Extensibility is the ability of a system to cater to future changes through flexible architecture, design, or implementation.

Extensible applications have excellent endurance, which prevents the expensive processes of procuring large inflexible applications and retiering them due to changes in business needs. Extensibility enables organizations to take advantage of opportunities and respond to risks and while there is a significant difference, extensibility is often tangled with modifiability. Modifiability means that it is possible to change the software whereas extensibility means that change has been planned and will be effortless. Adaptability is at times erroneously leveraged with extensibility. However, adaptability deals with how the user interactions with the system are managed and governed.

Extensibility allows a system, people, technology, information, and processes all working together to achieve the following attributes:

• Handle new information types
• Manage new or changed business entities
• Consume or provide new feeds