MACH Architecture: The Advanced & Progressive Face of Ecommerce

Do you know how MACH started?

But very recently, the companies became aware of this loophole in the old technology and became ready to adopt the new technology and approach. Companies with eCommerce platforms gradually realized that the monolith approach no longer supports customer expectations. They realized that keeping up with the digital tongue was becoming the need of the hour and a crucial component to measure success in the long run.

The Enterprise software called the “all-on-one” suites became the less preferred and safest choice for eCommerce. There came a time when businesses had to deal with ample legal restrictions in terms of data, growing demands of UX, faster and wiser deals for customers, more innovative marketing activities, etc., and thus the eCommerce systems failed.

After the constant ups and downs in the growth of eCommerce, the world saw a drastic paradigm shift since the pandemic. Ecommerce is breaking the shackles of traditional and monolith digital commerce platforms to stay ahead of the competition and meet the customers’ rapidly changing needs.

Now, do you wish to boost the speed and flexibility of your eCommerce platform?

MACH Architecture is the right technology, then. It came into existence to modernize eCommerce platforms. The acronym Mach stands for:

• Microservices
• API-first
• Cloud-native, and 
• Headless

The MACH approach enables businesses to create a tech-stack niche in the industry to create a future-rich solution for the customers’ fast-changing habits and expectations. In addition, it allows brands to stand out by providing a rich user experience on the site.

Here are the powerful words by the MACH alliance Advisory Board Member Giles Smith, “In my view, composable architecture [which leverages MACH] lets you pick the right choices for your end user and your technical team, who work towards bringing together specialist technology over a generalist.

Gartner mentioned that one of the key strategic technology trends for 2021 would be combining “customer experience, employee experience, user experience, and multi-experience into a total experience meant to transform business outcomes.

To execute these outcomes, technology will have to evolve from monolithic architecture to a new approach called the Mach approach. MACH architecture has gained popularity big time in businesses.

What is The Headless Magento 2 Service?

The headless approach in e-commerce is prevalent. But are you wondering why Magento 2 merchants have to go headless? Let’s see some examples and understand this terminology better.

What is Headless Magento Commerce?

Headless is nothing but where the store frontend and backend are separated, and the data exchange occurs via API requests. It can be configured with the help of the e-commerce solution, the CMS, or a combination of both. The term used for the frontend part of the website is “the glass.”

Advantages of Headless Magento Commerce:

Flexibility – As the backend and front end are separated, the content on the website, which is the most vital part of selling a product or service, can be managed without affecting the backend business infrastructure. This feature helps to meet the changing demands of consumers and post promotions and offers on a timely basis.

Customization – The Headless Magento 2 Service allows you to experiment and customize the parts of the website without any hassle or errors.

Speed of the website – A headless website can run faster than standard websites because the changes needed in the front end aren’t the same as changes done in the back end. The changes are not related, thus providing flexibility and no interdependence.

The process sounds easy to implement and adapt to, but it also has some disadvantages.

Developing an agile, flexible, and faster eCommerce platform is complicated and requires many accurate and specific technical skills. For example, suppose you lose out on using specific APIS for creating headless Magento stores. In that case, you can lose some great display features with the loopholes reflecting on the storefront or while navigating.

Magneto IT Solutions

Magneto IT Solutions is one of the leading eCommerce development agencies providing the perfect alignment between design, customer experience, and technology services.

It is one of the best Headless Magento 2 Service providers to elevate your online business platform. They tailor-make unique solutions that engage the client’s target market with a clean and rewarding shopping experience.

They are a leading eCommerce development agency in the USA focused on custom solutions, including eCommerce development. Ecommerce strategy, eCommerce consulting, eCommerce UI/UX, eCommerce support, and CRO.

The eCommerce market is increasing around the globe. Every day, new companies in various industries try to outrun each other and take the lion’s share of their respective eCommerce markets. Magneto IT Solutions recently tied hands with commercetools to introduce MACH Architecture into their technology service bucket. Magneto IT Solutions as a Commercetools solutions integrator, focus on tailor-made eCommerce development to make the customers’ platform stand out.

Commerce Tool’s expertise in MACH technology

Commercetools has been the most vital ambassador of the MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) principles. Commerce Tool’s expertise in MACH was founded years before, with experience in frontend technologies, cloud computing models, and API development. The platform was designed to deliver a game-changing modern commerce solution.

Commercetools does not just focus on selling the specific features or solutions of MACH architecture. Still, they believe in understanding and prioritizing the client’s vision, striving for constant innovation, and implementing it in the MACH future. Where the business needs to see and measure the changes in real-time, Commercetools builds quick prototypes and implements the MACH architecture in minimal business areas.

