Why the Future of Ecommerce Lies Within MACH Architecture

It’s no secret that online retail has boomed throughout 2020, after being on a steady growth trajectory for the last couple of decades. Ecommerce companies are leaving the constraints of traditional, monolith commerce platforms behind in efforts to stay ahead of their competitors and offer excellent customer experience. 

 Lauded as a way for commerce platforms to become more flexible, efficient, and innovative, MACH architecture is gaining steam in the retail ecosystem - and exceeding customer expectations in the process. The acronym MACH stands for: Microservices, API first, Cloud-native, and Headless. This new architecture allows ecommerce companies to pick and choose the best technology for each specific area of functionality and connect the necessary components to create a feature-rich solution for customers. 

 MACH Alliance Advisory Board Member Giles Smith encapsulated the power of MACH when he recently said: “In my view, composable architecture [which leverages MACH] lets you pick the right choices for your customer and teams which brings together specialist technology over generalist.” 

 In part one of this two-part blog series on MACH architecture, I’ll dive into the method behind each element of MACH and explore how, when working together, these core approaches help ecommerce businesses speed up development to unforeseen levels. 

MACH - What is it made up of? 

M stands for Microservices. Microservices are being adopted in development teams because of their power to provide scalability, flexibility, and resilience in digital architectures. For ecommerce platforms, this means that individual pieces of business functionality are independently developed, deployed, and managed as containers and serverless functions.  

 A is for API first: Application Programming Interfaces connect all the system pieces, so separate components from each Packaged Business Capability (PBC) can all work together in harmony. APIs connect different microservices and allow for data exchange between users’ browsers and the backend.  

 C stands for Cloud-native: Hosting their digital architecture in the cloud means that ecommerce companies can do all their software development and delivery in a scalable infrastructure, with everything backed up and ready to use by the vendor. A cloud-native environment caters to the business’ changing needs and provides out-of-the-box solutions and services to help drive innovation and agility. 

 H is for Headless: This approach decouples the frontend and backend of an ecommerce solution to allow companies to make edits to the online storefront with no disruption to the backend. It helps create personalized, tailored experiences in the process, such as checkout, wish lists, search, or recommendations. 

Pushing up the speed limit of ecommerce platform development 

MACH allows companies to speed up their time to market as they leverage ready-made solutions from third-party vendors to reduce the need to build services from scratch.  

 Because these SaaS providers regularly update their products, ecommerce platforms paying for their service always get the latest version and don’t have to spend time updating their shop system or conducting migration projects. 

 Being cloud-native spurs development forward too. With everything in the cloud, the ecommerce platform doesn’t have to ensure its own high-speed processing power - it can rely on an infinitely more powerful cloud vendor and its products for this. 

 One excellent example of MACH-powered speed and agility comes from Best Buy. In response to the Covid-19 crisis, Best Buy built and deployed a contactless curbside pickup ordering solution in record time. This was possible thanks to their adoption of MACH. It allowed them to quickly pivot and deliver a new tool within weeks of the pandemic hitting the US. The new ordering solution meant that Best Buy could continue to offer high-demand items like home office equipment and kitchen appliances while increasing the safety of employees and customers. 

 The MACH approach is gaining traction with forward-thinking companies that seek to stay ahead of the growing competition in the ecommerce space. If Best Buy can use it to ward off the likes of Amazon, it must be something worth shouting about, right? 

 In part two of the blog series, I’ll explore exactly how MACH helps ecommerce companies achieve most flexibility while offering cost-effective, tailor-made solutions.