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MACH Alliance's Commitment to Clear Guidance Amidst Big Tech Acquisitions and Developments

With the MACH Alliance set to surpass 100 corporate members this year, and with MACH now decidedly “the standard,” the MACH Alliance is undertaking a wide-ranging and thorough initiative to explore what membership means in the coming years. We play a leading role in creating clear guidance for enterprises, delineating MACH technologies that foster future-proofing and vendor independence from those that don’t. That guidance is important for buyers given the rapidly shifting dynamics of the technology landscape over the past three and a half years.The rise of Composable technology and MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless) as an architectural standard more specifically, has not gone unnoticed by big players in the industry. They are following suit, and we can not be more pleased about that. They have made pivots to their strategies and product portfolios in this direction by rearchitecting products, by acquiring MACH startups etc. This is an amazing testament to MACH as a vision for the future — a future that empowers businesses with flexibility, control, and most importantly, future-proof technology that enables growth and differentiation. That has always been the goal of the MACH Alliance and is one we hold ourselves to every day.Our strict MACH Certification criteria are in place to uphold this promise to the market, so that the responsibility of navigating vendor marketing claims is not a burden to the buyer. The reason we certify companies, not products has always been and remains that established vendors with one product in their portfolio that qualifies, may claim MACH credentials across the board. That would be detrimental to the clarity we are here to secure. While that reasoning remains sound, our focus is on the buyers, and we want them to understand what they're investing in and to ensure that their chosen solutions meet the high standards set by the MACH Alliance. Providing the best and comprehensive guidance for buyers has been and will be our endeavor always. So today, I am confirming our commitment to researching improved ways to help the buyer best in navigating the landscape. We will dedicate substantial time over the next few months to that work and communicate our findings in March. We believe that as MACH grows and evolves, so too will its value as an industry standard, and with that, the quality that we need to deliver and the scrutiny we are under.If you feel you can provide useful insights for our research, please get in touch at <a href="mailto:info@machalliance.com" target="_blank">info@machalliance.com</a> with the subject line: Research Guidance. We'd love to hear from you! We know we owe the buyer clear guidance and that is what we are set out to do. <hr/><h3>Author:</h3><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-panella-b616911/" target="_blank"><img alt="Jon_Panella-_card.png" src="https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltb9eff0ec0532965e/blt71c13ae19249557a/656df7f0646856187768155d/Jon_Panella-_card.png" inline="true" height="auto" width="594" style="text-align: left;max-width: 594px;float: left;width: 594;height: auto;"/></a>

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The MACH Alliance plays a leading role in creating clear guidance for enterprises, delineating
MACH technologies that foster future-proofing and vendor independence from those that
don’t. That guidance is important for buyers given the rapidly shifting dynamics of the
technology landscape over the past 3.5 years.

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Speed of Ret'AI'l to the power of MACH

