💭 MACH: Microservices, API-First, Cloud-Native, Headless | XS' Issue #6
Hey there 👋, from the 6th issue of Experience Stack Newsletter!
Welcome to the new subscribers 🤩 Every day there are new members joining Experience Stack and I’m thrilled to see this. Looking forward to meeting you all!
And, if you think your friends or colleagues might enjoy reading this newsletter, feel free to forward it to them 🤗
A couple of issues back, I’ve talked about composable movement and in this week’s issue, I’ll be talking about MACH architecture:
what MACH is
what is the meaning of these four letters: MACH
why it is trending and why should you care about this trend
M A C H
Let’s start with what MACH stands for:
Microservices → Microservices is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of services that are independently developed, deployed, and managed.
API-First → The API-first approach refers to a strategy in software development where it allows various applications to communicate with one another.
Cloud-Native → Cloud-native architecture is a design methodology that utilizes cloud services to allow dynamic and agile application development techniques that take a modular approach for building, running, and updating software through a suite of cloud-based microservices versus a monolithic.
Headless → Headless is a specialization of decoupled architecture, in which the presentation layer of an application is separated from backend services.
We understand the meaning of MACH. However, the meaning of MACH technology is beyond these for letters.
Then, why should we care about it and why it’s trending?
There's no such thing as an all-in-one platform when it comes to business. This is where MACH technology comes into play.
MACH technologies enable you to create modular technology stacks. Having an architecture that is pluggable, scalable, and replaceable, means it can be continuously improved without harming other components.
Let’s suppose you want to create an omnichannel commerce experience for your customers. To achieve this you need different solutions that work seamlessly with each other from content sources to data sources, analytics to personalization solutions, etc. When you use MACH technologies to have this experience, your typical tech stack will look like this:
The bottom line, at its core, MACH solutions ensure composability, scalability, and future-proof architecture by following their self-definition.
You can learn more about MACH from these resources:
MACH Alliance | Amplience — amplience.com Learn how a microservices, API-first, cloud-native, headless architecture is the future for commerce brands who want to create best-in-class customer experiences.
MACH Is Here to Shake Up the Martech World — www.cmswire.com Just as the cloud revolution changed the landscape in the early 2000s, a new form of change is taking place: the MACH revolution.
Rounding Up the Stack
Blog Posts
Each week, we check tens of blog posts (if not more than a hundred) to deliver you the best articles written from the last week. These are the articles from last week that we enjoyed reading and caught our attention:
Headless Commerce + Headless CMS: The Perfect Combination?
Today’s modern commerce platforms go beyond simply decoupling the front end to enable CMS-driven commerce to embrace multi-touchpoint extensibility and support any touchpoint - and to make life easier for developers:
Headless Commerce + Headless CMS: The Perfect Combination? — www.elasticpath.com
Gamification: Loyalty and Messaging Tips to Level Up Your Customer Engagement
While it’s easy to grasp the basic concepts behind gamification and clear to see how it can open the door to innovative promotional campaigns, it’s not a process that can be entered into lightly:
Gamification: Loyalty and Messaging Tips to Level Up Your Customer Engagement - Iterable — iterable.com
Top 5 Internal Site Search Best Practices
With the pandemic enabling a historic and likely permanent shift in consumer behavior to online and mobile digital channels, internal site search continues to gain importance:
Top 5 Internal Site Search Best Practices | Constructor.io — constructor.io
Headless Architecture: The 42 Most Popular Technologies in 2022
To dig a little deeper, the author analyzed the current trends regarding the Jamstack tech stack and defined what are the most popular headless technologies:
Headless Architecture: The 42 Most Popular Technologies in 2022 — naturaily.com
A Deep Dive on a Customer Experience Priority: Customer Understanding
Customer understanding is all about learning everything you need to know about your customers in order to deliver the experience they expect going forward:
A Deep Dive on a Customer Experience Priority: Customer Understanding — www.cmswire.com
Podcasts
The Headless Marketing Show
On-Page Personalization Takes Technology and Know-How
In this episode, host Alex Belding and Andy Kaiser from Ninetailed discuss all things personalization.
If you have been thinking about personalized experiences for your website and other digital experiences this episode is for you!
CX Decoded
Scott Brinker on Rise of Low- and No-Code in Marketing and Customer Experience
Gartner estimated that enterprise low-code application platforms will be 65% of all app creations within the next five years, and the worldwide low-code development technologies market was projected to total $13.8 billion in 2021, an increase of 22.6% from 2020.
CX Files
In this episode, Shira, VP of Global Support at Checkmarx, talks about cybersecurity, data protection, and how CX companies can protect important customer data.
The Customer Experience Podcast
Building a Customer-Centric Organization
Today’s guest is Sam Jacobs. Sam is the host of The Sales Hacker Podcast and he dives into his thoughts about company values and about listening to your customers so you can do what’s best for them. He feels strongly that brands should have a clear sense of who they are, why they exist, and why they’re trying to do what they do.
Videos and Webinars
Contentful
Agile Ecommerce: Putting Content and Customers at the Heart of Experiences
How do customers experience commerce today, and what opportunities are organizations missing out on when they stay focused on individual channels? Hear from Holden Bale, Head of Commerce at Huge, on why only a holistic approach to storytelling across channels will keep brands relevant — and how to structure a tech stack and organization to meet the challenge.
Going Headless with John
What Is Cloud-Native in MACH Architecture
Cloud-Native is a central tenant of MACH architecture but what does it mean to be could-native in this context and how can we navigate the complex technology cloudscape.
Upcoming Events & Webinars
CMS Wire - Translating CX Value into the C-Suite’s Language
🛠 In this webinar you'll learn:
The “Solve for X” approach to customer experience
The areas where you can make an impact that speaks to executives
How to effectively convey the customer perspective beyond the numbers
🗓 Tuesday, February 15 at 11 am PT / 2 pm ET / 8 pm CET
WEBINAR: Translating CX Value into the C-Suite’s Language — www-cmswire.simplermedia.com
Headless Creator - How Personalization and A/B Testing Work Together
🛠 In this lesson on personalization, you are going to focus on experimentation, A/B testing, and how they work together. Presenters will touch upon ROI, scaling, and the importance of data in experimentation.
🗓 Monday, February 21 at 7.30 am PT / 10.30 am ET / 16.30 CET
How Personalization and A/B Testing Work Together — www.headlesscreator.com
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That’s it from our side.
Hope you’ll enjoy the content presented above.
Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or feedback. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us by replying to one of the emails or emailing directly to me via esat@experiencestack.co
And, if you think your friends or colleagues might enjoy reading this newsletter, feel free to forward it to them 🤗
Till next time 😉