The debate between "best of breed" and "suite" vendors has dominated discussions around enterprise architecture and technology procurement in the Internet era. Thirty years in, we can declare a victor: composable MarTech / Digital stacks have won the debate. Of course this hasn't stopped major MarTech vendors from fighting a dogged rearguard action in favor of their suites, now under the guise of "AI."

So what comes next? And what is a savvy MarTech leader to do?

Composability Dominates Large Enterprise Stacks

You could be forgiven for thinking that the likes of Salesforce and Adobe play dominant roles in large enterprise stacks, since most enterprises license at least one of their offerings, and their reps are in your executives' ears all the time pushing them to consolidate on that vendor's "platform."

Looking further afield, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP -- or even Acquia, Optimizely, and HubSpot -- also claim the suite mantle.

Of course, you the seasoned MarTech leader already understand that most of these suites have been cobbled together or jerry-rigged from piece-parts, and remain far from representing cohesive platforms. You've likely also witnessed more than a little vendor bullying to place more of that vendor's toolset into your stack. Real Story Group has been happy to help many of you push back

And today I'd like to share some evidence of your wisdom. At RSG we've compiled a composite diagram of more than thirty large (often global) enterprises that have participated in our exclusive MarTech Stack Leadership Council over the past six years.

Img: Composite MarTech Stack diagram across 30 large enterprises that have made up RSG's Stack Leadership Council

Note that we could have added even more logos, but we ran out of space, so treat this diagram as more emblematic than literal. Still, you get the point: enterprise stacks are primarily best of breed today. In fact, I know of only one large enterprise that has fully embraced a strategy of a single core MarTech supplier, and even that was in the context of a broader operational outsourcing initiative.

A Composability Caveat

Composability in the tech world always begs the question of how finely to slice various services. Hopefully we can all agree that your MarTech / Digital stack as a whole should contain discreet services that you will want to optimize against your particular circumstances. In some cases, different services (represented by boxes above) could be provided by the same vendor, or in rare instances by the same platform. In other cases you may need two or more logos in one box.

For example, your CDP might bundle useful personalization or orchestration services. Your customer data ops team, however, will surely deploy multiple platforms across the various capabilities they need to deploy. So there are exceptions.

Where you need to exercise caution is against introducing too much composability into one of the boxes above. I can think of Web Content Management and Customer Data Activation in particular as areas where RSG has sometimes seen solution architects get ahead of business usability and value by introducing too many discrete solutions into the mix.

As usual, your mileage will vary.

The Empire Fights Back

Major MarTech vendors are not content to sit back and watch logos proliferate in the diagram above. They all talk a good game about interoperability, but they are also promising their investors a greater share of your wallet. What do you think drives their roadmaps more?

Lately they have been promoting their AI features -- especially Agentic AI features -- as differentiator, and as a way to bind their disparate products together.

This strategy brings a nice aroma to the nose but thin gruel on the palate. Most vendor agents are what RSG calls "workflow" agents. Real enterprise value will come from "orchestration" agents that manage hand-offs among your diverse MarTech platforms, though I believe mass deployment still remains years away. In most cases the simple agents and frameworks built by MarTech vendors remain fragile and potentially expensive, rather than bet-the-farm differentiators.

What You Should Do

First and foremost, stick to your composable stack strategy; it will remain a winner. Trust your wise enterprise architects, and consider the professional growth opportunities that come with driving business value.

Looking forward, develop a vendor-independent AI strategy that leverages your unique content and data stores as well as your omnichannel ambitions. AI -- especially Agentic AI -- will work best as a layer in your stack, not a feature in your channel platforms.

This will require building more internal capacity, despite a potentially tough budgetary environment. Prioritize domain expertise (rather than platform proficiency) as you build out your teams.

And speaking of budgets, don't shy away from pursuing true consolidation: eliminating unnecessary overlaps in single boxes above. Note this is quite different than reducing the number of vendors across your stack; that kind of consolidation rarely yields cost savings and frequently leads to business erosion.

Stack integration has always been, and will always be, a core capability for any MarTech team. AI isn't going to make this challenge go away, though AI can become a useful part of most integration approaches.

We live in a composite stack world. Let's briefly celebrate that....then get back to work.