What's the MACH vibe in 2025? Here are 3 predictions (and more)

I’ve always loved Johnny Carson’s “Carnac the Magnificent.” 

Yeah, I'm dating myself with this admission, but I’ll hide behind an innocent fanboy affectation for kitsch Tonight Show sketches that were well before my time. I mean, maybe not “well,” but I'll take what I can get.

If you’re not familiar with the act, Carson would don this iconic feathered turban and cape while holding a hermetically sealed #10 envelope to his head. He would then conjure an answer to the question hiding within – and every revelation was comedy gold. 

Carnac was a fortune-telling fixture for over two decades on late-night TV and still has a place in the cultural zeitgeist. You can check out some of his psychic exploits here:

As humans, we’re collectively fascinated with knowing the unknown. Of seeing the future by reading the tea leaves. And why not? Uncertainty is painful. Having some framework for what’s ahead is, to say the least, comforting. 

While most oracles have proven less than reliable, the best sources have always been wise people with a strong grasp of the past and the present. Sages that might not wear a turban and cape, or even consult a crystal ball – but are more equipped to interpret the tarot cards than most.

In what has become an annual tradition, I connected with Casper Rasmussen, Group SVP, Technology at Valtech – a leading global agency that focuses on digital and business transformation. As always, he generously channeled a few predictions for 2025, specifically through the lens of composability. 

Now serving in his second term as president of the MACH Alliance, I can’t think of a better-equipped, Carnac-level prognosticator of what’s to come. You can peruse his prescience from last year when he saw the seeds of MACH expanding into other industries, which we now see blossoming.

At “The Experience Innovation Company,” Casper is doing some astounding things to help brands achieve the exceptional and maximize their potential. Founded in 1993, Valtech boasts over 6,000 people with diverse skill sets in 63 offices in 25 countries. To be in a leadership role at this expansive organization is no small accomplishment, and it’s one of the key reasons why he’s an authority on where things are headed. 

So what’s in the envelope for 2025? Let’s find out what our own “Carnac the Magnificent” has to say.

Time traveling through 2024 in the MACH machine

Before we move forward, let’s take a quick look back at some of the notable accomplishments of the MACH movement in 2024. It was a busy year with some significant milestones. 

In January, the Alliance published its first annual report, showcasing its industry impact and plans for the year ahead. The report chronicled the aggressive growth arc in 2023, which saw membership rise above 100. In addition to describing the evolution of the organization’s admissions practices and development of education programs, the annual report provided deeper transparency into the Alliance’s finances.

There was also a revelatory study on the expansion of support and ROI for MACH, which was released in March. Along with signals around leadership buy-in at the top of the enterprise, the survey also indicated that the U.S. was pulling ahead of Europe in the overall pace of MACH adoption. This was viewed as positive trend data, opening up a larger addressable market for composable solutions.

One of the major shifts this year – and perhaps the most contentious and publicly debated – was the expansion of the MACH certification scope. Based on lengthy research from the previous year, the Alliance announced that it was now accepting applications for independent offerings within larger vendors (think Segment as a wholly-owned yet separate entity under Twilio).

This news spurred some “conversation” in the market, given the historically firm ethos regarding monolithic systems. But the organization provided clear guidelines on how products could meet the certification benchmarks if they are actively branded, offered, and sold separately. It marked a significant change, but one that will ultimately expand choice for buyers. 

MACH THREE in New York City brought the Alliance’s signature event to U.S. soil for the first time, reflecting the continued rise of MACH growth and adoption in North America. Global brands like IKEA, MARS, and Mattel were in tow, sharing the innovative digital experiences they’ve created using MACH architectures and the many benefits and challenges of embracing digital transformation with a composable strategy. 

BTW: Clarks and Kraft-Heinz took home top honors in the annual Impact Awards, for which I served as a judge for the second year. I can personally attest that the scope of these projects is beyond impressive.

In June, J.P. Morgan joined the Alliance, reaffirming Casper’s prediction that other industry segments would join the MACH chorus. As a Supporter member, the iconic banking and investment trailblazer is helping to elevate thought leadership and educate companies on the role of composable technology in financial services, with the goal of delivering more innovative digital experiences to both clients and end users.

The “Women in MACH” program continued to drive awareness for diversity in tech with the introduction of a new DEIB Scoring Tool. At a time when political and social attitudes are creating friction for these initiatives, the MACH Alliance continues to invest in the evolution of these platforms, helping its member organizations – and the market at large – to identify areas where “belonging” can be enhanced to improve human potential and business outcomes.

Just as the Alliance completed its elections of a new board – including the addition of Dylan Valade to lead its rideMACH educational initiative, and Bob Howland to head the executive advisory board – there was the birth of a new logo. In October, the Alliance introduced a refreshed identity, synthesizing years of maturity into a more refined mark that departs from its “rebellious” roots to a more “buttoned up” market authority.  

So what’s ahead in 2025 for MACH (and more)?

A lot. But Carnac – er, Casper – has boiled it down to three things that could have the biggest impact on MACH and the broader market. 