Commercetools, with the help of emerging and content-rich experiences based on AR (Augmented Reality) and MACH pillars, help push innovation boundaries and give a result-oriented approach in all their MACH implementations. As a result, all the MACH implementations have delivered actionable results.

Mach implementation succeeds when the client’s vision and understanding are clearly understood, which is what they master. commercetools blend culturally and guide the clients throughout the process of switchover.

Migration Process Applied by Commercetools

• Building a migration roadmap

The three major areas that Commercetools focuses on for roadmap building: are UI/UX, data, and business logic. The essential milestones need to be listed, the deliverables need to be discussed, and a timeline needs to be decided.

• Extract the data, import the data, and verify it
• Customizing the Ecommerce platform

What Are The Four Pillars of MACH

• Micro Services – Microservices involve breaking down business functionalities into more minor services. The work of microservices is to update those specific elements, like adding new shopping cart features to the application without disrupting the entire application. With this, the updates would take place faster, and there will be minimum downtime, an enhanced experience for consumers, and more time to value your business. This is an advantage over the monolithic systems because the developers can have the flexibility and the benefit.
  
  In brief, microservices are independently deployed, developed, implemented, and managed.

• API First – This feature is the connective tissue of the MACH architecture. This feature brings sync between different applications or microservices to make all the separate pieces of code work in harmony. It facilitates many software components to interact with other products or services, thus simplifying the development process. APIs make the software development process easier and quicker and reduce the investments of effort and time.
  
  In the eyes of the software engineer, this development is considered the most vital base for building a robust application.

• Cloud Native SaaS – This refers to the software where the development and delivery are hosted on the Cloud. With the business constantly changing needs and demands, this model gives out-of-the-box solutions and doesn’t require frequent installation or maintenance since the updates and upgrades happen automatically without any customer effort, downtime, costs, or other fees. Hosting digital commerce on the cloud platform helps in scaling the business infinitely.
  
  Here everything is backed up in Cloud for the vendors to use immediately. In addition, with the Cloud Native SaaS feature, businesses can use commerce service as a whole or in parts without deploying and re-deploying solutions.

• Headless – The Headless eCommerce solution is the current trending term in the market. Headless helps in decoupling the frontend and backend architecture of eCommerce applications. This, in turn, helps the development teams to create tailored solutions or personalized UX experiences for online storefronts without disrupting the backend of eCommerce.
  
  The merchants get the free flow to add, remove or alter any specific service such as headless payments, headless CMS, loyalty programs, searches, or headless checkout. This brings in the opportunity for endless customization, speeding up the process to the market and enabling eCommerce brands to create a rich customer experience.

Top 10 Benefits of MACH over Monolith Approach

In the earlier times, a monolithic approach or system was the only option for an eCommerce platform. However, as time went by and the technology advanced, this one-size-fits-all approach in brands started having challenges and issues.

Companies struggling to meet the customer demands responded that they couldn’t deliver the end-user experience at speed with the current infrastructure. And only about 1/3 (35%) said their infrastructure keeps up with customer/end-user demands. 

MACH architecture was built when businesses needed robust control and agility to meet the needs of the customers and the requirements in the future.

Four kinds of technology that formed the MACH foundation – Microservices, API First, Cloud Native, and headless – truly provide an efficient and compatible environment for businesses to embrace technological innovation and adapt to the fast changes with less risk.

Nearly 9 out of 10 (94%) of c-level executives surveyed mentioned that they intend to increase MACH investment in their companies.

Let’s investigate the top 11 advantages of MACH eCommerce platforms and learn how valuable is MACH for your organization:

1. MACH Architectures are Versatile and Flexible

The advantage of MACH is that it supports each of those components or microservices in Ecommerce that are pluggable, scalable, replaceable, and that can be improvised through agile development to meet the business needs.

Businesses can use this feature or approach to build custom-based solutions rather than depending on what is available. 

With customer behaviors changing rapidly during or after a pandemic, businesses needed to run faster and adapt to the changes quickly. In this process, the firms who adopted the MACH architecture benefitted to the fullest, meeting the latest trends, technologies, touchpoints, etc.

2. Automated Upgradation

No technical need arises to roll out new features, updates, and upgrades with every technology release. Instead, in MACH architecture, all releases are automatically upgraded.

3. No Breakdown of The Platform

If any of the microservices break down, the chain isn’t affected, or no other feature in the eCommerce platform is affected or suffers a downtime. The other microservices still operate independently.

4. Cost-Efficiency

The businesses had to pay a hefty or subscription amount for the licensing purchases, along with the hefty annual maintenance charges and consultation fees.

The B2B E-commerce development agency has developed MACH technology as a viable B2B eCommerce solution that is highly flexible and supports composable commerce. With this Headless eCommerce solution, one can customize the solution and only pay for the tools that make the Brand look unique.

