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Why 2021 will be the Year that Composable Applications are as Sexy as IoT and AI
By Rick Veague, Chief Technology Officer, North America, IFS
Companies in our
industry right now are working very hard to prove that they have successfully
integrated technologies like the internet of things (IoT) and artificial
intelligence (AI) into their enterprise software products. However, what
actually makes these transformational technologies valuable is the ability to
design new processes and workflows to drive improved business outcomes.
This comes as a
requirement given the business world today is increasingly volatile. Competitive pressures, emerging technologies,
changing regulatory requirements and complex customer demand all drive the need
for businesses to be extremely agile to thrive.
It is critical that businesses have the capabilities, operational
processes, and flexible IT platforms to constantly adapt to changing patterns. This agility is only made possible upon a
foundation of a highly composable application set built on modular, configurable
and autonomous components, which
leverage modern, open application program interfaces (APIs).
While there's
nothing new about APIs, APIs based on open standards, such as REST and ODATA
are coming into sharp focus as a way to get new application capabilities to
market increasingly quickly; this is coupled with a growing demand for ‘digital
transformation' from the c-suite.
Composable
applications further the digital transformation process to drive competitive
advantage by incorporating and operationalizing the use of AI to automate
business processes. In fact, Gartner predicts by 2023,
organizations that have adopted a composable approach will outpace the
competition by 80% in the speed of new feature implementation.
Composable Applications based on AI
and Open APIs
APIs have reached
new heights since the early days of component-based architecture, and the web
of course. A lot of what we are using for APIs now was inspired by the dissertation
of Roy Fielding, published at the turn of the century in 2000, who originated
the idea of the representational state transfer, or RESTful, API. These have
some technical advantages, but the main one is that it makes APIs easier to use,
and easier for other systems to discover what resources those APIs can provide
to them.
For example, instead
of one big, monolithic block of code, you instead get a product suite built of
thousands of small software components, interconnected by open APIs which can essentially
define how different pieces of software work together. Because that working
relationship is well-defined and established, it can become easy and fast for
companies to compose how the software meets changing requirements quickly - one component could be changed as needed
without disrupting the whole.
AI and ML
(Machine Learning) are critical technologies that support the use of composable
applications. In a traditional model, a
user might be presented with a list transaction to improve. In this scenario, the "intelligence" is
entirely in the mind of the user, and results in tedious, error prone, and slow processes to
execute work. Traditional software
addresses this through business rules to help streamline the data presented,
but the user still has to review the results; those rules can be rigid, and do
not adapt to change without expensive coding.
Using AI and ML, that same list can show the user probabilities. As the user makes the decisions, the system
learns, and the next time the list is further streamlined. Over time, the system gains the
"intelligence" and shows only exceptions to the user, which is the fastest,
highest value approach.
APIs for extending software
It's the
intuitive nature that makes RESTful APIs so desirable today. Even
manufacturers and service companies today are, in many ways, becoming software
companies themselves. They may have developers who write software to do things
like open our applications to their customers or suppliers, introduce data from
the IoT, and enable other systems to interact with our software in
new and useful ways.
Our longtime commitment to this way
of writing software and delivering value is one reason we joined the Open API
Initiative. Our involvement will help us
align our APIs with current and emerging standards for what is proving to be
the language technologies use to talk to each other.
At IFS, we
are demonstrably serious about this commitment and we
have gone all the way. We are not just building a select set of APIs
"on-the-side". APIs are at the core of our architecture, dependent on OData-based Restful APIs; it's the entire foundation for how our front-end
works. Every form, every interaction goes through oData-based Restful APIs. This
commitment allows us to deliver choice, flexibility and capabilities to our end
user customers for what they need today, and in the years to come.
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About the Author
Rick Veague, Chief Technology
Officer, North America, IFS
As Chief Technology Officer of IFS in North America, Rick
Veague is responsible for driving the leading product and industry solutions
that deliver true business value to IFS customers and partners in the United
States and Canada. As a well-respected panelist and speaker, Rick regularly
speaks on IFS solutions and IT strategies at tradeshows and industry events
throughout the country.
Rick joined IFS in 1999, and has
held various pre- and post-sales positions developing, marketing and delivering
high-value business applications including ERP, SM, EAM and MRO solutions. He
holds a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Knox College.