Hi Everyone! I’m Siva working as a Staff engineer with BODi

• What’s your specialty? - Designing & building commerce applications and end to end integrations
• What brings you to the Community? - New to commercetools and understanding commercetools way of building the distributed ecommerce system 
• Hobbies and interests? Running and reading 
• Random or cool facts about you? I live in Washington (evergreen US state)

Welcome to the CT Community @hauke.rahm!  

 Finally someone I can talk to about the rain (I’m in Wales!)  

Hi Siva!

I’m trying to get fitter before the winter months arrive in the UK, what tips to do you have to help me as i start jogging? 

I’d love to hear any book recommendations you might have too. 

I hope you’re having a great week!

Hi everyone!

I’m thrilled to join this composable commerce community and connect with experts from commercetools and implementation partners.

My name is Pankaj, and I’m a Digital Advisor at LEVO, based in Wellington, New Zealand.

I’ve worked with a variety of platforms, including Optimizely, Salesforce, Marketo, DAM systems, and several analytics tools. Most of my experience has been with monolithic systems, with occasional ventures into composable elements within those systems. However, I’ve seen firsthand the architectural limitations of monoliths, which sparked my interest in exploring truly composable architectures.

For the past two years, I’ve been working on composable commerce projects, with commercetools being a key focus due to its leadership in the space. This journey has deepened my passion for learning and delivering solutions in Composable Architectures and Headless Systems.

I’m excited to collaborate, learn from all of you, and contribute to this amazing community to the best of my ability.

Thank you!"

Hi there ​@Pankaj, I am very pleased to welcome you to the commercetools Community. You’re in the right place to all things composable commerce! 

What do you like best about working with composable architectures, as opposed to monolith ones? 

I prefer working with composable architectures because they provide a level of flexibility and modularity that monolithic architectures inherently lack.

Monolithic architectures often operate as a black box, which can be quite limiting. While some monolith products expose APIs, these are frequently categorized as internal vs. public, restricting what developers can leverage. When it comes to customization, intermediate to high-complexity features often require custom development outside the monolith. At that point, the monolith starts acting more like a container to store data while all critical business logic resides elsewhere, leading to inefficiencies and a fragmented setup. This creates a painful situation during migrations or upgrades, as customizations tend to be unsupported or require significant rework.

Composable architectures, on the other hand, are API-first by design. The same APIs that power the product's native interface are available for public use, ensuring consistency and ease of integration. This makes enhancements much more flexible and keeps them within the scope of product support. With composable, we are working within a well-defined ecosystem that is designed for extensibility, meaning customizations can be implemented cleanly and without breaking the core functionality.

Another significant advantage of composable architectures is the decoupled nature of their components. Each component (e.g., CMS, PIM, commerce engine) can evolve independently, allowing you to integrate best-of-breed solutions tailored to specific business needs. This modularity is particularly useful for scaling, adopting new technologies, or experimenting with innovations without being locked into a single vendor or platform.

Additionally, composable architectures align well with modern development practices like CI/CD, headless implementations, and cloud-native deployments, which empower faster development cycles and improved performance.

In summary, composable architectures enable greater flexibility, scalability, and maintainability compared to monoliths. They reduce the pain points associated with migrations and upgrades, offer better support for modern use cases, and foster a more developer-friendly environment.

Since I am still relatively new to this side of the world, I’m sure there are many other points I might have missed. However, I’m confident that being part of this community and working in the composable stack will not only enhance my understanding but also help me contribute more effectively over time.