<pre>Authored by Prasad Tangirala, Vice President of eCommerce engineering at Conn's HomePlus and a MACH Ambassador.</pre> We can't spell Retail without AI. Everyone is in a race to launch generative AI (chat GPT or Bard) based experiences on their websites.<a href="https://www.conns.com/" target="_blank"> Conn's Home Plus</a> was one of the first e-commerce sites to launch an AI chat-driven product Q&amp;A. We could pull this off with minimal investment and effort because of our early adoption of MACH.MACH is a strategic choice, given the magnitude of churn and change the industry faces. The marketing technology <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/chiefmartec.com/2022/05/marketing-technology-landscape-2022-search-9932-solutions-on-martechmap-com/__;!!CKMDUA!iWCKyb4_zTivQIvr9b_rDC0cqbcVPGeNsiEq0que7zb6Ouqxrh41QnXB7eu3yENtXp44RR4uscD7qyEDubKXC7ZdNVz9$" target="_blank">landscape</a> provides a great visual of our industry's massive opportunity (and problem). There is an innovation overload happening that no organization can digest. No one can keep up with 1000+ new products /ideas debuting each year. Also, this means any technology choice we make today will have several great replacement options in about 3-5 years.We realized early on that Composable architectures provide a way out. We chose a MACH-certified AI search provider while upgrading from an earlier generation search two years ago after completing and evaluating the proofs-of-concept with three vendors. We worked with them to ensure their AI search recognized our inventory distributed in each of our stores, warehouses, and drop-shippers. It was flexible enough to be customized to handle our complexity out-of-the-box. That proved to be a great decision even as we <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/machalliance.org/insights/re-platforming-to-mach-without-any-negative-business-impact-__;!!CKMDUA!iWCKyb4_zTivQIvr9b_rDC0cqbcVPGeNsiEq0que7zb6Ouqxrh41QnXB7eu3yENtXp44RR4uscD7qyEDubKXCzBF9J1H$" target="_blank">re-platformed our e-commerce site while growing the business.</a> <img src="https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltb9eff0ec0532965e/blt0c0626fb9b9602d0/6560a398ec799416cb967e4d/image.png" height="400"/> So now, when our chosen vendor was trying to beta their conversational AI offerings, we could immediately take advantage of it. Please check out our <a href="http://conns.com/" target="_blank">conns.com</a> implementation of this technology, and ask some questions about our products. And remember, <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfbFU0rAQilh9yv3BoEvshFasaINedwDC__;!!CKMDUA!iWCKyb4_zTivQIvr9b_rDC0cqbcVPGeNsiEq0que7zb6Ouqxrh41QnXB7eu3yENtXp44RR4uscD7qyEDubKXCzoHHQyH$" target="_blank">"Financing" is not a bad word at Conn's.</a> We have a financing option for most customers, and we are one of the few retailers who offer next-day delivery on large appliances and furniture in all 15 states in which we operate. Happy shopping and Happy holidays! <h3>About the Author:</h3><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tvprasad/" target="_blank">Prasad Tangirala</a> is a MACH Ambassador and VP of eCommerce Engineering at Conn’s Home Plus. He is passionate about digital transformation that results in non-linear business growth having led several such successful transformations. Prior to Conn’s he was leading the eCommerce practice at Cognizant and early on he held product and technology leadership roles at Amazon and Apple and financial (lending) startups.

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We can't spell Retail without AI. Everyone is in a race to launch generative AI (chat GPT or Bard) based experiences on their websites. Conn's Home Plus was one of the first e-commerce sites to launch an AI chat-driven product Q&A. We could pull this off with minimal investment and effort because of our early adoption of MACH.

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How MACH architecture helps you prepare for the Black Friday traffic?

