Recap 2023 – ComposableNow: The Future of the Open Web

The Lille Grand Palais in Lille, France, was the location for ComposableNOW, our Day0 event before the start of DrupalCon Lille. The half-day program focused on technical talks, demos, and discussions about the latest innovations in Drupal, decoupled and composable web technology, covering application development, deployment, and infrastructure options.

We are very grateful to our fantastic speakers for their detailed and highly informative sessions and for contributing their time to share their insights. Below is a recap of the various technical sessions.

Composable Magic: Transforming Monolithic Legacy Systems

Robin Speekenbrink (Team and Product Lead) and Sam Zwaaij (Business Developer and Solution Architect) from Synetic led a captivating session, explaining the complexities of maintaining monolithic architectures and advocating for the adoption of microservices to build composable architectures. 

They demonstrated the pathways to achieving resource efficiency, scalability, and flexibility through Composable DXP and commerce automation. Highlights included real-world applications, such as Synetic’s customer BAM, and their utilization of a component library across multiple sites and solutions, allowing developers to focus more on projects.

Simplify Drupal Headless Architectures with Decoupled Toolbox Module

Émérya’s CEO and Founder, Wilfrid Roze, laid a roadmap to simplifying Drupal headless architectures. With a focus on structure and the use of decoupled API web services, the presentation carefully dissected the 'why', 'how', and 'what next' of simplifying Drupal, providing attendees with a clear vision and practical insights to enhance their headless implementations.

Wilfrid showcased the Decoupled Toolbox, which stems from their deep and, at times, arduous foray into Drupal's headless capabilities. While they extensively explored available avenues such as GraphQL, JSON API, REST API, Views, and custom code, they ultimately crafted a fresh module.

He explained the rationale behind their choice to forge this new module, its core principles, and how it will deliver the following benefits:

• Streamlining decoupled development, mitigating intricacies, and lowering expenses on the backend.
• Elevating front-end user-friendliness while reducing time demands, while harmonizing with component-based design systems.
• Automatically generating OpenAPI documentation, simplifying usage and accessibility.

Better Security, Performance, and Scalability with Drupal and Next.js

Simon Morvan, Director of Technology at Evolving Web, delved into enhancing Drupal’s capabilities with a poignant presentation on security, performance, and scalability through integration with Next.js, showcasing Drupal as a versatile, no-code headless CMS. Highlighting case studies like the 'pp direct app', the discussion provided a multifaceted view of the power of open source and decoupled solutions in today’s digital landscapes and how this approach can reduce hosting costs and security burdens.

The Composable CMO in 2024 and Beyond

John Faber, Managing partner at Chapter Three, offered a visionary perspective on how contemporary CMOs face significant decisions regarding marketing technology, which have far-reaching implications for their business, both in the short term and down the road. They can establish firm control over their data by embracing adaptable business models and open web principles. Having data authority facilitates the integration of a diverse array of tools to create a tailor-made DXP that perfectly aligns with the enterprise's specific requirements. 

The ability to craft distinctive and flexible solutions begins with a foundation of flexible hosting, which can then be extended by incorporating a combination of open source and proprietary tools. Swift and agile deployment of these technologies becomes essential for businesses that wish to survive and thrive in the ever-evolving digital ecosystem, ensuring their continued relevance and competitiveness.

Taking the Pain Out of Writing Unit Tests for Drupal

Alexey Korepov joined us remotely, addressing a common developer challenge: writing unit tests. His session was full of practical solutions, and he showcased ways in which test helpers can simplify and enhance the testing process, making unit testing less daunting for developers.

amazee.io’s Head of Technology and Co-founder, Michael Schmid, spoke about how composability is reshaping the landscape of the web, transforming not just how websites are constructed but also how they are harnessed. For instance, an API-first approach empowers businesses to create decoupled frontends and even smartphone apps, effortlessly sharing content without redundant duplication.

Michael guided the audience through a fascinating future exploration, where composability intertwines with artificial intelligence. Discussing content creation, the realistic perspectives of AI, challenges, and strategies such as data sovereignty and starting small, the session was a profound forecast of the endless possibilities and challenges that lie ahead in the digital evolution journey.

If you're looking for a platform to help you build scalable, flexible, and maintainable applications, look no further than Lagoon and amazee.io. Our team’s expertise and our platform’s flexibility, developer-friendly approach, comprehensive solution, and continuous improvement make us the best choice for modern web businesses and organizations. 

🗓️ Schedule a chat with our expert team today.