In the previous post, I explained what accelerators are, what are the benefits of using an accelerator, and what to look out for when choosing one to work with. In this blog post, I am going to compare accelerators to Digital Experience Composition platforms which are an emerging category of SaaS within the MACH space.
DXCs are a new category of SaaS solutions that offer similar benefits to MACH accelerators. You can think of a DXC as a universal accelerator for API-first applications, where you can pull any kind of REST or graphql APIs into a visual workspace where developers or business users can manage omni-channel digital experiences within a visual, low-code editor. DXC speeds up time to value for composable architecture, lowers development cost, and makes it easy for business users to build digital experiences that pull information from many headless data sources.
“DXC is emerging to handle digital multi-experience orchestration in a 'headless,' decoupled, composable world. Extending from front-end as a service (FEaaS) or 'visual page builders', these tools allow developers to set up digital experiences and hand them to business users for day-to-day management in no-code environments.” — Gartner, 2022, Hype Cycle for Digital Commerce
Read more here.
What is the difference between a DXC and an accelerator?
It is like comparing apples and oranges, moreover, every accelerator is different and every DXC can offer a different set of features.
A rough and oversimplified comparison between the two categories is that accelerators are usually built and maintained by a commerce platform vendor or an SI. They offer documentation but as they are a tool in the SI arsenal that needs further customization, not a SaaS, therefore, they usually do not provide SLAs or regular tool audits. They offer less flexibility than DXC in terms of which APIs can be used within the solution. Accelerators can be customized to add the integrations for a specific customer but that takes additional time and work. Accelerators are a point-in-time solution to get started and onboarded on the commerce project which then evolves and gets further customized. Accelerators typically have a wider use case.
DXCs offer more integrations out-of-the-box and continuously develop new connections. DXC is a SaaS and the implementation is either on the customer or SI side. DXC can be used to build omni-channel experiences and pull together many data sources for content-heavy pages or displays. DXC (or DXO) can be leveraged within an accelerator that adds even more commerce-related functionalities on top of what a DXC provides.
DXC | Accelerator | |
SaaS | Yes | - |
Cost | Subscription-based | Can be free or paid within the SI-offered services or an ISV subscription |
Implementation | Not provided by a DXC vendor but can be delivered by an external SI. | Usually done by the SI who built the accelerator. |
SLAs | DXC provides its own SLAs | SLAs from the independent contracts with the vendors. |
External audits | Usually yes | Usually not |
Visual workspace | Usually yes | Usually not |
Flexibility | Visual workspace provided for a higher number of API-based tools vs an accelerator. | Usually each accelerator has a fixed commerce platform and some flexibility with the other software solutions to choose from. Can be swapped by the SI but takes extra time. |
Use case | Building personalized digital experiences that require pulling together data from many headless data sources. | Starting a commerce project on a MACH architecture, migrating off legacy architecture. |
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