What is MACH architecture?

In the past, enterprise solutions were designed to meet as many business requirements as possible. For instance, an e-commerce solution would encompass as many facets as possible - PIM, CMS, Storefront, Email Marketing, OMS, etc. The solution worked well for a period but with changing customer demands and technology innovations it showed cracks. Agility, innovation, and upgrades all suffered. The other issue the monolithic solution present is adoption. Most companies would use anywhere from 50-80% of the overall capabilities, in many cases they did not need the entire package.

The advent of cloud-based solutions has opened new possibilities and MACH architecture advocates building an open cloud native and best-of-breed enterprise solution, that is uniquely composed for each business. As an example, if a company engages in e-commerce, MACH architecture advocates that the company builds a solution by choosing or building the right PIM, DAM, Storefront, Email Marketing. Each of which is a microservice hosted in the cloud.

Components of e-commerce (source: Technology || Enterprise MACHified. (machalliance.org))

The core benefits of this approach are:

• Each module is independently evaluated and meets business’s requirements.

• Each module is independently managed, upgraded and maintained.

• Each module supports open standards and API based communication.

• Each module is replaceable.

• Each module is independently scalable.

• The company can now innovate at a pace that matches customer’s needs.

In summary, MACH addresses one of the most pressing issues of today - How to meet the continually changing customer demands and technology advancements. It provides a way to remain agile, customer-centric and future-proof. Every part of the solution can be individually chosen or built to meet business requirements, i.e., modular.