonomous modules allows you to scale based on demand. You can also integrate it with diverse digital tools and services.

Resource efficiency: With modular content, you can pick and choose only the modules you need at a given time. Hence, you do not expend resources on the whole system. 

Overcome monolithic issues: Modular content also helps you avoid system bottlenecks, lack of flexibility, and other problems you can find in a monolithic DXP.

Strategies to implement a modular content architecture

To start, identify the parts you struggle to maintain or scale, then modularize them gradually. Next, automation tools should be developed, tested, and deployed to ensure consistency and save time. 

Also, get your teams to share data while working on shared services. Set up clear policies for communication and interface design. Finally, set up protocols to track service health and performance.

The importance of modularity in creating tailored digital experiences

A modular system enables you to create digital content and solutions from reusable modules. That way, you can customize solutions to the needs of the users. That also helps you remain consistent.

Modular systems also support extensive integration, enabling you to create highly customized modular content and digital experiences. They are cost-efficient and allow you to adapt to new technologies. You can access multiple data points to enrich the digital experience.

The importance of application agility in modern digital landscapes

Application agility enables you to adjust to rapid changes and shifts in the market. That way, you can deliver new features on demand. Being able to adapt quickly leads to better customer experiences. It also gives you a competitive edge because you can adopt new technologies and trends. 

Agile methodologies streamline workflow and reduce risks because you collect regular feedback during iteration. This enables you to improve and update features on the go. Perhaps one of the main benefits of agility is that it fosters a culture of innovation. Teams share data and ideas and push boundaries.

You can expand as your business grows, ensuring you maintain quality and meet new customer needs. Finally, you can equip your business to be flexible and resilient by going agile.

Case studies

Burberry

After struggling to scale with their legacy, monolithic DXP, Burberry finally chose MACH (microservices, API, cloud-native, and headless) to guide their e-commerce and enable them to personalize the customer experience.

Opting for Contentstack's composable DXP enabled them to enjoy the benefits of a MACH strategy, along with apps and integrations. They increased publishing speed by 80% and reduced tickets from 40 to one per week.

Latoracca said, "Contentstack helps our engineers to move fast and concentrate on business requirements by reducing proprietary platform inconveniences. Adding new consumers has never been such an easy and pleasant journey for everyone."

Read more about how Burberry enabled speed and agility through a composable DXP.

Dawn Foods

Dawn Foods also chose MACH (microservices, API, cloud-native, and headless) to modernize its e-commerce. 

By pairing it with the MACH-compliant composable DXP from Contentstack, they increased online orders by 50%, publishing time by 80%, and six major releases six months after launch.

Hear from Gireesh Sahukar, the Vice President. "Content updates in our site run 80% faster compared to a monolith CMS. In some cases, the content that could take up to a week to publish using a monolith CMS, we can publish in less than an hour with Contentstack."

Read more about how Dawn Foods found the recipe for online success.

FAQ section

What are the benefits of microservices?

Microservices enable you to scale and be fast, flexible and efficient. You also manage your resources better as every service is separate, and you do not need to deploy the whole system when you want to update or add new features,

How does a composable DXP differ from a traditional DXP?

A composable DXP is modular and flexible. It allows you to select and integrate the needed parts, while traditional DXPs are integrated, tightly coupled, and less adaptable to specific business needs.

What is the significance of modularity in a DXP?

Modularity in a DXP allows you to choose the units you need and deploy resources only to those units. This leads to better resource use and a more personalized user experience.

How do microservices contribute to software development?

It helps you adopt a modular and scalable way to develop software. You can break up your applications into smaller units, which makes them easy to manage, update, or replace. It also enables you to manage system failure, ensuring that the failure of one service does not ruin the whole system.

What is the role of agile software development in a composable DXP?

Agile development promotes a flexible and iterative process where teams share data and ideas and collect customer feedback to improve digital solutions. It aligns with the modular and versatile nature of composable DXPs, enabling you to adapt to change.

What is the role of microservices in modular content and composable DXPs?

They act as building blocks. They allow you to test, develop, and deploy individual units, leading to a more flexible, resilient, and scalable platform.

Learn more

Microservices have become an essential part of composable DXPs and modular content, ensuring they are flexible, faster, resource-efficient, and easy to manage. Despite that, their influence is set to continue well into the future.

If you aim to enjoy microservices benefits in a DXP, Contentstack's composable DXP offers the complete package. It is API-first, headless, and cloud-native. Sign up for our free demo today to see it in full flow.