How to Apply MACH and Composable Commerce to Your Business
Two emerging concepts - MACH and Composable Commerce - are moving from cutting edge concept for early adopters to mainstream table stakes in the commerce world faster than almost any ecommerce technology in memory.
Many merchants still aren’t fully aware of what MACH and Composable Commerce truly are, and even those that are aware of it are often struggling to determine how to apply it to their business and their commerce efforts. Today we’re going to define MACH and Composable Commerce and then show how every company can adopt a composable commerce mindset today and benefit greatly from this.
What is MACH?
MACH is an acronym that stands for Microservices, API-first, Cloud, and Headless. It’s a framework for building cloud-native applications that are composed of loosely coupled microservices that communicate with each other through APIs. Headless refers to the decoupling of the front-end and back-end, allowing for greater flexibility and faster development time.
Microservices basically means instead of building a single large application to serve as your website or another piece of your commerce technology stack, you build or buy smaller microservices. For instance, if you want to use Adobe’s Sensei AI to provide smart search functionality on your site, you can connect to a separate microservice that Adobe provides that powers this functionality.
What is Composable Commerce?
Composable Commerce is a new way of looking at commerce technology. It’s a shift away from the traditional monolithic commerce platform to a more modern, microservices-based approach.
In a Composable Commerce world, there is no such thing as a “one size fits all” platform. Instead, each company chooses the best-of-breed solutions that fit their specific needs and assemble them into a cohesive whole. This gives companies the flexibility to change individual components as their needs evolve, without having to completely rebuild their entire commerce stack.
The Long Term Benefits of MACH and Composable Commerce
There can be many benefits if you move your entire commerce technology stack to a MACH and Composable Commerce approach, such as:
Ability to control the end-to-end commerce experience
Flexibility in taking just the best parts of different platforms and solutions
Faster time to market by simplifying integration between systems
Reduced cost of support and ownership by enabling smaller changes
Easier integration with third-party systems if those systems also adhere to MACH
However, these benefits really apply the best when you’ve completely replaced your entire commerce technology stack with components that follow the MACH and Composable Commerce approach. Given how new these technologies are, there are not many vendors yet supporting a MACH and Composable Commerce approach, making it challenging or expensive to move entirely to MACH and Composable Commerce.
The good news is everyone selling online can begin to adopt a Composable Commerce mindset to the decisions they’re making about their commerce technology stack.
Adopting a Composable Commerce Mindset Today
We recommend that all merchants adopt a composable commerce mindset today. It starts small - simply start thinking as you build new features, subscribe to new services or buy new platforms - does this move me closer or further from Composable Commerce?
Buying a monolithic application that doesn’t have an API – that's moving further from Composable Commerce. Ensuring that the new technology you select supports microservices, APIs, cloud technologies and a headless approach – that’s moving towards Composable Commerce.
This goes beyond just the technology you’re buying - as you, your development team or your development partner are building new features or integrations, it’s important to apply this Composable Commerce mindset. Building small, discreet features that build on top of each other and utilize a headless and API-first approach will allow you to capture some of the benefits of Composable Commerce and position yourself to take full advantage of this new approach in the future.
Magento at MACH Speed?
After almost fifteen years of working with the Magento platform, we often are asked how new technologies might be adopted by or utilized with Magento. The great news is through the work that’s been done to bring headless frontends to Magento and a Cloud-first approach in the past few years, Magento can be leveraged for a Composable Commerce approach. Both Magento Open Source (through various hosting partners) and Adobe Commerce Cloud (the commercial version of Magento) support this type of approach in unique ways. Not all development partners are familiar with Composable Commerce or the steps necessary to deploy Magento in a Composable Commerce or MACH-style method, so it’s important to ensure whomever you are working with on your Magento implementation or expansion is familiar with and following these methodologies so that your commerce technology stack will be able to leverage the full benefits of Composable Commerce.
