February 28, 2024
Anyone who is paying attention to the world of content and commerce management has seen the meteoric rise of MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless), or composable architecture, and for good reason. MACH solutions are known for their dynamic, flexible approaches to experience development that delivers agility and performance that is the goal of any business who leverages digital channels to interact with, convert and retain customers. In addition, the philosophy of MACH is hard to argue: choose best of breed solutions, have no vendor lock-in, create your assets once and use them anywhere.
To truly realize the benefits of composable solutions requires maturity and a plan for building and growing into these architectures. Many organizations don’t have the ability to simply commit to composable and convert legacy systems to more modernized approaches and instead, must consider new, hybrid methods to slowly migrate to composable architectures, leveraging composable suites instead of jumping wholeheartedly into complete rewrites.
There are two new trends we see now driving the composable marketplace:
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Pure play MACH composable vendors are now creating features and services which tilt more towards traditional CMS platforms. Examples here include Contentstack building the Automation Hub framework and now expanding into front-end hosting with its Contentstack Launch featureset.
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At the same time, traditional CMS platforms are modernizing their underlying architecture to drive the benefits of composable architecture, using a new approach called a Composable Suite. Optimizely is most notable here in that it offers a new SaaS based approach to delivering its well-regarded CMS and CMP platforms using traditional MACH delivery models.
Five considerations when exploring MACH
Here are five considerations for organizations thinking about the best way to approach and adopt MACH solutions:
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Consideration |
Composable Suite |
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|
1 |
With traditional MACH deployments, organizations will have to contract and procure with each platform. A baseline content-focused build could easily include content management, search, digital asset management and personalization features, requiring contracting and legal support with vendors proving each of these capabilities. |
Composable suites typically bundle multiple features together, simplifying both the integration work and the contracting, legal and procurement activities into a single vendor. |
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2 |
Depending on how the composable solution is architected, business users may have to work in multiple tools to deliver a single user experience. That means they have to be trained and become proficient with different UIs from different vendors. |
Composable suites can offer a common interface across multiple features, quickening the learning curve and reducing the number of UIs that have to be managed. |
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3 |
Selecting individual tools and platforms for each feature also requires that those tools be integrated together, which is typically the province of more mature IT teams and organizations. This also adds to overall cost and timelines of delivering these solutions. |
Composable suites already integrate features together in a predictable, standards-compliant fashion, without giving up the ability to replace a given feature with a new tool if desired. In short, it’s the best of both worlds. |
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4 |
Most organizations aren’t able to fully commit to composable architectures because they also have to maintain what they’ve built in the past. Building a transition plan takes time, energy and effort. |
Composable suites accelerate the ability to support hybrid architectures by streamlining costs and providing a natural path from traditional DXP platforms to modern, composable architecture. |
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5 |
An ages old debate exists about selecting the absolute best of breed versus best of need. To put it simply, oftentimes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. The value of composable architecture isn’t necessarily the absolute best of a given feature, but instead, the power, agility and speed improvements associated with a modern technology stack. |
Composable suites work to deliver “good enough” features without sacrificing significant additional cost and effort trying to deliver perfection across all times and channels without fail. Composable suites are a vital method for helping organizations to navigate their way to fully composable architecture without giving up the native value of being able to buy the absolute nest, when they need it. |
A final concern should be considered by organizations seeking their path to embracing composable technologies: the MACH marketplace is fast evolving and typically will see market consolidation through acquisitions and mergers. Implementing individual tools today that could later be acquired may have ramifications across how companies build, maintain and evolve their composable ecosystems. While this is always a concern in the world of IT, it is more likely to be prevalent in this space given the rapid growth and explosion of interest in MACH tools.
Three key options for the modern experience technology stack
Companies today have three strong options to select as they think about how to continually deliver persuasive customer experiences, two of which are built upon the concept of composable architectures:
1. Continue to leverage traditional DXP platforms
It should be made clear that traditional DXPs still have a place for many companies. They are mature, packed with features and are adequate for a wide number of use cases. Standout examples of trusted DXP platforms include Optimizely’s DXP, among others.
2. Migrate fully to MACH / composable architectures
If an organization is both a mature IT organization and can take on the commitment to fully embrace its digital ecosystem using pure MACH principles, composable architectures can offer tremendous flexibility and power in a fully modernized technology stack that can adapt for an uncertain future. Best in class examples here include tools like Contentstack, Contentful and Optimizely’s SaaS CMS offering.
