We’re officially in 2026 and if there’s one thing that already feels unmistakable, it’s this:
The way most organizations think about software has become the constraint, not the capability.
This didn’t happen overnight. It crept up on us after two decades of well-intentioned investment.
But somewhere along the way, many leaders crossed an uncomfortable line:
Change got slower, not faster
Systems became harder to adjust, not easier
AI showed promise everywhere, except inside core workflows
And after billions spent, adaptability somehow got worse
I heard it repeatedly throughout 2025:
“Every change feels heavier than it should.”
“Our systems slow decisions instead of supporting them.”
“We keep buying tools, but nothing feels more flexible.”
“Why does everything require a workaround now?”
Those aren’t complaints, they’re symptoms and as 2026 begins, one category moves from background noise to something leaders can no longer ignore:
Composable software.
By composable software, I mean systems that can be assembled and rearranged as priorities change without reimplementing everything or buying something new.
I am excited to have this be my first post of 2026 and look back on this December 31, 2026 and see what has evolved and where we are at!
Why This Was Inevitable
There’s a simple reason this is surfacing now.
The world changed faster than our software thinking did.
Over the last decade:
Innovation became continuous, not episodic
Business cycles compressed
Work stopped fitting neatly into roles and processes
AI collapsed the distance between idea and execution
But our approach to enterprise software barely moved if at all, in fact we got worse at the changefulness aspects of it.
We kept buying and implementing systems as if:
The problem could be fully defined upfront
The future state was knowable
Stability was the goal
And innovation happened in predictable waves
That mismatch has finally caught up to us in my view.
Composable software isn’t a reaction to new technology, it’s a reaction to innovation velocity.
When change becomes constant, locking assumptions into software stops being efficient, no matter how good the platform is.
When change becomes constant, software designed for stability becomes a liability.
What I Mean by “Composable” (Without the Architecture Lecture)
When I say composable software, I’m not talking about a platform, a vendor, or a technical pattern.
I’m talking about this:
Software that can be assembled, rearranged, and adjusted as the business changes, without stopping everything else.
To compose means you don’t buy a finished answer, you assemble pieces with intention and when conditions change, you change the arrangement.
For most of our careers, enterprise software assumed the opposite:
The work was known in advance
The process would stay stable
The organization wouldn’t shift much
And software could safely lock in “the right way” to operate
That assumption no longer holds and 2026 is the year pretending it does becomes expensive.
Why This Isn’t a Buzzword Cycle
When I say composable software matters in 2026, I don’t mean it suddenly becomes a dinner-table phrase or the word of the year at conferences.
That’s not how enterprise shifts have happened during my lifetime.
What I do mean is this:
2026 is the year leaders start demanding software that can be recomposed, even if they never use the word composable.
What I have seen and am seeing RIGHT NOW is:
Friction showing up
Leaders struggle to name it and blaming vendors
A category emerges because it explains what’s already broken
That’s how cloud, agile, and digital transformation entered executive language. Not as trends, but as relief and I believe composable is next in that lineage.
The Economic Signal Behind the Shift
This conversation isn’t being driven by elegance or tech architecture debates.
It’s being driven by cost and efficiency.
After twenty years of enterprise software investment, many organizations are staring at the same reality:
Overlapping platforms doing similar work
Licenses supporting shrinking usage
Customizations preserving old assumptions
Money spent keeping systems stable instead of making them adaptable
For a long time, this inefficiency was tolerable because growth covered it but that cover is gone.
The market data tells the same story leaders are feeling intuitively. The global market for composable applications was roughly $6–7B in 2024, crossed $8B in 2025, and is projected to more than double by the end of the decade, growing at over 20% annually. That kind of growth doesn’t happen because of hype, it happens because buyers are changing behavior.
At the same time, surveys show that more than half of large enterprises now report having a composable strategy in place, even while many cite executive understanding, not technology, as the biggest barrier.
That gap between adoption and mindset is exactly what 2026 exposes.
The Efficiency Reckoning AI Accelerated
AI didn’t create this problem but it has revealed it.
AI doesn’t tolerate redundancy
It doesn’t wait for annual upgrades.
It doesn’t respect org charts or vendor boundaries.
It shows you, very quickly, where:
Data can’t move
Decisions are trapped
Workflows don’t line up
And cost has accumulated without adaptability
Composable software matters in 2026 not because it’s cheaper upfront, but because it’s the only cost-rational way forward.
It allows organizations to:
Extend value from what they already own
Reuse capabilities instead of replacing platforms
Change one part of the business without re-implementing everything
Reduce long-term cost by reducing rigidity, not cutting capability
That’s the economic unlock leaders are circling, even if they don’t yet have the language, YET.
Here’s a simple test leaders can use:
If changing one part of how work gets done requires a major implementation, a vendor roadmap, or a new purchase, you don’t yet have a composable strategy.
If every change feels like surgery, your systems aren’t composable.
The Experience Problem We’ve Been Avoiding
There’s another reason this is surfacing now, especially in HR.
Most HR software wasn’t designed for how humans use technology today. It was designed for how HR needed to administer work in a more stable world.