That said, it’s important to inject some context around a central theme for all three of these predictions: economics. We’ve heard this word repeatedly throughout the year as vendors, agencies, and customers faced tight budgets and general uncertainty in several areas. 

This palpable drag was felt across the market, compounded by a challenging social and political climate and a contentious U.S. Presidential election with far-reaching implications. In a recent interview with Hero Digital, I touched on some of the pain that agencies are experiencing. 

“Much of this is a reflection of the macroeconomics and the status quo of the industry right now, where getting value for money matters more than ever,” he explained.

In his mind, this is all about raising the floor, but also lifting the ceiling – all at once. In the wake of the COVID-induced race to digital transformation, there was so much capital at hand that companies could fundamentally push for innovation without affecting the cost of doing business.

AI is also a common thread in each of these predictions. That’s not a huge shocker, but how it relates to MACH and the advantages it brings to composable strategies is a key part of the success equation. 

Put on your turban. Here’s the first prediction… 

1. Businesses will invest in cost optimization and AI to fuel innovation

The general mantra is clear: lower the cost of doing business. As Casper was already alluding to, there will be a broader focus on reducing the bottom line as we drive into 2025. That might seem obvious to many of us, but he links it to a couple of concepts that are vitally important.

“We’re already seeing a heightened push for optimization, smarter enterprises, more commercial excellence than ever before to unlock the investments in innovation and customer experience,” he said. This is also directly manifesting in the automation realm as businesses look to reduce costs.

“Now they're pushing harder to drive consolidation in business processes with automation and take human intervention and the human capital out of the equation. This will unlock capital and investment to actually do more innovation, more customer experience, more digital services, product development, and so on.”

A core part of the optimization vector is the role of interoperability. As Casper describes it, decentralized organizations have operated in a multitude of different ways up to now, with separate brands or portfolios of brands, or even different business units. Now, we’re seeing a push toward standardization to achieve optimization.

“This is where it comes back to the Alliance for process standardization,” he said. “It also highlights the need for standards of integration between systems, so this is specifically where interoperability fits in.”

In terms of the outlook, we can expect a scaling of this business process standardization, accompanied by greater automation and intelligence-first decision-making. AI will be a key component in all of these areas, helping to enhance performance and further stimulate automation and insights. 

These forces will lead to the adoption of more concrete standards that ensure people, processes, and technologies can integrate, interoperate, and co-exist across the full enterprise stack – which, when paired together, will streamline costs.

“We believe that interoperability fits very well into this push for smarter enterprises, and it will also have that positive effect of furthering the innovation agenda,” Casper said. “The effect of optimization basically accelerates digital innovation – and is simply driven by that macroeconomic situation and circumstance that companies find themselves in.”

2. AI will make everyone a developer

Will it? Casper thinks so.

“It goes back to this notion that digital acceleration is now available to most, if not every enterprise,” he said. “AI can make any marketer a developer themselves, because at the tip of your hat with a simple prompt, you can fundamentally go from having a simple spec to having a working prototype of a product. You don't need to be a software engineer to create software anymore.”

OK, that might sound like a stretch to some. We certainly have co-pilots, prototyping tools, and other resources to help accelerate code creation. But functional software as an output? Casper seems confident that’s going to happen in a meaningful way, where a product manager or even a marketer can deliver their spec as working code with a great experience design – transforming how teams create digital experiences and innovate.

The other net benefit of AI democratizing development is speed to market. The pace is reaching extraordinary levels, and will continue to explode. But is that good? As Casper explained, AI and MACH are helping to improve the outcomes in profound ways. 

“This is not about having zero guardrails. I think it's really about going in and challenging what to expect from the machine versus the human, and how to find the interplay that drives maximum efficiency. It means engineering is not software engineering anymore – it's ‘value engineering.'”

“The speed to market requirements that we saw three years ago from enterprises that were measured in weeks,” he said. “Now we're starting to talk about speed to market in days. The introduction of AI has really challenged the status quo of what good speed to market looks like. So the pace of innovation has not just increased, it has exponentially increased. And we believe that only at the intersection of AI and MACH is where you can unlock the true speed of innovation to outpace your competitors even further than we did two or three years ago.”

There are clear applications where this happening already, specifically with AI-powered search and generative technologies. The fact that software and product development are now becoming more readily available also means digital acceleration is actually possible for anyone.

While AI is driving this potential, Casper was quick to point out that it’s not about handing over the keys to the machine and letting it run the whole show. 

“We believe is that there needs to be a human in the loop, meaning this is not about full AI autonomy,” he reflected. “This is not about having zero guardrails. I think it's really about going in and challenging what to expect from the machine versus the human, and how to find the interplay that drives maximum efficiency. It means engineering is not software engineering anymore – it's ‘value engineering.'”

In this “new normal,” MACH might just be uniquely positioned to help support a stronger competitive posture. With composability, openness, and incrementality as first-class citizens, MACH with AI can help deliver unparalleled productivity boosts – and make everyone a potential developer.

3. Security and data privacy will be enhanced without impacting innovation

As the frequency of DDoS attacks, corporate hacks, and private data leaks onto the Dark Web increases, the volume around security is getting louder and louder. 

