A solution to the MACH Alliance conundrum – let’s go MAH
16 Mar 2023
5 mins
You are probably aware that over the last several years the Web Content Management System (CMS) and Digital Experience (DX) market has bifurcated into two competing camps. On one side you have the DXP Suite vendors led by Adobe, Sitecore, CrownPeak, Optimizely, etc. And then on the other side are vendors advocating for a best-of-breed approach, some of whom have joined forces as the MACH Alliance (Microservices, APIs, Cloud-Native SaaS, Headless).
Lock-in
One of the key arguments against a suite-based approach is that it leads to an over-reliance on a single vendor to deliver cutting-edge technology across a variety of domains over time. Many customers that have invested in suite-based solutions find that the vendor’s portfolios of technology are actually quite uneven when it comes to capabilities: e-commerce might be great, but analytics and campaign management, not so much. It’s just not realistic to expect a single vendor to be market leading in multiple different technology areas.
Many customers also find themselves “locked in” to the full digital experience suite from a vendor and unable to easily replace individual components that are not meeting their needs. A clear advantage of a composable multi-vendor approach is that if a particular component is no longer getting the job done the customer can simply replace that component with a better provider. This is the future-proofing power of a modular architecture.
MACH peculiarities
To be clear, we at Tridion believe in a CMS approach that is best-of-breed, microservices-based, composable, headless, and API-first. There is no question that this puts us very much in sympathy with the MACH Alliance group of companies, many of whom we integrate with today. However, the MACH Alliance is not without its peculiarities. Vendors accepted into the Alliance must adhere to a long and restrictive set of requirements, some of which are not relevant to delivering business value for customers. One key example of this is around allowable software deployment models.
A mandatory requirement to gain admittance to the MACH Alliance is that a member vendor must utilize multi-tenant SaaS as the ONLY available deployment model. Furthermore, if the applicant vendor has any products in their entire portfolio that are not multi-tenant SaaS then they are barred from the Alliance.
Customer-first
So as a customer, what are you to do if you want all the goodness of a headless, API-first, composable CMS architecture, but you want to run it on-premises? Or in your own cloud, or have it managed and hosted for you in the cloud, but as a single tenant instance?
A key tenet of a composable architecture is that building blocks can (and should!) be treated as black boxes. Nothing in a single-tenant cloud deployment voids this relationship. In addition, as content management systems are moving from managing websites into full-fledged enterprise content hubs, there are some very real benefits:
- Data Sovereignty – Where content is stored and how information complies with local regulations can be an issue
- Access to Systems – Some organizations have privacy and compliance requirements around which individuals are allowed to even touch systems that contain sensitive information
- Reduced Risk – An insidious risk with multi-tenant SaaS is a data bleed issue that can occur when a shared database is used
- Change Management – No systems are updated without conferring with clients
- Opportunities for Customization – Customizations that deliver key business value are available when standard microservice-based solutions are not available
There are plenty of companies that have compulsory requirements, perhaps because they are in regulated sectors or they have high security requirements, therefore multi-tenant doesn’t fit their business. Should they not be able to adopt all of the other advantages of the MACH approach?
Flexibility, not constraints
As you might guess, at Tridion we don’t see the need to discriminate based on deployment models, and that’s why we offer a wide range of options that still deliver the power of a headless architecture, along with the ability to connect seamlessly to other best-of-breed solutions via APIs. Whether on-premises, or in the cloud, it’s the customer’s choice. There’s no need to be forced into technology tradeoffs that don’t make sense for your business.
Just to share some of the MACH Alliance membership requirements that we at Tridion don’t think are relevant when it comes to delivering real value to customers:
- At least three different microservices that each have their own domain
- Each with their own datastore
- Able to release each application independently
- Internally, APIs built first; then implementation happens
- Multi-tenant native SaaS (single instance of application can service many different users)
- No platform upgrades that customers must apply (hands-free/transparent to customers); your product isn’t versioned
- Your entire company product(s) offering/ portfolio is 100% MACH compliant
What do any of these have to do with the real goal which is enabling customers to easily compose a best-of-breed solution mix?
Let’s go MAH
The MACH Alliance might say that we are trying to cherry-pick the aspects of MACH that fit our model, that we are more MAH than MACH. Our answer is that MAH is actually a great option for many companies looking for a CMS, and it delivers on the real business value behind a best of breed, composable, headless, and API-first approach. So at Tridion, we’ll gladly be charter members of the MAH Alliance.
For more information, visit our Tridion page.
Alex Abey
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