That design bias shows up everywhere:
Navigation built around policies, not intent
Workflows optimized for compliance, not momentum
Experiences that assume users will “learn the system”
Interfaces that make sense to specialists, not people
Meanwhile, human expectations have changed completely.
People now expect:
Conversational interaction
Immediate feedback
Low friction
The ability to explore, adjust, and undo
They don’t want training, they want the system to meet them where they are.
HR feels this first because HR sits closest to human friction. When the experience breaks, people route around it. That’s not resistance. it’s called adaptation.
Edge Signals: Where the Future Is Already Leaking In
You can already see this coming into organizations.
Look at the rise of vibe coding, prompt-based configuration, and natural-language workflows.
These tools aren’t popular because they’re flashy. They’re popular because they align with how humans actually think:
Start with intent, not menus
Explore by doing, not configuring
Adjust in real time, not after approval cycles
They feel less like software and more like collaboration.
Composable software makes this possible at scale because it decouples experience from rigid systems. The backbone stays stable and the interaction continues to evolve.
The Mindset Shift That Makes or Breaks 2026
This is where many leaders will struggle, not because of technology, but because of habit.
For decades, the default response to a problem looked like this:
“Let’s go to a tradeshow. Let’s see the leaders. Let’s buy the best platform.”
That mindset assumed:
The problem was fully understood
The solution already existed
Buying something new was the most efficient answer
In 2026, that logic breaks.
The better starting question becomes:
“What do we already own, and how do we need to recombine it to match how people actually work now?”
This is not anti-vendor, it’s anti-waste.
Buying software is no longer the strategy. Designing adaptability is.
What Quietly Stops Working in 2026
Three assumptions finally give way.
The software is the workflow.
Work no longer lives inside a single application. It flows across people, tools, documents, agents, and decisions. Composable accepts this reality while traditional SaaS resists it.Vendor roadmaps will keep us current.
In a volatile environment, waiting for updates becomes one of the most expensive delays in the system. Composable reduces dependence on vendor timing without ripping vendors out.One experience fits everyone.
HR taught us this was never true. Composable systems let experience evolve without breaking the backbone.
This Is Not an Anti-SaaS Argument
You still need systems of record and they still need to be reliable, be able to scale, and be compliant.
Composable does not mean:
Stop buying SaaS
Rip out platforms
Build everything yourself
It means you stop forcing every system to be everything.
Instead of replacing what you own, you:
Anchor the stable investments
Reassemble the changing parts
Extend value without restarting the meter
From both a cost and experience perspective, that’s the unlock.
The Question to Start 2026 With
I don’t think 2026 will be remembered as the year composable software was invented.
I think it will be remembered as the year organizations finally said out loud:
“The world changed. Innovation exploded. And our software thinking didn’t.”
Composable software isn’t the trend to watch this year. It’s the category that explains why the last twenty years didn’t deliver adaptability or experience.
And the biggest shift shouldn’t be technological, it should be a mindset shift:
From buying more systems, to getting more out of what we already have
From managing platforms, to designing how humans actually work with them
2026 won’t reward organizations with the biggest stacks.
It will reward the ones that can take work apart, reuse what they own, and put it back together in ways that feel natural to humans, without stopping the business.
That’s the real starting line for this year and I cannot wait to watch it!
About Jason Averbook
Jason Averbook is a globally recognized thought leader, advisor, and keynote speaker focused on the intersection of AI, human potential, and the future of work. He is the Senior Partner and Global Leader of Digital HR Strategy at Mercer, where he helps the world’s largest organizations reimagine how work gets done — not by implementing technology, but by transforming mindsets, skillsets, and cultures to be truly digital.
Over the last two decades, Jason has advised hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies, co-founded and led Leapgen, authored two books on the evolution of HR and workforce technology, and built a reputation as one of the most forward-thinking voices in the industry. His work challenges leaders to stop seeing digital transformation as an IT project and start embracing it as a human strategy.
Through his Substack, Now to Next, Jason shares honest, provocative, and practical insights on what’s changing in the workplace — from generative AI to skills-based orgs to emotional fluency in leadership. His mission is simple: to help people and organizations move from noise to clarity, from fear to possibility, and from now… to next.
You can email at jasonaverbook@gmail.com or send message at LinkedIn to connect.
John, I'm stealing your phone app analogy. It's perfect. We wouldn't tolerate two days of training to use Instagram, but somehow we've normalized multi-day bootcamps just to request time off.
On agents: yes. The future isn't one system to rule them all. It's a core data layer with purpose-built agents you can spin up, iterate, and retire without blowing up the whole stack. That's what composable actually means.
The trick is getting leaders to stop thinking "implement a system" and start thinking "solve an employee problem." Otherwise you just end up with fragmented agents creating new friction.
The composability argument applies directly to document management infrastructure. Organizations that built monolithic ECM platforms a decade ago are now dealing with the integration debt that composability was supposed to eliminate. A document layer that exposes clean APIs and connects into the broader enterprise stack through standard integrations is a fundamentally different architectural bet. Dokmee.com has been building in this direction.