5. An Add-on to The Existing Technology

As MACH commerce provides the most advanced technology, businesses no longer must settle with any ordinary software. Furthermore, as MACH Architecture is composable, the existing technology can still be used along with the headless eCommerce solutions.

6. Reaching the Target Audience Faster

The MACH software allows companies to improve customer experiences from time to time by rolling out offers and discounts with the help of Headless eCommerce solutions. As a result, the backend processes and system updates which are time-consuming and complicated, are no longer to be performed. 

To be precise, Headless eCommerce Solutions helps brands to innovate at the time, location, and style they desire. MACH architecture enables the B2B eCommerce development agency to work on different aspects of the product without disrupting or interfering with other products, services, or parts. As a result, Mach software accelerates business growth and productivity and shortens the time to market.

7. No Time for a Rundown

With MACH technology introduced, websites have no time for rundown as their eCommerce solution is built with the cloud eCommerce solution. It allows them to scale up and down based on the website traffic, thus increasing the scalability.

Remember the significant shopping days like Black Friday, Mother’s Day, or Christmas? Every store or brand panics that their website will crash due to heavy traffic, will the speed go down, will the shoppers abandon their cart due to poor rate, or will the after-effect of the sale cost them millions of dollars?

With all these questions haunting them, when b2b eCommerce development agencies like Magneto and Commercetools help you implement the MACH technology, all the brand worries are washed away, and they automatically scale, especially when the traffic on their site increases. 

8. Creating Great Shopping Experiences

A MACH technology makes the shopping experience favorable to any device, channel, or platforms, such as a website, a mobile device, a software platform, a VR headset, a Jumbotron, or a voice-activated device. As the back end is the same and it layers multiple UI components, it brings remarkable brand experiences that force people to return to the site.

9. Customization as per The Region

Businesses utilize the B2B eCommerce solutions of Mach technology that allow each market to operate at their speed. Thus, these markets develop the features according to the region’s customers and their region-specific demands.

MACH technology allows digital retailers to customize the regional store as per the local choices, leaving the leading Brand unaffected and maintaining a consistent brand experience. In addition, Mach software allows brands to provide their partners, vendors, and staff personalized access to customize the front end of their websites.

10. Humanizing Customer Experience

The brands can fully leverage the personalized purchasing experience with MACH software, making their shopping easy, attractive, and engaging for them to return. The methods used here should be informed and targeted and have personalized promotions for every customer in your database to increase and scale conversions.

11. Accomplishing More Reduces Costs

Many people have the notion that MACH technology is costly and thus it will contribute to the significant expense of the total cost of ownership, but that’s not the case. When the brands talk about the Total Cost of Ownership, they often cite digital transformation as a significant expense. But their major expense is generally the annual maintenance cost and labor costs. MACH upgrade’s minimal fees decrease the long-term expenses, thus allowing the business to accomplish more at a lower price.

Disadvantages of MACH Architecture

• Complex Architecture – Implementing the MACH software requires a highly experienced technical team to understand and maintain the microservice-based architecture. The team should be equipped to implement the changes or create custom services with this technology.

• Increased overheads – Hiring a special technical team to implement this technology can increase expenses. When the software is scalable and easier to bring in more leads, it’s essential to have such a technically qualified team to make the platform tech savvy and maintain its architecture.

• Quality of API – API first does not mean the API is well designed or created equally. Each API needs a deeper dive and evaluation by the engineering team for successful implementation.

Best Brand Implementing the MACH Technology

The best company we have come across to date that has implemented the MACH technology from the early times is Amazon. Amazon started using state-of-the-art technology with a great transition from a monolith approach to microservices. In Feb 2020, Amazon stood as the most valuable corporation with a market capitalization of $941.19 billion. And this is all because of their early shift and adoption of MACH software.

Amazon also takes advantage of headless commerce because of separate frontend and backend technology. They deploy code every 11.7 seconds without disrupting any of their services.

The second-best example is Uber.

Uber shifted from a monolith platform to cloud-based microservices. The B2B eCommerce development agency then created B2b eCommerce solutions with the help of MACH technology. They created microservices for passenger management, travel management, and many more. All their microservices are connected via APIs.

To Sum Up!

MACH Architecture looks pretty similar to Service-Oriented Architecture. Still, it simultaneously showcases the modern approach with the many new technologies that came up throughout the 2010s, including the Cloud (SaaS), API-first products, and headless microservices.

Like the pandemic becoming the new standard, MACH architecture with B2B commerce solutions is also the new normal for businesses looking to stand out in the competitive, fast-moving marketplace. MACH architecture calls for more agility and proactiveness in digital strategies instead of making changes on a slower timescale with a monolithic architecture.