Is Composable Commerce the New Legacy? When Modern Architectures Become a Burden
In the IT world, a system is considered "legacy" when it’s outdated, difficult to maintain, and only marginally compatible with modern demands. This definition often fits monolithic platforms like SAP Hybris or IBM WebSphere—systems that have grown over the years but now hinder progress due to their rigidity and complexity.
But what if the real problem isn’t age, but architecture?
In an era of cloud, microservices, and API-first strategies, many companies believe they’ve left legacy behind—after all, they're using modern, so-called “Composable” commerce architectures. But here's the catch: even a modular solution can become a burden if it grows over time with excessive custom development and hard-to-maintain integrations.
Legacy isn’t about outdated technology. Legacy is a state of limited adaptability.
That’s why it’s time to rethink the concept—and critically evaluate your own architecture.TL;DR
Composable Commerce is replacing traditional monoliths—but without process governance and as complexity increases, there's a risk of falling into a new legacy trap.
- Even modern composable architectures can become burdensome due to fragmentation and custom development.
- Terms like "composable regret" and "MACH-lash" describe the harsh reality of poorly planned adoption.
- A lack of centralized orchestration makes commerce processes hard to manage and adapt.
- Process-intelligent architectures with clear governance and low-code components offer a sustainable way forward.
- Emporix demonstrates how flexibility and control can be reunited through its Orchestration Engine.
The Dark Side of Composable Commerce
Composable Commerce is touted as the answer to rigid monoliths: modular, flexible, API-first. It sounds great on paper. But in practice, even the most modern architecture is no guarantee of long-term agility.
What starts as a liberation often ends in a new web of dependencies.
Many companies underestimate the effort involved in integrating a multitude of best-of-breed solutions. Every new component brings its own APIs, release cycles, and configuration logic. Eventually, it all tips: instead of gaining flexibility, you inherit new complexities—along with the same symptoms as traditional legacy systems.
It becomes especially problematic when custom logic is created for every deviation from standard processes. These customizations—often justified as necessary—accumulate like technical debt. They’re undocumented, barely testable, and hard to maintain. Over time, a “custom code graveyard” emerges—the very thing these architectures were meant to avoid.
This phenomenon now has a name: composable regret—the painful realization that architectural freedom has become overwhelming. Gartner analyst Mike Lowndes calls it MACH-lash—the backlash companies experience when they jump into MACH standards (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) before they're ready.
In short: Composable can become a trap—not due to its principles, but because of poor governance, lack of process maturity, and excessive customization.
When Modularity Becomes a Burden
Modularity is not an end in itself—it’s a means to enable flexibility. But when modules are no longer orchestrated and instead individually connected, the advantage flips: modularity becomes fragmentation.
And fragmentation creates overhead.
Isolated process logic arises, buried deep within code silos. Pricing logic lives in a microservice. Promotions in a third-party tool. Returns are handled via ERP workarounds. What seems like flexibility at first becomes a mammoth task at the slightest change. Nothing fits together cleanly—and every small optimization turns into a project. Here, two key weaknesses of many composable systems emerge:
- Lack of centralized control: There’s no overarching understanding of the process. Each service functions individually—no one sees the whole picture.
- Complexity through custom development: Every required adjustment creates new code. And that code grows—with every sprint, requirement, and iteration.
The result: time, budget, and expertise are consumed not by innovation, but by maintaining complexity.
The paradox is, these companies have done everything right technically. They’ve modernized, adopted microservices, built APIs. Yet they’re stuck again—in a new kind of legacy.
The Solution: Process-Intelligent Architectures
If technical modernization alone isn’t enough—what is?
The answer isn’t more services, APIs, or tools. It lies at a higher level: process orchestration. This means an architecture where processes are not hidden in code but explicitly modeled, governed, and continuously improved—independent of the underlying systems.
This architectural approach isn’t new, but it’s rarely been fully applied in commerce systems. And that’s where the difference lies—between a truly future-ready setup and a merely modern-looking legacy framework. What sets a process-intelligent architecture apart?
- Centralized process logic instead of scattered workarounds
- No-/Low-Code tools instead of endless custom development
- Visible, editable workflows instead of technical black boxes
- Incremental evolution without platform migrations or downtime
The result: companies regain control of their commerce processes. Instead of being driven by technology, they drive the technology—and their business forward.
A great example is Emporix with its Orchestration Engine (OE). It’s not just the functionality that’s modular—process logic is made centrally controllable as well: visual, transparent, agile. New customer journeys, pricing models, or campaign workflows can be adjusted in just a few hours—without deep custom coding.
Conclusion: Time for a New Understanding of Legacy
Legacy isn’t about how old your tech is. It’s about your architecture.
And this problem no longer affects just traditional monoliths—it’s increasingly found in modern composable stacks that lack clear process governance and accumulate custom code. The good news: there is another way.
Companies that think of their commerce platforms not just as modular, but also as process-intelligent, gain key advantages:
- Agility to respond quickly to market changes
- Cost control due to reduced need for custom maintenance
- Faster innovation because new ideas can be implemented immediately
- And most importantly: freedom, because processes are no longer hidden in systems, but placed at the center of control
