MACH Alliance Bolsters Commitment to Buyers, Providing Clarity Amidst Shifting Market Dynamics

In a post published on the MACH Alliance website this morning, Jon Panella – Group Vice President at Publicis Sapient and a MACH Alliance Chairperson – voiced the advocacy group's unwavering focus on the buyer. 

The short but poignant prose reinforced the MACH Alliance's commitment to clarity and its critical role in guiding enterprises through the complexities of an ever-changing market landscape. 

The post explicitly addresses the rise of composable and MACH architectural standards – and how many big industry players have “taken notice.” Some of these organizations have realigned their strategies and positioned intently around composability while others have acquired MACH startups, all in an effort to capitalize on the hype and awareness of this growing sector. 

As Panella pointed out, this is a positive testament to MACH's impact on the market. At the same time, he clarified that the organization's strict certification criteria apply to companies, not products – a long-standing commitment that underscores a vendor's claim to a more holistic MACH accreditation. 

According to the post, navigating the mixed marketing messages appears to be a key pain point for buyers. In a recent letter published on social media, the Alliance openly challenged vendors claiming to be MACH to apply for certification, noting the confusion these claims create for buyers. 

To help alleviate the burden and bring more clarity to the chaos, the Alliance is committing to a research sprint over the coming months. The goal: explore ways to improve the buyer's experience when navigating these complexities, and maintain the steadfast commitment to guidance. 

In the post, Panella also encourages readers to share their insights as part of the research initiative. The results will be published in March of 2024. 

Read the MACH Alliance post

You can read John Panella's complete post below or on the MACH Alliance website.

With the MACH Alliance set to surpass 100 corporate members this year, and with MACH now decidedly “the standard,” the MACH Alliance is undertaking a wide-ranging and thorough initiative to explore what membership means in the coming years. We play a leading role in creating clear guidance for enterprises, delineating MACH technologies that foster future-proofing and vendor independence from those that don’t. That guidance is important for buyers given the rapidly shifting dynamics of the technology landscape over the past three and a half years.

The rise of Composable technology and MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless) as an architectural standard more specifically, has not gone unnoticed by big players in the industry. They are following suit, and we can not be more pleased about that. They have made pivots to their strategies and product portfolios in this direction by rearchitecting products, by acquiring MACH startups etc. This is an amazing testament to MACH as a vision for the future — a future that empowers businesses with flexibility, control, and most importantly, future-proof technology that enables growth and differentiation. That has always been the goal of the MACH Alliance and is one we hold ourselves to every day.

Our strict MACH Certification criteria are in place to uphold this promise to the market, so that the responsibility of navigating vendor marketing claims is not a burden to the buyer. The reason we certify companies, not products has always been and remains that established vendors with one product in their portfolio that qualifies, may claim MACH credentials across the board. That would be detrimental to the clarity we are here to secure. While that reasoning remains sound, our focus is on the buyers, and we want them to understand what they're investing in and to ensure that their chosen solutions meet the high standards set by the MACH Alliance. Providing the best and comprehensive guidance for buyers has been and will be our endeavor always.

So today, I am confirming our commitment to researching improved ways to help the buyer best in navigating the landscape. We will dedicate substantial time over the next few months to that work and communicate our findings in March. We believe that as MACH grows and evolves, so too will its value as an industry standard, and with that, the quality that we need to deliver and the scrutiny we are under.

If you feel you can provide useful insights for our research, please get in touch at info@machalliance.com with the subject line: Research Guidance. We'd love to hear from you! We know we owe the buyer clear guidance and that is what we are set out to do.