MACH THREE: Open integration tech comes of age

The MACH Alliance outlines the next stage in its maturity and roadmap at end-user event, reports Retail Technology Magazine publisher, Miya Knights

The MACH Alliance is focusing on its next growth phase as members of the open technology systems advocacy group gathered for its third annual user conference in New York.

The Alliance – founded in 2020 to promote a microservices, application programming interface (API) first, cloud-native and headless (MACH) approach to integration – was coming of age, according to executive board members during a press conference held at the event. 

Jasmin Guthmann, an executive board member of the MACH Alliance and head of corporate communications for content management system provider, Contentstack, explained that growing MACH adoption means the group must shift its focus towards serving more diverse end-user organisations.

“The early majority reacts to a very different set of messages than the early adopters,” she said. “Nobody in the early majority on a beta test deployed over the weekend is excited when something breaks so they can fix it.”

Simplifying point-to-point integration

The non-profit group is developing standards, certifications and education to broaden the appeal of a MACH-based systems integration approach. It works to automate basic, repetitive integrations that free up engineers while ensuring more strategic integrations can be handled intentionally.

Casper Rasmussen, MACH Alliance president and senior vice president of technology for digital agency, Valtech, suggested that organisations can accelerate some basic hygiene integrations, which he said can “make sure system A can understand what system B is all about.

“Then there are other integrations and data streams for much more advanced use cases that you care more about as a company, where the data needs to be your intellectual [IP] property, where it cannot reside in any other environment that needs to be available through your core systems,” he added.å

Rasmussen said the Alliance is developing case studies and research to drive the adoption of composable technologies in industries beyond retail and consumer goods, where they are not currently considered the default approach.

Maximising composability benefits

The board members also discussed a move towards pre-composed MACH solutions to accelerate the implementation of composable architecture in businesses. These target more mature applications, including digital commerce, emphasising flexibility and optionality.

Chris Bach, The MACH Alliance vice president and co-founder and chief security officer of cloud-based integration development platform provider, Netlify, argued that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) development and the need to keep pace with consumers were pushing industries to consider MACH.

”It’s constantly evolving,” he said. “One of the external drivers that has accelerated things is AI. The use cases are very immediate, from the generative developments that tackle the easier manual surface areas and automate them to having service agents that can use generative AI with customers.

“There’s just so much to add that ensuring you make the right choices becomes hard. A [tech] stack must have different solutions and components. So, MACH composability becomes a prerequisite. You can’t do that if you’re stuck in a monolith, using whatever it offers.”

Vendor interoperability focus

Amanda Elam, The MACH Alliance executive board member and chief marketing officer for customer relationship management provider, Bloomreach, continued to build on Bach’s point. She confirmed that vendor pricing and contracts must enable composability and interoperability.

“What I love about MACH is that Bloomreach believes you should use us for all your channels, right? We believe that that’s the best thing,” she explained. “But, ultimately, MACH means you’re in charge of the tech stack you need for whatever your business is.”

Elam added that it was the job of The MACH Alliance to ensure that end users of MACH systems can remain in control of that choice. In practical terms, this means vendors with MACH Alliance certification must ensure clients can consume their products more flexibly. 

The executive board confirmed this includes offering clients the ability to choose only the modules they may need from one vendor’s product and bundling these modular solutions with other MACH-certified providers to enable out-of-the-box implementation and faster time to value.  

Managing the pace of change

Elam said MACH principles were helping organisations manage today’s accelerated pace of change. “If you are uncomfortable with constantly changing, testing, breaking, and constantly trying new things, then you are behind,” she stated. 

Srikrishna Kalavacharla, Neiman Marcus Group senior director of omni-personalisation and engagement engineering [pictured], later that day shared experiences that supported the views of the executive board members. He described how MACH enables continuous integration and the impact this has on delivery.

“We say our pre-production environment is a continuous integration environment,” Kalavacharla said, adding that some vendor partners ask for a more stable QA [quality assurance] or staging environment. “We answer that our continuous integration environment is the most stable,” he added.

The US retailer uses MACH-based test-driven development and deployment practices for its websites. “We had to look at how we could move faster, relinquish control and achieve our goal. I know it doesn’t sound easy, but the price is just too good and big to pass up.” Kalavacharla concluded.