Navigating Black Friday is a real challenge for enterprises, especially when it comes to wrangling high traffic. The ripple effect hits eCommerce platforms, impacting both the behind-the-scenes backend and the user-friendly frontend – think web and app interfaces, payment systems, pricing and promotion software. To ensure everything runs smoothly during the peak rush, enterprises must actively tackle and manage these traffic spikes.Let’s look at how MACH architecture supports optimal performance during sales events. <h2>How Black Friday traffic challenges monolithic ecommerce platforms?</h2> <ol><li>Managing concurrent user sessions Surging demand stresses server resources, particularly exposing vulnerabilities in the database layer. This elevates the risk of performance bottlenecks, hurting the overall user experience and potentially resulting in substantial losses during Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. </li><li>Scalability concerns Classic monolithic architectures often struggle with horizontal scaling, restricting their ability to handle spikes in user volume. Obtaining the right number of CPUs is crucial for businesses running Black Friday promotions on-site.Conversely, companies collaborating with a cloud provider may feel pressured to opt for a pricier plan, often requiring a multi-year commitment to ensure peak performance. This approach is not cost-effective. If traffic exceeds initial projections, customers may experience website slowdowns or crashes during peak demand periods. </li><li>Lower data consistency causing a bad customer experience The fast-paced nature of Black Friday transactions heightens complexity, underscoring the critical need for data consistency. The challenge involves ensuring uniformity across the distributed network and facilitating simultaneous system updates to avoid errors.In the absence of real-time communication between systems, issues may emerge, for example where customers place orders for more products than are actually available. This can lead to potential delays in delivery or order cancellations, resulting in a negative customer experience or financial losses. </li><li>Points of failure in third-party integrations Potential points of failure can arise from custom-coded third-party integrations, such as payment gateways and external APIs. The increased transactional load on Black Friday can strain these integrations, leading to service degradation or complete failures.</li></ol><hr/><h2>How MACH architecture supports traffic spikes on Black Friday? </h2>Moving away from the traditional monolithic approach, MACH introduces a shift by offering flexibility and scalability to accommodate changing customer demands and fluctuating performance requirements.The MACH architecture empowers enterprises to get ready for Black Friday and other seasonal traffic spikes in the following way:<ol><li>Scalability In contrast to monolithic solutions, MACH not only handles unpredictable Black Friday traffic spikes but also sidesteps the performance issues and high CPU costs typically linked with traditional systems. The modular and independent nature of microservices within MACH plays a crucial role in effective load distribution, enabling each component to scale horizontally. </li><li>Better customer experience MACH's microservices guarantee continuous responsiveness during traffic surges, delivering customers a smooth shopping experience.</li><li>Reduced payloads Within the MACH architecture, different services communicate through API calls within an event-based framework. This ensures that data transmission between systems occurs ad-hoc, triggered by events like placing an order. The outcome is a streamlined process where only the necessary and specified data is transmitted, leading to a substantial reduction in payloads.</li><li>Cost-effectiveness The MACH architecture achieves cost-effectiveness by enabling independent scaling of components, mitigating unnecessary costs, and providing an optimal solution for tackling Black Friday challenges. In contrast to monolithic solutions requiring optimization of the entire package, MACH architecture allows precise scaling, ensuring payment only for the services required for increased API calls. Additionally, MACH software providers often offer flexibility in purchasing extra API call packages for specific months, anticipating higher traffic, without inflating yearly subscription costs.</li><li>Geo-redundancy Incorporating geo-redundancy into the MACH architecture enhances system reliability during Black Friday events. Through duplicating and distributing resources across multiple geographic locations, the influence of localized failures is minimized. This ensures a consistent and reliable customer experience, even during unforeseen events.</li></ol><hr/><h2>MACH-architecture guarantees:</h2> Performance optimizationConstructed on a responsive foundation, the MACH architecture enhances performance through dynamic resource allocation. The key lies in fine-tuning contracts based on demand, enabling platforms to adjust to peak loads. Central to this adaptability are the SLAs that ISVs must provide, ensuring alignment with the dynamic demands of eCommerce.Full elastic consumption maintains optimal performance at the lowest possible cost. ECommerce platforms utilizing MACH can efficiently scale spending based on real-time needs, increasing resource usage during specific months.Cloud-native infrastructure for reliabilityThe cloud-native approach bolsters system reliability through built-in redundancy and fault tolerance. By dispersing services across multiple servers and data centers, the architecture reduces the risk of single points of failure—especially crucial during Black Friday, where any downtime can lead to significant revenue loss.Smooth customer journey across different channelsCome Black Friday, MACH's headless architecture streamlines promotional content delivery to diverse endpoints, encompassing websites and mobile apps. Functioning as an e-commerce platform, the CMS, PIM, and promotion engines communicate pricing and promotion details to all channels via APIs, ensuring uniformity in information relayed to customers across their entire shopping journey.Promotion management within MACH Architecture The unified MACH promotion engine powers all front-end applications and collects data on purchases and applied promotions, making fraud prevention easier as the system validates customer eligibility against all purchases, regardless of the channel. In contrast, utilizing distinct promotion systems for web, app, and POS systems could introduce vulnerabilities, potentially enabling customers to exploit a single-use coupon code multiple times.Beyond the advantages in performance and scalability, MACH Architecture equips companies to launch more effective Black Friday promotions. How?Better promotional ROI thanks to connected systems The MACH architecture enables direct and real-time communication among CRM, CDP, commerce, and promotional software, fostering personalization and contextualization of offers. In contrast, traditional monolithic systems limited enterprises to generic offers, such as a flat 30% off for all, lacking flexibility and precision.Within the MACH architecture, advanced promotional scenarios become achievable, for instance:<ul><li>discounting products down to the minimum margin level based on exact product prices and margins, </li><li>offering discounts only on products the customer has never purchased before, </li><li>providing specific discounts tailored to customer segments or locations, </li><li>dynamically displaying available promotions to each customer in real-time. </li></ul>The result is the development of personalized promotion pages for each customer. These micro-targeting capabilities not only elevate the customer experience but also play a pivotal role in effectively managing the promotional budget and preventing fraud. Significantly, these functionalities are empowered by the real-time API communication between the interconnected systems in the MACH architecture.<hr/><h2>What to make out of this?</h2> As Black Friday looms, view it not merely as a shopping event but as a chance to revamp your eCommerce strategy. Armed with the scalability of MACH architecture, your promotions can stand out, delivering genuine value. Features like flexible subscription pricing, auto-scaling, personalized incentives, and adept handling of massive traffic are significant elements that enhance your promotions and enrich the user experience.In your Black Friday preparations, remember that promotions extend beyond mere discounts; they are opportunities to integrate suitable technologies and forge connections with your customers. Leverage MACH architecture to make this Black Friday a significant milestone in your eCommerce journey – a moment where scalable promotions not only drive transactions but also leave a lasting impact.

