MACH - Modern Architecture to Address Digital Commerce Growth in the 2020's

Revenue from retail e-commerce in the United States was estimated at roughly USD 905 Billion in 2022, and expected to exceed USD 1.7 Trillion by 2027 ( Statista ).

As e-commerce continues on this rapid growth trajectory, enterprises have been experiencing various challenges related to antiquated portals, commerce and content management platforms.

At Intelliswift Software , our practitioners have been a part of delivering solutions for our customers as they harness the rising trends that includes the increasing importance of APIs, the rise of cloud computing, and the need for greater flexibility and scalability in software development. The trend towards using microservices and headless architectures is being driven by the need to build applications that can easily adapt to changing business requirements and technologies.

MACH is a software development methodology that focuses on building microservices, using an API-first approach, and adopting a cloud-native architecture. It is designed to enable organizations to build and deploy scalable, reliable, and flexible software systems.

The key tenets of the MACH methodology include:

Microservices: Building software as a collection of small, independent services that can be developed, deployed, and managed separately. This allows teams to work on different parts of the system concurrently and makes it easier to scale and maintain the system.

API-first: Designing the system's APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) before building the actual services or applications. This ensures that the APIs are well-defined and easy to use, and helps to prevent integration issues later on.

Cloud-native: Building software that is optimized for deployment in a cloud computing environment. This typically involves using containers and other technologies that allow the software to be easily scaled and managed in the cloud.

Headless: Building software that is designed to be consumed primarily through APIs, rather than through a traditional user interface. This allows the software to be more easily integrated with other systems and used in a wider range of contexts.

To ensure that enterprises can innovate swiftly and have an agile experience roadmap, they must own a Modular, Composable, Swappable architecture. But MACH, is not necessarily an all or nothing game. It isn’t a suite and allows for modular introduction. Going with a headless front-end frees commercial and marketing teams and de-risks any future changes to the “back-end”.

Below the composable elements that go into a typical commerce environment.

Pros of MACH Architecture:

Total Cost of Ownership: If the service architecture is adequately designed, all the microservices can be scaled independently. This allows optimizing infrastructure costs of the commerce service.

Composability: With each microservice being independent, replacing any of them with a home-grown or a 3rd party service is possible. Customers can leverage this to create a best-of-breed solution picking the best-in-class functionality instead of being limited to what is available in the best-of-suite approach.

High Availability: Fault isolation is another benefit of a microservices architecture. If one of the microservices is down, the entire commerce solution will not go down as the other microservices should still operate.?

Seamless Upgrades: Since each microservices can be changed independently, there is no technical need to package new features, patches, updates, and upgrades into more significant releases for rollout.

Cons of MACH Architecture

The main challenges associated with the microservices are related to inherent architectural complexity. If the software application consists of many independent microservices (each having its own APIs), this can result in the excessive effort required to stitch them together. This has to be done either by the customer or by the partner. Often having the right partner, with roots in Microservices and APIs, and a strong productization focus (reusable components) help address the complexity, and the time-to-market concerns.

Headless CMS:

Web Content Management is one of the first areas to be disrupted by Headless CMS. There are several advantages of headless CMS (content management system) over traditional CMS:

Decoupled architecture: In a headless CMS, the frontend and backend are decoupled, meaning the frontend and backend can be developed and deployed independently. This allows for greater flexibility and scalability, as the frontend can be developed using any technology and the backend can be easily integrated with multiple frontends.

API-driven: Headless CMS use APIs to deliver content to the frontend, which allows for easy integration with a variety of platforms and devices. This makes it easier to create and manage content across multiple channels, such as web, mobile, and IoT.

Better performance: Since the frontend is not tied to the backend, it can be designed and optimized for better performance. This is particularly important for mobile devices and applications, where performance is critical.

Future-proof: A headless CMS is not tied to a specific frontend technology, which means it can easily adapt to new technologies as they emerge. This makes it a more future-proof solution compared to traditional CMS, which are often tied to a specific technology stack.

Easier to manage: A headless CMS typically has a simpler, more intuitive user interface, which makes it easier for non-technical users to manage content. Additionally, the decoupled architecture allows for more efficient collaboration between developers and content creators.

Some examples of headless CMS platforms include:

Contentful: A cloud-based headless CMS that offers a flexible content model, powerful editing tools, and an API-driven delivery platform.

Contentstack: An API-based, headless content management platform that allows developers and content managers to create and manage content simultaneously and independently, to create websites and applications quickly.

Strapi: An open-source headless CMS that can be self-hosted or deployed to the cloud. It offers a customizable content model and an API-driven delivery platform.

Sanity: A cloud-based headless CMS that offers a flexible content model and a real-time collaboration platform.

ButterCMS: A headless CMS that offers a flexible content model and an API-driven delivery platform. It is designed for developers and offers integrations with popular frontend frameworks such as React and Gatsby.

Ghost: An open-source headless CMS that is designed for bloggers and content marketers. It offers a powerful API and a flexible content model.

Beyond Headless CMS, what’s next for MACH

The terms MACH and Composable Commerce are already being used interchangeably and MACH approach has already made huge inroads in Commerce Portals. One of the key tenets of Composable Commerce is Modular Architecture. This is where MACH comes into play as the underlying back-end technology of a Composable Commerce approach that enables marketing, merchandising, and sales teams to bring their brand's unique digital vision to life by launching and continuously optimizing digital commerce experiences that leverage multiple best-of-breed vendors, composed together into a complete, business-ready solution.

Platforms like Commercetools with their MACH underpinnings are gaining huge traction, taking away business from leaders like Oracle ATG that have ruled this market for over two decades. However, Composable Commerce is a subject for another post that I hope to write soon.

Credits:

I’ve leveraged excellent content from MACH Alliance and various platform vendors including commercetools , Contentstack , Elastic Path , Strapi , and others.