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HEADLESS ARCHITECTURE IN A DIGITAL LANDSCAPE As enterprises increasingly embark on digital assets capable of being potential slower time-to-market and delayed their Digital Transformation Journeys sales channels, it is an imperative for response to customer, also lacking context and redefine their business models, there Enterprise Digital Architecture to offer the at times. has been an uncompromising trend of needed level of agility and flexibility to We also look at the applicability of positioning Customer Experience in the support digital business models. Headless Approach in the domain of centre of Enterprise Digital Strategies. With In this context, we discuss about Headless Digital Commerce along with it’s nuances the proliferation of digital technologies Architecture, an architectural paradigm in Content Management space, while and endless choices of touchpoints offered that enables enterprises to overcome touching upon broader architectural to customers today, Digital Marketers strive the challenges posed by traditional and concepts like Microservices and Service to offer a consistent and personalized monolithic systems, like insufficient Oriented Architecture, to the extent experience unrestrained by technology extensibility, high customization cost, relevant to this context. platforms. With all touchpoints, including

What is Headless Architecture? Headless Architecture is a specialization This paradigm has gained patronage over Digital Customer Experience unrestrained of Decoupled Architecture, in which the recent years. Although this is relevant by the underlying platforms and systems. It presentation layer of an application is to all multi-tiered applications and apps has emerged as a proven solution to blend separated from backend services. It is that provide digital touchpoints to end Content and Enterprise Services, which realized as a set of Business, Content and customers, it is becoming the primo choice include Commerce, to provide a rich and Data Services that are implemented and for Digital Commerce Platforms of large compelling experience to customers. exposed as well defined web-services, and enterprises that seek agility and flexibility consumed by customer facing channels. in delivering personalized Omni-channel

Experience

Content Commerce

External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited Microservices in Headless Architecture Microservices are structural blocks of the rapid evolution of features across services. times, leading vendors of customer business domain of an enterprise, and are Functional decomposition of the system engagement platforms are re-engineering modelled as autonomous, self-contained allows achieving loose coupling and their solutions based on microservices services. Microservices can be built high cohesion among components. It architecture. It has gained momentum with upon disparate technologies, and can enhances agility, flexibility and scalability the wake of API Gateway technologies, be independently deployed and scaled. in applications development. As much as Monetization Flexibility and emergence of This Flexibility enables decentralized the approach has garnered prominence Marketplace Service Models. governance and data management and in applications development in recent

Experience

API Gateway

Content Microservices Commerce Microservices Enterprise Microservices

Microservices can be designed in more Branch, Asynchronous Messaging, and failure monitoring, fault tolerance and than a way depending on the context. Shared Data Microservice Design Patterns. resilience to the architecture. Microservices Options of proven design patterns are communicate amongst each other Service Discovery is enabled through available to build microservices. A few through synchronous or asynchronous Service Registry. Circuit Breaker provides of them are Aggregator, Proxy, Chained, mechanisms.

oad alancer Registryiscovery Circuit reaer

Routing

eb Apps Micro Service Micro Service 3 y a e Mobile Apps t a I 3rd Party Micro Service Micro Service Apps

Security Monitoring

Rapid adoption of this architecture style from build, deployment and automation Containerization are available as Platform has led to the emergence of a plethora of standpoint. Capabilities as Service Registry, as a Service (PaaS) offerings from leading features from cloud platform providers API Gateways, Load balancing, and Public Cloud Providers.

External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited In relation to SOA Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is description, discoverability and mediation Extension or Specialization of SOA in which an architectural style, a set of principles, requirements are more formal. SOA ascribes functional area boundaries are used to patterns and criteria that address to centralized governance. define domain models, with finer level of characteristics such as modularity, service granularity. It is the Service Oriented In the context of Headless Architecture, encapsulation, loose coupling, and Delivery approach for a well-architected SOA is an architectural imperative; separation of concerns, reuse and SOA solution. microservices are one among the means composability. Components provide service to achieve it. Microservices are an to each other within an application. Service