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Navigating Black Friday is a real challenge for enterprises, especially when it comes to wrangling high traffic. The ripple effect hits eCommerce platforms, impacting both the behind-the-scenes backend and the user-friendly frontend – think web and app interfaces, payment systems, pricing and promotion software. To ensure everything runs smoothly during the peak rush, enterprises must actively tackle and manage these traffic spikes.


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 Open invite to companies who claim MACH:

The MACH Alliance exists to propel the future of technology which is microservices based, API first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless. That is what MACH stands for and our mission is to safeguard MACH standards for the clarity of buyers.Our certification criteria serve a very clear and important purpose. Providing clarity to the market of what is and what is not MACH, to help buyers build their future-proof application stacks. We guard this strict set of standards fiercely and rigorously benchmark all our members against them. As such, we are concerned to see more companies using MACH wording in their product marketing, promoting their solutions as MACH-ready when they are not MACH certified.It is a great thing that the market as a whole is quickly moving in the direction of Composable and connectivity through API’s. The MACH Alliance supports that wholeheartedly. Yet <a href="https://machalliance.org/insights/four-things-digital-leaders-really-need-to-know" target="_blank">Composable is not MACH </a>and being on a Composable track does not validate a MACH claim at all. The prerequisites for MACH Certification are very clear.We urge all vendors claiming to sell a MACH-ready solution to apply for certification. <a href="https://register.machalliance.org/hubfs/Admissions%20Playbook.pdf" target="_blank">The criteria and the process are outlined here</a>. Any company that claims to offer MACH should carry the seal.The Alliance can explicitly only guarantee the interoperability, ease of use and swapability of certified companies. MACH-labeled solutions where vendors don’t meet the certification criteria are undermining the industry standard and causing confusion for buyers at a time when they need our help. We strongly advise buyers to check the MACH Alliance website to confirm certification in case of any doubt. The MACH Alliance is contacting non-certified companies who are making MACH claims and asking them to apply for certification, and to remove those claims until that is achieved.Furthermore, in some of the recent claims, specific legacy vendors suggest they are offering an enterprise version of MACH. Yet MACH was made in and for the enterprise from the start. MACH is an enterprise setup that requires a level of company maturity, and it has seen massive adoption from enterprise companies like Sephora, Costa Coffee, Mars, Boohoo, Puma, and the list goes on. MACH was made in the enterprise, let there be no misunderstanding.We will continue to take action to avoid buyer confusion and to protect the seal that we are here to guard. Prove your MACH credentials and get certified!If any vendor or buyer would like to speak with us about MACH criteria and principles, or requires clarification and support, we’re here to help. Casper RasmussenPresident, MACH Alliance<hr/> Get in touch at <a href="mailto:info@machalliance.org" target="_blank">info@machalliance.org</a> or <a href="https://machalliance.org/application-member" target="_self">apply here.</a>

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Our certification criteria serve a very clear and important purpose. Providing clarity to the market of what is and what is not MACH, to help buyers build their future-proof application stacks. We guard this strict set of standards fiercely and rigorously benchmark all our members against them. As such, we are concerned to see more companies using MACH wording in their product marketing, promoting their solutions as MACH-ready when they are not MACH certified. 


Open invite to companies who claim MACH:

Please apply for certification to avoid buyer confusion