The Gartner® Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Enterprise Software is an analysis of the emergence, market momentum and influence of 24 new technologies and trends related to enterprise software. The analyst firm recommends product leaders at technology and service providers use it to assess emerging trends, including the velocity of each technology and trend to mainstream adoption and the expected impact of the technology or trend on the enterprise software market.
The report organizes the emerging technologies and trends (ETTs) into three themes, Intelligence, Experience and Orchestration. It recognizes commercetools as a Sample Vendor for Packaged Business Capabilities and for Headless business apps under Converged Business and Productivity Applications, both of which fall under Experience. Here, we provide the definitions Gartner offers for these two ETTs and explain how they fit into the value proposition commercetools solution offers enterprise businesses.
In explaining the Experience theme, Gartner proposes, “Enhanced user experience is rapidly becoming a foundational capability for enterprise software, especially in the wake of the recent emphasis on generative AI technologies.”
This opinion is not only one we’ve heard reinforced at multiple industry events in 2024, it’s also at the core of the value proposition commercetools offers: To provide the leading composable commerce platform, giving companies all of the components required to build and run outstanding shopping experiences.
In fact, when Dirk Hoerig, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of commercetools, first envisioned headless commerce. His theory (which proved true) was that separating the backend processes from the front-end UX would make it easier and faster for companies to improve the user experience while continually delivering seamless shopping experiences.
In the Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Enterprise Software, headless business apps are included under the ETT Converged Business and Productivity Applications, which Gartner defines as “single, process-based or task-based solutions that combine business applications (process-aware applications, such as ERP and CRM) and business productivity applications (general-purpose applications, such as email, persistent chat, content creation and content management).” Business collaboration partnerships are also listed within the ETT.
While we would argue that with composable commerce quickly becoming established as the future of commerce technology, the headless approach is already table stakes, Gartner assesses that it will take more than six years for Converged Business and Productivity Applications to adoption by an early majority.
But there is hope, as composable business has begun receiving attention, and market-leading vendors are normalizing the idea of decreasing task switching between applications with a common canvas. The democratization of technology is driving business buyers and owners — who have often been focused on business application functionality — to become more aware of the importance of total experience.
While its range is extended, Gartner predicts that “converged business and productivity applications have a high mass because their applicability is widespread across industries and functions.” Among the recommended actions the report offers is for leaders to, “Refactor your enterprise software product into discrete packaged components and APIs that could be used headlessly to enable end-user organizations to create new applications and end-to-end experiences.”
commercetools believes fully that an API-first approach is critical for companies looking to deliver a modern commerce solution. Our solutions, built on MACH® technologies, include a robust set of open APIs that allow our customers to quickly integrate new technologies in a flexible, highly scalable manner.
Rather than a large one-size-fits-all software package that must be entirely adopted and then customized, an API-based approach allows for developers to consume smaller, more granular pieces of functionality from specialized ‘best-of-breed’ vendors.
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A set of APIs is also known as a packaged business capabilities (PBC), which Gartner acknowledges in its report. “Packaged business capabilities are encapsulated software components that represent well-defined business attributes, recognizable as such by business users and packaged for programmatic access. Technically, PBCs are sets of standardized APIs, event stream topics and optional user interfaces, packaged with metadata to facilitate discovery and inclusion in composable applications.”
Where converged business and productivity applications providers combine application capabilities to support specific use cases, PBCs may be used by customers to combine capabilities to support their own use cases in the form of a custom, composable application.
Gartner predicts “the range of this ETT is one to three to reach early mainstream adoption because the majority of providers are in the early stages of offering APIs and PBCs as a first-class means of delivery, which is an essential prerequisite to supporting composable applications.”
commercetools has always acknowledged that adopting PBCs requires transitioning from a tightly coupled architecture to the component-based structure of composable commerce. This modern approach is providing the flexibility companies need to constantly adapt as commerce continues to evolve. In addition, unlike having to do the big bang migration associated with monolith platforms, companies can incrementally add APIs. This both mitigates risk and spreads costs out over an extended period.
PBCs enable companies to transform their application experiences with legacy enterprise software, such as ERP, supply chain, manufacturing execution systems (MES), and industrial control and automation. To facilitate the distributed and integrated operations engaging both edge and central capabilities, many PBCs support event-driven interfacing, instead of or in addition to the more traditional request-driven APIs.
The report recommends business leaders, “Begin the transition to PBCs, even without providing API access and changing product pricing, by organizing product functionality into multiple components that could be sold separately or could be included in premium versions.”
Packaged Business Capabilities and Converged Business and Productivity Applications are only two of the trends and technologies Gartner presents. Download the full report, Gartner® Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Enterprise Software to explore all 24 ETTs and get more information on how to use the radar to determine which ones make the most sense for your business.
Anita J. Temple is the Corporate Journalist at commercetools. She was a fashion editor at Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) and W Magazine before launching a career as a freelance writer and creative producer. She has written content and worked on a wide range of marketing projects for companies including Dreamworks, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Verizon, and Adidas.