Headless Commerce Customer touchpoints for Digital Commerce Bus (ESB) play a vital role in securing and disparate technology stacks and at has seen rapid evolution from Desktop performing orchestration among services different levels of granularity. For example, Browsers to Mobiles, Social Media, Kiosks, pricing service could be implemented Depicted here is a reference set of Wearables, Smart Assistants, Appliances, any as a rule engine, Inventory service as e-commerce services that span across IoT enabled device and even Digital Assets. a cache, and payment service using a different stages of customer journey, An ecommerce solution is expected to serverless framework. Services can also be and process cycle. It is to be noted that, deliver a buying experience that is seamless independently developed, deployed, scaled as described earlier, services within an across touchpoints. and governed. enterprise could be implemented using Applicability of Headless Architecture has never been more illustrated than in the business domain of e-commerce in the recent years. Indeed, it has become an architectural imperative for e-commerce applications across business models like B2C, B2B, B2B2C and B2E. It allows for deployment of best-of-breed tools for different parts of the application, and allows businesses to focus on digital marketing and conversions independently of the underlying ecommerce platform and transactional nuances. It also provides agility in responding to market trends in providing rich, hyper-personalized and consistent customer experience across channels seamlessly, and has opened wider possibilities in offering commerce capabilities with personalization, recommendations and interoperability with existing systems of records Traditionally, larger enterprises with are apparent, adoption rate has been In Headless Architecture, it is imperative for higher business and IT maturity levels in significantly higher in recent years by all commerce capabilities to be exposed as ecommerce space have ventured into both larger and mid-level enterprises, APIs by backend applications and enterprise Headless approach, either to realize the considering the undeniable benefits offered systems. In a microservices based solution, best of both worlds from marketing and by this approach that is future-proofed and services are identified and designed with commerce standpoint, or to reuse and resilient to constant explosion of customer dedicated functional scope, defined augment their existing investments in touchpoints and expectations. boundaries, while enabling interaction marketing platforms with ecommerce Commercial ecommerce products like amongst themselves especially for data offerings. Although, the intrinsic complexity elasticpath and commercetools are synchronizations. Solution components associated with the sophisticated nature of engineered on Headless and Microservices like API Gateway and Enterprise Service solution and associated cost of ownership based architectural patterns.

External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited Headless Experience Experience layer of any Headless Web UI, Mobile Apps, In-store Kiosks, Digital services provide by layers underneath. Architecture is all about the freedom Signage, Shoppable Media and Micro- However, the experience layer comes under that it is entitled to, by design. It typically Moments from within digital marketing the purview of two larger architectural represents all customer interfacing channels. These are unrestrained by the paradigms as depicted below: applications and touchpoints, which include technological composition of business

Experience Layer (Powered by Digital eXperience Platform) Experience Layer (Independent Channels & Touchpoints)

API Gateway API Gateway Digital eXperience Platform Commerce Microservices Enterprise Microservices Commerce Microservices Enterprise Microservices (Content as a Service)

Although, the illustration above applies (explained subsequently) is existential in the meritoriously, and to draw a comparison only when a Digital eXperience Platform Digital Landscape, its prevalence is assumed against potential solution options.

Digital experience Platforms (DXP) Digital eXperience Platforms represent CMS, Web content and digital assets play a by backend applications, potentially as Portal and Search technologies that provide significant role in providing a compelling microservices are consumed as stateless content management, aggregation and and engaging customer experience. Web RESTful APIs by DXPs thereby totally personalization capabilities. Typically, these Content Management and Digital Assets decoupling customer experience and information aggregation platforms provide Management capabilities assume one of business services. rich, unified and personalized experiences the foundational roles in digital platforms. Product vendors like Adobe, Oracle, Sitecore with cross-channel consistency. More often, DXPs provide CMS capabilities like page and Acquia are offering enterprise ready these capabilities are augmented by pre- templating, content authoring, tagging, DXP platforms hosted on public clouds, integrated digital marketing capabilities publishing and workflow services. and are made available for on-premise like behaviour analytics, targeted content In a Headless Architecture, business deployments alike. delivery, recommendations and campaigns processes and data services exposed management.

External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited Headless CMS With the proliferation of modern UI (CaaS) is a distilled variant of Headless and workflows. Hence, we use DXP and technologies, and rapid adoption of rich and Architecture, in which the digital landscape CMS interchangeability in this context. The lightweight UI frameworks, there has been designates a Content Management System approach has gained growing patronage a growing want of decoupling experience (CMS), or Content Management Module of a together with the emergence of Single from content itself. Content here represents Digital Experience Platform only for Content Page Applications (SPA) built on popular both Web Content and Digital Assets. Management and Administrative use that technologies like Angular, ReactJS and Vue. Headless CMS aka Content as a Service includes setting up content, taxonomies

Single Page Apps Mobile Apps 3rd Party Apps

Content APIs

Headless CMS

CaaS decouples content authoring from its significance in multiple fronts like instance, Adobe AEM provides content presentation and consumer channels. performance, cloud scalability, security and service variants as Content Fragments and It enables reuse and delivery of content flexibility. It also provides businesses users Experience Fragments; while the former across channels and touchpoints. It also with benefits like rich and customizable UX, is about pure content, latter also enables provides the developers of UI applications multi-channel publishing, reduced time to mark-ups and layouts along with content. with the needed freedom and flexibility market and lower operating costs. SPA Editor feature too is introduced to to develop features without having to be enable WYSIWYG for SPAs in CaaS mode. However, the approach also has its constrained by the limitations imposed by drawbacks in compromising prominent Enterprises that implement CMS platforms CMS frameworks. CMS capabilities like in-context have the choice of designing it to the CaaS is built on API-first approach. editing and WYSIWYG/previews, and degree of decoupling desired between The CMS platform exposes content as marketing capabilities like targeting and it and backend services or systems and stateless RESTful APIs in JSON format. It personalization. frontend applications. There are distinct is typically cloud centric and supports ways of adopting CMS to one’s needs. Product vendors continue to evolve cloud deployments through PaaS or SaaS. their offerings in the space as well. For Architecturally, the approach has proved

