Danish technology company Umbraco has launched Compose, a developer-centric software-as-a-service product designed to save software engineers time when integrating a range of technologies within composable digital experience (DEX) platforms.
Compose is the first product launched by Umbraco that can be used entirely independently of its open source .NET CMS platform. But what does the company mean by composable digital experience and what components constitute the composable composition within?
What is a Composable Digital Experience?
A potentially indistinct term unless clarified, in this context, the company’s notion of a composable digital experience platform might take the form of a website (or more likely, a wider web portal with purchasing/billing options and onward customer engagement functions beyond basic customer relationship management (CRM) to cement customer-to-brand engagement potential) that needs to combine data from multiple marketing and e-commerce technologies.
Well-known enterprises, including Carlsberg Group, Renault UK Group and Rubbermaid, have built sites on the Umbraco platform. Brands often use a range of technologies to deliver the best customer experience.
According to the company known for making what it claims is ‘probably’ the best lager in the world, “Carlsberg Group’s big online move is a website framework called Pegasus. It allows its 500+ brands to think consumer & content-first, speak to fans every day, and share experiences across all markets, channels & screen sizes, securing the widest digital footprint possible. Pegasus enables individual brands and markets to create locally relevant, on-brand experiences that can be adapted.”
But let’s stop, even if we know what a composable digital experience platform is, why is building, operating and managing one so tough for software programmers?
Developer Integration Challenges
When combining technologies to create a composable digital experience platform, software developers typically have to build a custom integration layer. Data also has to be structured in a way that allows it to flow between systems. Umbraco Compose provides a standardized way to structure, ingest and deliver data from multiple marketing and e-commerce technologies.
“When creating a product landing page, Umbraco Compose provides a standardized tool to pull in product specifications from the product information management system (PIM), images from the digital asset management system (DAM), prices from the enterprise resource management (ERP) system, and marketing content from the content management system (CMS). Previously, this could involve multiple custom integrations that demand ongoing maintenance and eat into developer resources. Alternatively, organisations are bound to a suite approach, which limits their flexibility,” said Lasse Fredslund, staff product manager at Umbraco.
By removing the integration workload and structuring data, Fredslund says the new product helps organisations to avoid vendor lock-in, increase flexibility and more readily adopt new technologies, including agentic commerce.
Ingestion API
Product, pricing, marketing, and image data are brought into Compose using an ingestion application programming interface (API) and accessed using a delivery API. Umbraco Compose uses GraphQL as the main query language. GraphQL queries deliver combined data as a unified output, making it more readily accessible to generative AI tools.
“GraphQL ensures that Umbraco Compose only delivers the data you need. This speeds up the load time of frontend applications, which is good for site visitors, your SEO/GEO/AEO ranking, and the planet. On top of this, with Umbraco Compose, you can connect any digital tool or technology to GraphQL, allowing faster adaptation to new business requirements, trends, and customer needs,” said Umbraco CTO, Filip Bech-Larsen.
Data Discoverability for Agentic AI
He explains that removing the overhead of maintaining custom backend-for-frontend integrations can free developers’ time for work that generates crucial business value, such as making product data discoverable by agentic AI. With content collected, structured and exposed through a unified GraphQL layer, Bech-Larsen claims that Compose becomes a strong starting point for the AI journey.
Umbraco’s CMS integrates with third-party applications to provide flexibility and extensibility. Headquartered in Odense, Denmark, with offices in the U.S., UK and Australia, Umbraco employs 150+ people.
