Over the past three years, the MACH Alliance has grown from an idea to a movement, to an established non-profit organization with more than 80 international members dedicated to advocating for open, best-of-breed technology ecosystems. The response we’ve seen has made it quite clear - and exciting - that this shift is happening even faster than we originally anticipated.
See our latest research on MACH adoption trends.
As true proponents of MACH technologies, we believe the Alliance has a responsibility to the market, especially to enterprise buyers, to approach MACH certification with a high degree of objectivity and scrutiny. It can be incredibly hard for a buyer to cut through industry jargon, particularly from big companies with loud marketing, to understand if a vendor or agency is truly following composable architecture principles. Our certification is our word that we have evaluated the technology, references, and roadmap of a member and they have proven they meet all the criteria for the Alliance to recommend them as part of a future-proof technology stack. This includes that they are active advocates for MACH and composable with clear senior leadership commitment.
As the adoption of modern, composable technology continues to grow, businesses are seeking out experienced and certified MACH System Integrators (SI) to help them transition and manage their tech environments. If you're interested in becoming a certified MACH SI, there are certain prerequisites your agency must meet before being considered. This blog focuses on criteria for a standard SI. The MACH Alliance also encourages boutique and global SIs, and the criteria is adjusted accordingly.
First and foremost, a standard SI is a full-service digital agency/SI with a sizeable composable practice. We are looking for commitment to MACH practices in the form of a Centre of Excellence or a MACH technology practice. It is not enough to be undertaking a few projects that customers requested, but requires an actual MACH practice and proactive promotion of MACH principles. *Your agency must have a minimum headcount of 250, and 100 or more engineers and architects certified by one or more of the major cloud providers (AWS, GCP or Azure) in engineering, architecture, and operations of cloud-native solutions.
In addition to headcount and expertise, your agency must have five public enterprise MACH references (annual revenue >$1 billion), with three customers willing to speak publicly about how you helped them move hosted solutions/on premise architectures to composable SaaS architecture or build 'greenfield' MACH ecosystems for a new brand or operation. These references should have a minimum of two MACH technology components or two ISV MACH member solutions. The goal is to gather insight on how the SI approaches and implements the solutions. The evaluators look at the case studies to understand:
All of this helps to understand the real complexity, reach and scale of the project, and the involvement and expertise of the SI. The evaluators also look for references moving from legacy monolithic platforms into a composable ecosystem.
Your agency must also have executed partnership agreements with at least four MACH Vendor member companies and at least one of either AWS, GCP or Azure.
Finally, to be considered for certification, your agency must have at least three recent thought leadership publications related to MACH technology, for example composable, microservices, headless or anti-monolith content. These publications should showcase your agency's expertise in MACH technology and its benefits.
In summary, becoming a certified MACH System Integrator is no small task. It requires significant experience, expertise, and references, along with partnerships with multiple MACH vendor member companies and cloud providers. But if your agency meets all the required pre-requisites and is passionate about helping businesses transition to modern, composable technology, then becoming a certified MACH SI can offer significant growth opportunities for your agency.
*Criteria valid at time of publication but is subject to change at the discretion of the MACH Alliance without notification.