As the hype about Artificial Intelligence (AI) wanes, and CFOs start demanding real return on AI investments, a second trend has been quietly unfolding across the technology sector. Unlike AI, which is still trying to find its value footing, this trend offers the promise of significantly shaking up the cost/value matrix for the technologies you offer. It’s a change in technology architecture that creates the ability for businesses to build their own products with only the features and capabilities they need. Best of all, they only pay for what they use, and many features are billed based on how much they get used, so organizations get a much closer match between the technology they use and the technology they pay for than has previously been possible.
A few years ago, I wrote about the emergence of microservices and how I expected them to shake up our industry. Today’s article comes with the benefit of additional years of product evolution. Composable information management is here, and resellers are jumping on board to distribute these innovative technologies. With the benefit of a current perspective, let’s review what the terms microservices and composable technology mean, consider how they are impacting the information management industry, and gather perspectives from channel peers who are “all-in” on selling composable information management to their customers.
What are Microservices and Composable Technologies?
In practical terms, microservices and composable technology describe the same thing. The term microservices is favored by software developers who use it to refer to sections of code that represent discrete capabilities. Composable technology is used more commonly in the marketplace to describe products crafted with a microservices architecture.
How are these products different than traditional software and cloud services? Traditional technologies are written in what is referred to as a monolithic architecture, meaning one giant code base that is difficult or impossible to break into smaller portions or modules. This has been the norm for decades and is signaled by products sold as software licenses or cloud services tiers which include a pre-selected list of capabilities. The challenge with these offerings is that companies end up purchasing products that include many irrelevant capabilities in order to get access to the roughly 20% that their business will actually use.
In contrast, the ability of microservices code to be broken into small feature bundles allows businesses to compose technologies that include only the capabilities they really need. Although they’re always available, unused capabilities are not billed unless activated, and they will not be billed if not used. Many composable technologies further allow usage-based billing, creating a much better match between what a business pays for and the technologies they use.
How is Composable Tech Expected to Impact the Information Management Industry?
Composable technologies will fundamentally change the ways we buy (and sell) business technologies. First, they change the products themselves by making them more flexible and resilient than even the most proactive development teams were previously able to deliver. Second, customers will see both faster and more democratic access to the latest innovations at much more sensible prices. Finally, resellers and other channel partners can expect to meet more customer needs while reducing customer churn and tapping into lucrative recurring revenue.
Evolution of Information Management Products
By breaking code down into discrete capability bundles, microservices architectures enable consumers to compose technologies that are unique to their business needs. They simply turn on the capabilities they need to solve their challenges and turn them off when they are no longer needed. These composable products typically include a complete library of related features and products, giving customers unprecedented technological flexibility without the need to go through buying cycles each time they identify a need. In addition, composable products can embed breakthrough capabilities and products quickly—usually within a few weeks, so even small customers have virtually instant access to the latest tech at sensible prices.
For example, our composable information platform includes not only basic Enterprise Content Management capabilities like secure file organization, searchability, and sharing, but also embeds sophisticated task automation (Robotic Process Automation or RPA), process automation, more than two dozen generative AI engines, and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) within the same user interface. All the capabilities are always-on—instantly available—to customers but they don’t pay for them until they get used.
Changes in Your Customers’ Expectations
The word is out! IDC estimates more than 60% of consumers already expect to be able to buy composable technologies. Why are they catching on? There are at least three common-sense reasons:
- CFOs don’t like wasting money on unused technologies. Known as “technical debt,” businesses have simply accepted paying for expensive licenses and cloud services tiers in order to access the handful of capabilities they needed. It was the only option available. For the first time, composable technologies create an exact match between what a business needs and uses and what they get billed for. It’s a sensible cost-cutting measure in an era when businesses are hyper-focused on profitability.
- Workers crave simplicity. We’re inundated with rapid-fire technical evolution and under pressure to learn new products on a constant basis. It’s overwhelming. Yet, composable technologies provide a consistent user experience into which new capabilities are introduced, simplifying our digital experiences, reducing the learning curve, and increasing our access to breakthrough innovations.
- We all like choices, especially when we recognize that our choices improve our ability to flexibly adapt our technical tools to solve ever-evolving business challenges. Composable products are the only way to make our technologies adaptable enough to empower both workers and businesses with the resilience critical to success in today’s rapidly changing marketplace.
Composable tech democratizes access to the latest innovations for SMBs by removing the early-mover advantage larger companies have historically enjoyed due to their deeper pockets and larger teams.
Impacts for Your Channel Business
How will composable technologies impact your opportunities? The flexibility inherent in these products means they evolve more quickly in response to customer needs and technological innovation, enabling you to meet more customer needs more quickly. You can reduce churn in your customer base by proactively managing customer relationships to ensure they understand what capabilities your products bring to help them solve their challenges and that they can do so without an expensive buying cycle or vendor evaluation. You become the consistent source for their information management needs no matter what those needs are. Finally, you’ll enjoy ongoing, recurring revenue as consumers evolve their use of composable products to solve more problems for more business units—making you even stickier as their preferred technology provider.
How are Early Adopters in the Channel Experiencing the Shift to Composable?
As composable information management products emerge, many forward-thinking channel companies are choosing to get involved. Here are the stories of just three.
DataXport: Offering Cutting-edge Technologies at Accessible Prices
DataXport has more than two decades of experience processing large-scale document workflows for public sector and regulated industries. They have embedded a composable Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) layer to their efforts that gives all of their customers access to AI-driven text recognition and indexing. Million Perez describes it as “a powerful next step” that is expected to drop indexing costs at least 50% over previous methods. The composable offering has democratized access to the latest tech for any size customer, because usage-based pricing breaks down traditional cost barriers.
Paperless Worldwide: Earning More Revenue from Existing Customers
Paperless Worldwide added composable information management to its product lineup in 2025. They’ve been delighted to find adoption of new capabilities is expanding among their existing customers. This improves the profitability and value of every customer, resulting in new revenue at a lower cost. “I’ve been in this business my whole life, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Bob Barzelato. “Sys.tm is fundamentally changing how we operate and engage with customers, creating new growth opportunities.”
Secure Records: Initial Projects Turn into Lasting, Lucrative Client Relationships
In 2025, Secure Records switched from delivering digitized records to clients on hard media to uploading those records into a composable information management platform. Initially, they expected clients to accept the files and export them to their internal networks, but they’ve seen more than 75% choosing to keep records within the system and begin to investigate and use additional capabilities. Secure Records is deepening customer relationships, allowing them to add increasing value over time and reducing churn in their revenue base. “Clients stay on Sys.tm after the initial project and continue using it for file access,” says Roy James. “We remain engaged with them over time, creating a stable base of recurring monthly revenue.”
Evolution Can Take Many Forms Though I don’t recommend taking your eye off the evolution of AI as powerful implementations are emerging, I do recommend broadening your perspective to also see the changes microservices-based technology architectures are bringing to the products you offer and the purchasing expectations of the customers you serve. Now is the time for you to investigate available composable information management products and consider when the time is right for your organization to begin offering them. You don’t want to miss this important shift or delay involvement until the most lucrative sales opportunities have already passed you by.
Christina Robbins is Vice President of Communication Strategy and Marketing at Digitech Systems LLC, one of the most trusted choices for intelligent information management and business process automation worldwide. Celebrated by industry analysts and insiders as the best enterprise content management and workflow solutions on the market, Digitech Systems has an unsurpassed legacy of accelerating business performance by streamlining digital processes for organizations of any size. For more information visit www.digitechsystems.com.