Conventional Approach is the de facto and personalization needs, whereas its the middle ground across parameters and choice for implementing frontend decoupled counterpart finds its relevance in scenarios. applications that are content-heavy, applications that are transactional in nature. static, and with high configurability Progressively decoupled approach strikes

External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited Reference Solution Architecture Multiple solution components have to Platform as a Service (PaaS) mode that Architecture that depicts solution come into play to stitch together an enables realization of most components of components blending experience, content end-to-end solution in a digital landscape a Headless/Microservices based solution as and commerce. While commerce has been using Headless Architecture as the pattern. low/no code ones. It is only getting efficient used as an illustrative example throughout, However, leading public cloud providers and easier. this architecture is applicable across like Amazon, Google and Microsoft keep business processes and domains. Here we present a Reference Solution rolling out features and capabilities on

Desktop Mobile Social Wearable Contact Center Kiosk Appliance Smart Assistant Email

Digital Experience Platform Content Delivery Network Content Management Digital Asset Experience Single Page rity Responsive Web UI Mobile Apps Progressive Web App Applications

c u Management Layer

S e Content APIs g

itori n API Gateway Registry Discovery Security Versioning Composition Routing Protocol Translation Mo n

Services (µ/API/Composite) g

i n Business Discovery Transactions Personalization c h ns

C a Services Prices & Cart & Upsell/

ce r Products Search Inventory Payment Orders Pro le Promotions Checkout Cross-sell g

Data oggi n

L D Indexes ule Enine ace D ererless D Store Directory nalytics Cutting Co n s ng o s Infrastructure High C r Cloud On-Premise Multi-Tenancy Clustering Monitoring Availability Handl i

Services ro r E r ts` n Enterprise s Ev e

Data / Event / p Middleware/ Endpoints (Http, JMS, Streams, etc) Process Orchestration Orchestration ESB Syn c vSec O e ata D Enterprise D ERP CRM MDM IDAM DW Analytics Systems

Technology View

DXP Content Delivery Network CloudFront

Experience Layer

API Gateway

Services (µ/API/Composite) Business Services

Infrastructure Services

Enterprise Middleware /Service Bus

Enterprise Systems

External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited External Document © 2020 Infosys Limited Headless Challenges

Along with the speed and agility that it In the scenario of decoupled CMS and Sophistication and complexity of this offers to business, Headless Architecture Commerce, a core capability like Enterprise architecture could prove effort and cost brings with it, its own set of challenges Search would prove more complex in the intensive compared to its monolithic that need to be dealt with to successfully context of data synchronization among counterpart. At organization level, it also build and operate. The decoupled nature multiple services. Also, business users demands relevant niche skill-set and of the architecture necessitates handling would be expected to handle multiple sometimes structural changes in terms of of QoS parameters like security, scalability, and disparate administrative tooling setting up cross-functional teams within the reliability, extensibility and maintainability – Web Content Management, Digital ambit of each service. at individual solution component level. It Asset Management, Product Information Despite the complexities and challenges is also an imperative to govern it centrally Management, Users Management, Order pertaining to adoption of Headless and taking the end-to-end solution architecture Management, Marketing Operations etc. Microservices based Architecture, outcomes into consideration. For instance, while When it comes to microservices, flexible listed below are far significant and security policies can be enforced at technology choices also imply deployment tangible to be ignored by customer centric component or service level, system design of associated disparate test suites and organizations. should implement authentication and DevOps tools for build, deployment and authorization of end users, typically using • Seamless omni-channel enablement automation. On a cloud, microservices an IDAM solution, and enable transfer are typically coupled with container and • Flexible experience development and validation of security token (SAML/ orchestration technologies like Kubernetes • Enhanced extensibility and scalability Oauth2.0/JWT) across levels. and Docker Swarm to achieve the full range • Agility and faster time to market of benefits that the architecture offers.

The Infosys Advantage In the era of customer obsession and technologies and practices are to be geographies and business domains like technology driven disruptions, businesses embraced sooner than later, should Retail, Manufacturing and Telco. We have constantly strive to leap ahead of, or are businesses aspire to be contextual and wide and deep expertise in executing compelled to keep pace with growing future-proofed. Headless Commerce and Headless CMS customer needs and expectations, that are implementations using a plethora of Infosys has extensive experience in beyond transactions. To reshape customer commercial products from prominent delivering successful Digital Transformation engagement strategies, responsiveness vendors like SAP, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, Programs using Headless Architecture come to the fore. From that perspective, Sitecore, Drupal and OpenText. paradigm and microservices based all emergent and relevant digital solutions, solutions, to multiple customers across

About the Author

Rajadurai P Senior Principal Technology Architect, Digital Experience, Infosys

Rajadurai has over 19 years of IT experience. He is specialized in Digital Enterprise Architecture. He has played pivotal roles in delivering large-scale digital transformation programs, and has led architecture consulting engagements for customers across business domains such as Retail, Telecom, Manufacturing and Finance.

For more information, contact [email protected]

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