In the previous post, I covered what accelerators are, what are the benefits of using accelerators and attached the list of available accelerators. Let’s dive deeper into the topic to help you understand how to choose and implement an accelerator.
Implementation of accelerators will be dependent on the client's appetite for risk (big bang vs strangler), the technologies being integrated, and the target architectural estate. Some accelerators focus on the integrations between products and some focus on the platform engineering required to roll out a composable architecture. Some accelerators focus on the operational aspects and some on the experience aspects. All are relevant and all are viable. Accelerators can be adapted gradually just like any MACH tools.
Accelerators are not SaaS platforms and do not have a price tag. Typically they are part of the toolkit used by SIs to implement a commerce project or are offered free of charge by an ISV to kick-start the project based on that ISV quicker.
Accelerators do not simplify the purchasing process — a customer has to enter multiple contracts and agreements with each vendor whose software is being used within the accelerator. However, as the accelerator offers built-in connections to certain tooling it can help in the research and make the decision process quicker.
Accelerators do not lead to vendor lock-in with multi-year contracts. They align with the API-first approach, offering speed, performance, and interoperability.
Accelerators can be used by both enterprise customers and SIs implementing the MACH project for a customer. Customers from all segments and of all sizes can benefit from an accelerator. Accelerators are most useful for brands looking to transform and innovate quickly and use the best-of-breed technology to do so but mostly have standard use cases where certain capabilities and features do not require full customization. This is why e-commerce and B2B commerce are good business models to adapt accelerators as many use cases overlap and can benefit from a standardized approach.
When you are considering using an accelerator, you should first define your use case, what kind of functionalities you need, or what software solutions you want to keep on using, if any. Then you can find an accelerator that meets your needs.
“As a customer, you have to ask yourself: what am I looking for, how can I ensure that the accelerator I am looking for is going to meet my business case? Do I understand my criteria, am I picking the best for my business today and into the future?” — Everett Zufelt, Vice President of Product and Partnerships, Orium
A good accelerator should allow for the customization of functional capabilities and a choice of microservices you want to use.
“A good accelerator should embrace customization. The acceleration should provide the baseline capabilities with a lot of the architectural decisions made based on best practices and previous experiences of the SI. Then the client can keep the baseline functionality if it doesn't need any further innovation from the industry norm, or they can customize and enhance if they require differentiation from their competitors for their unique functional requirement.” Dom Selvon, CTO, Apply Digital
Ensure the accelerator aligns with MACH principles, preferably opting for MACH-certified SI or ISV vendor-built accelerators.
“If an accelerator is not built properly adhering to MACH standards, it could mean you will end up locked into a solution. It might have performance issues and end up being a MACH-olith.” Anton Koval, Partner Manager, commercetools.
Prioritize accelerators with comprehensive documentation and, if possible, accessible code. Open-source accelerators or sandbox accounts enhance transparency.
“What we initially heard from our customers a lot was “I love the idea of this accelerator but where is the documentation? How can we learn about it, how can we train our teams to work with it?” — Everett Zufelt, Orium
Ensure the accelerator meets specific use case requirements or is flexible enough to integrate with your chosen tooling. Excessive customization may offset time savings.
“Accelerators tend to be opinionated and the wrong choice of vendor mix can often lead to suboptimal outcomes. The choice of components within an accelerator must be sustainable & futureproof and align with the larger customer strategy and scale at play to enable continuous innovation and value delivery.” — Uday Lakkoju, Global Vice President - Composable Products & GTM, Valtech
“Accelerators implicitly come with specific tooling and infrastructure. It’s important to challenge those implicit choices against the organization's architecture. The potential issue here is that an organization chooses an accelerator for the available functionality which does not fit in the current landscape and knowledge making the solution expensive and hard to maintain.” — Krzysztof Molin, Senior Director, Software Engineering, EPAM
Some accelerators are centered around the commerce software placed at the core, others like Valtech’s LEAP and GEAR are centered around the business use case (Retail and CPG vs B2B manufacturing) and tailored to the needs of that specific vertical.
Last but not least, if you plan to work with an SI it’s usually best to work with what they built rather than choosing an external accelerator and asking the SI to work with it — their team is trained and skilled in using their toolkit, not external accelerators, and the time savings may be offset by the additional training or customizations needed.
Accelerators play a pivotal role in adapting MACH Architectures, they speed up the implementation time and help to standardize the approach to MACH software-based projects. The number of accelerators available on the market is impressive and the choice may seem overwhelming at first, this is why we will follow up with a second post in this series covering how to choose the right accelerator and how to implement them.
Here is a list of Accelerators that the author of this article has put together: Click here to see the list.
This list is not exhaustive, if you know of an accelerator that is not listed here please write to katarzyna.banasik@voucherify.io and they will consider including it in the list.
Katarzyna Banasik, Product Marketing Manager, Voucherify
Anton Koval, Partner Manager Accelerators, commercetools
Ricardas Montvila, VP Global Strategy, MAPP Digital
Everett Zufelt, Vice President of Product and Partnerships, Orium
Andrew Kumar, GVP, Uniform.dev
Uday Lakkoju, Global Vice President - Composable Products & GTM, Valtech
Krzysztof Molin, Senior Director, Software Engineering at EPAM
Dom Selvon, CTO, Apply Digital