Feature
The Gist
- Future of digital experiences across industries. MACH’s early adoption by ecommerce and retail industries.
- Composability movement. Digital customer experience professionals advancing composability, but not without challenges.
- MACH's future outlook. Continued growth and innovation across various verticals.
MACH architecture — Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless — has reached an “inflection point” because many industry verticals want to build off a model that decouples the user interface from diverse “as-as-service” digital experience modules.
Eric Feige, managing director of strategy at VShift and a CMSWire Contributor, shared those insights with CMSWire after attending the MACH Three Composable Conference last week in New York City where digital customer experience professionals came to advance the movement toward composability and open, best-of-breed technology ecosystems.
“MACH’s earliest evangelists are ecommerce providers and retail focused systems integrations,” said Feige, calling one of his key takeaways “verticalization beyond retail." “We are at an inflection point where other industry verticals like healthcare, financial services, energy and manufacturing are embracing MACH as a preferred architectural model for digital experiences due to the time savings and autonomy benefits of decoupling the UI from diverse ‘as-as-service’ digital experience modules.”
What Is MACH Architecture and Composability?
The MACH Alliance, a nonprofit organization formed in 2020 and composed of vendors and brands, wants to evangelize a digital experience technology and architecture movement that supports:
- Microservices: Individual pieces of business functionality that are independently developed, deployed and managed.
- API-first: All functionality is exposed through an API.
- Cloud-native SaaS: That leverages the cloud, beyond storage and hosting, including elastic scaling and automatically updating.
- Headless: Front-end presentation is decoupled from back-end logic and channel, programming language and is framework agnostic.
At the center of the strategy is the concept of composability, which MACH Alliance officials tout as a modular approach to executing digital customer experiences that give brands and practitioners the ability to experiment, scale and react to “changing market conditions by using best-of-need tools.”
We found in our CMSWire DXP Market Guide that virtually every DXP solution (including those that were previously an integrated, monolithic environment) seems to be repositioning themselves as a headless, hybrid headless or composable DXP. The composable approach is not only through "headless-first" providers, we reported, but now through established DXP providers who are emphasizing their headless credentials.
“While it’s open to debate what exactly a DXP is or isn’t,” according to our DXP Market Guide, “the fact is that these headless vendors are now part of the DXP space, and we think marketing teams should consider all their options.”
Embracing composable architecture isn’t a question of if but when and how, according to Lars Birkholm Petersen, CMSWire Contributor and co-founder of Uniform, a digital customer experience software provider. “Composable and MACH Architecture allow brands to leverage APIs across various technologies, including CMS, Commerce, DAM, and PIM, to craft engaging digital experiences through the chosen front-end,” Birkholm Petersen wrote in a June 17 LinkedIn blog post.
Related Article: Composable Architecture: Building Your Roadmap to Success
Digital Composition Management and Challenges
According to Birkholm Petersen, different strategies have emerged to address composition management, and he noted challenges within each:
- Custom backend for the front-end (BFF): Technical and often lacks business user-friendly interfaces
- Agency accelerators: Pre-composed solutions that don’t empower business users, as it’s more focused on deploying scripts/code that enables the starting point for the stack.
- Federation/aggregation tools: Combine multiple APIs into a single endpoint, but they often require developers for front-end integration and do not provide tools for business users.
- Headless technologies: Integrate some components with business-focused UIs but most don’t fully support visual composition management.
For sure, none of these approaches around composable are "set it and forget it."
“In our view there is a considerable gap between the implied ease and cost of building and managing composable architecture and the reality of making it work, which requires reliance on IT resources and (arguably) investment in an orchestration layer,” we reported in the CMSWire DXP Market Guide. “However, some providers are investing in low-code interfaces that enable business users to better manage integrations. This may help make composable architecture more achievable for some teams.”
Related Article: 7 Marketing Technology Trends for 2024
MACH vs. SOA: A Strategic Framework for Modern Digital Architectures
Over the past decade, the marketing technology (martech) industry has experienced various trends, from XML and SOAP to the current MACH architecture framework, according to Mark Barrett, chief revenue officer at Aionic Digital. The SOAP web services architecture includes a service provider, a service requester and an optional service registry.
Barrett emphasizes that while technologies evolve, the fundamental goal remains the same: to address business needs effectively. Barrett reflects on the evolution from Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to MACH, noting that "SOA laid the groundwork for modern architectural paradigms."
He explains that MACH, unlike its predecessors, offers "flexibility, scalability and agility," which are essential in today's digital landscape. Barrett warns that while MACH brings significant benefits such as "scalability, faster time-to-market, and reduced vendor lock-in," it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. He points out that its adoption requires careful consideration of organizational size, technical expertise and infrastructure readiness. Smaller businesses may find MACH's complexity overwhelming, while larger enterprises could struggle with tightly coupled dependencies.
He also highlights the specific advantages MACH offers in the ecommerce sector, enabling mid- to large-scale businesses to achieve composability and flexibility in their technology stack. However, Barrett cautions that the benefits of headless architecture might be "overly complex for smaller operations."
Ultimately, Barrett advocates for a strategic approach to adopting MACH, noting that "each organization's unique circumstances" should dictate how they implement this architecture. The key to leveraging MACH effectively lies in carefully assessing needs, leveraging the right technologies and embracing MACH principles.
Related Article: Customer Experience Strategies: Enhance Composability With Cross Functional Models
Artificial Intelligence & Composable Content
So what about artificial intelligence? Where does the proverbial AI tech enter the mix? Headless content services are increasingly viewing AI as a “head” that can consume content as data and present a content rich experience in a relevant manner, according to Feige.
“Also, AI will increasingly be used as a CMS replacement or intelligent layer that can access, interpret and then intelligently compose and create a more engaging and productive digital experience,” he told CMSWire. “The traditional notion of content management systems (CMS) is actively being reinvented with intelligent MACH-based modularity being incubated by this community.”
Composable Strategy Still Nascent
According to Feige, industry analysts and MACH ambassadors covering the composable space are interested in promoting modern, business-driven operating models to make sense of the proliferation of easily interchangeable MACH and composable technologies.
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“We expect more and more business executives to assume leadership roles with prioritization, standardization and governance as a focus so that the power of MACH can be realized with tight alignment to business goals and constraints,” Feige added.
However, he noted that MACH Three conference participants suggest that we are still in the early stages and that there’s much more ahead. Expect vertical industry digital stacks with interchangeable vendor solutions to emerge more fully, he added.
“Expect useful innovation and exciting disruption with AI-based composable content, and expect strategic consultants to move more aggressively into MACH as executive leadership seeks to make sense of MACH,” Feige said. “For digital content leaders driving change in their organizations, look to MACH for inspiration. There’s a lot of change going on.”