3. Progressively adapt to MACH / composable architectures through the adoption of Composable Suites
The increasing choice for many organizations is to adapt MACH / composable architectures through the use of a composable suite. This saves time and energy for legal, procurement and training considerations, while delivering the power and flexibility inherent in native MACH / composable architectures. Optimizely is an intriguing choice in this marketplace. With the announcement of the availability of their Optimizely Composable Suite, customers are able to deliver CMS and CMP capabilities, with commerce capabilities coming later in 2024.
Native MACH solutions
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Consideration |
Benefits |
Drawbacks |
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Vendor management |
Allows most flexibility in selecting vendors. |
Must procure and manage vendor-specific relationships. |
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Business user interfaces |
Each MACH tool has a unique interface; best of breed examples can integrate with other tools (ex: Ninetailed’s ability to embed in Contentstack’s UI). |
Business users must learn multiple UIs and sometimes log into different platforms to access features and capabilities. |
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Tool integration |
Each MACH component should be integrated with appropriate tools within the MACH ecosystem. |
Core integration work is required at build time and must be maintained as component tools change over time. |
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Migration / adoption |
MACH components can be architected and adopted on an as-needed basis, providing agility and flexibility in how to build MACH-driven platforms. |
Each component of a MACH ecosystem must be reviewed to determine the most appropriate adoption model. |
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Best of breed |
MACH components align fully with the idea of best of breed selections especially over time. MACH solutions provide the ability for organizations to change their architecture when a more powerful component becomes available over time. |
Swapping components requires new integration points and potentially data / asset migration. |
Composable solutions
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Consideration |
Benefits |
Drawbacks |
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Vendor management |
Reduces the number of vendors to be managed and procured depending on specific mix of needed features and functionality. |
Still have additional vendors to negotiate and manage. |
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Business user interfaces |
Reduces number of UI to learn and manage. |
Still may need to log in to additional interfaces, depending on specific makeup of composable ecosystem. |
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Tool integration |
Reduced number of integration points. Simplified and expedited build times compared to native MACH. |
Non-suite components must still be integrated separately. |
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Migration / adoption |
Expedited build times. Reduced migration and adoption times compared to native MACH. |
Non-suite components must still be migrated or adopted separately. |
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Best of breed |
Best balance of best of breed versus best of need. Allows for flexibility in crafting unique composable ecosystems. |
Assumes that all suite components meet expectations and needs for a given project. If not, no value is delivered in this approach. |
Traditional DXP solutions
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Consideration |
Benefits |
Drawbacks |
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Vendor management |
Consolidates all vendor management and procurement responsibilities to one single vendor. |
Potential lock-in to a single vendor, often requiring a multi-year commitment, making it difficult to move quickly if a DXP isn’t viable. |
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Business user interfaces |
Typically, a common UI is leveraged across all DXP modules and feature sets and requires a single login point for business users. |
Not all DXPs feature unified UIs. Many that are the result of acquisitions and mergers suffer from origin UIs that complicate matters for business users. |
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Tool integration |
Most core feature sets and capabilities come pre-integrated, saving development time. It also allows for easy sharing of analytics and insights across functionality (i.e. search activity automatically influences content recommendations), so the effect is magnified beyond simple integration alone to include data-sharing. |
Requires alignment that the full feature set and capabilities of the platform are good enough for the desired outcome. Must validate the level of integration and data-sharing, as the depth of this integration varies by vendor. |
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Migration / adoption |
Upon replatforming conclusion, provides a unified, consistent platform for operation and overall enhancement. Streamlined management and consistency of expectation. |
Requires full commitment to migrating to a unified platform, even in phases or waves. Less helpful if migration is only focused on partial replatforming of a given digital ecosystem. |
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Best of breed |
Much more focused on delivering a best-of-need model, as any given module can be outperformed by niche providers. |
Still requires customization and integration work if niche providers are included. Some wasted energy and effort when replacing DXP functionality with niche provider work. Can also contribute to code bloat for unused features or capabilities. |
For more information
Given the complexities and stakes associated with making these kinds of core architectural decisions, we find that companies benefit from working with trusted partners who have experience with multiple approaches to delivering persuasive, composable digital solutions. Valtech is a well-versed team of business experts, user experience pros and technically excellent practitioners of native MACH, composable suite and traditional DXP platform providers and are ideally positioned to help you navigate these complex decisions.