With the proliferation of AI and data-driven personalization, robust privacy measures will become essential for every enterprise. As such, Casper believes we might see new standards or frameworks designed specifically to ensure compliance and transparency in MACH environments. 

The evolving policy landscapes in Europe and the U.S. are already reflecting a more conservative “mood” (consider the depth and reach of the EU AI Act). That might be good for heading off potential problems, but will these measures have unintended consequences?

“These privacy and AI acts are becoming real regulation and legislation, and they could put a damper on innovation,” Casper remarked. “Especially if businesses go into a conservative mindset around ‘what if,’ or ‘are we compliant’ and start becoming more risk averse.” 

As Casper described it, the implementation of these sweeping bills needs to be embraced by enterprises while ensuring that they don't limit their ability to innovate. That means understanding and complying with the frameworks and the standards that are being set while still pushing new thinking and ideas. One way to achieve this is through an open mindset.

“We believe is that a market approach – based on the principles of being open – allows you to introduce compliance, data privacy, and security more seamlessly into your architecture, more so than if you're working in a closed, outsourced platform-minded approach,” he said. “Instead of being a process someone needs to enforce, why can’t security be something you can observe, like the health across an architecture? You have to fundamentally bake compliance into the way you set up and execute your architecture, instead of forcing it in a more reactive way.”

In this new digital frontier of strict policies, a security or data privacy breach can have profound consequences for a business – both legally and financially. As such, enterprises will prioritize their protection and market viability, and that requires full transparency and control of their data access, data residency, data sharing, and intellectual property. At the same time, there’s no appetite to compromise on speed to market and digital innovation. 

To Casper’s point, composable, open, and fully autonomous technology environments are the only way to realize innovation while managing ethical business concerns. To get there in 2025, the observability he invoked will be essential.

“Transparency and observability in technology is key if you start to face regulatory and legislative change, because you want to be able to fundamentally control and validate the patterns,” he said. “It’s like believing in observability as a way to operate. I think it's important for navigating this continued push for compliance, security, and privacy.”

Raising the MACH I.Q.

Aside from these three areas of predicted focus, the Alliance is maintaining a stalwart commitment to education in 2025. This year, the rideMACH program – its robust eLearning platform – grew by leaps and bounds, tripling its enrollment in the last six months. Given the demand, it stands to reason that the program will continue to expand.

This investment in knowledge is becoming a much bigger imperative, and the opportunities for high-touch training are happening in a big way – with really big brands.

“Right now, we are planning skills enablement for a multi-billion dollar FinTech technology company, specifically to help educate and promote MACH within their product management practice,” Casper shared. “This is all about internal talent development and shifting the hearts and minds of internal folks that are steering the execution of their own product development. We’re partnering up hand in hand with technology companies to further the market in emerging categories like financial technology.”

That last bit is key. As Casper mentioned earlier, the Alliance has made progress in deepening its reach across other industries – but also to other layers of the technology stack.

“Historically, we've been very well-represented within content management, search, e-commerce, and some of the higher-up technology components,” he said. “Now, we're starting to move down stack towards the more native tools that are business process and business application-oriented. So that's also an avenue of expansion we're still pursuing, and something that we've started to really unlock for ourselves because of the intake and the search of applicants, and also new members in those types of technology categories.”

What about the evolving definition of “composability”?

Perhaps even Carnac would struggle with this one, but I had to ask: what’s up with that pesky composability word? And how is the MACH Alliance continuing to stand its ground when so many DXPs and other platforms are weaving “composable” into their lexicon?

Casper offered a great summation that reinforces the core tenets of MACH’s view while validating the positive attributes of other platforms that are embracing a composable posture.

“We fully support the fact that they are [composable] and can claim composability,” he said. “But what we always talk about is the size of the components or the granularity of what you are composing. We're also advocating for the choice of opting out from certain products or offerings within a potential pre-composed solution from a single vendor. And I think that's really the litmus test on the degree of composability that some of these [vendors] have achieved.”

When it comes to understanding the dividing lines between what is or isn’t MACH-worthy, there’s been some intestinal discomfort. Over the last few years, I’ve heard from numerous vendors who have had their MACH applications declined, several taking to the open airwaves of social media to air their grievances. 

"At the end of the day, we're not looking for the entire world to be certified. That would make it counterintuitive by its definition. We're clarifying what we believe is the right choice for enterprise companies, and that safe space is protected by the guardrails of our criteria – and we stand strong by that.”

“We hear a lot about certifications going wrong, where the outcome is different than what the one applying expected,” Casper said. “We see it as a testimony to the fact that our criteria and certification actually work. At the end of the day, we're not looking for the entire world to be certified. That would make it counterintuitive by its definition. We're clarifying what we believe is the right choice for enterprise companies, and that safe space is protected by the guardrails of our criteria – and we stand strong by that.”

Sidestepping the challenges associated with approving or denying applicants (over 50% are not admitted on their first attempt), the goal for any use case – in Casper’s words – is to achieve a “well-balanced architecture,” one where they can swap out any of their components without creating a ripple effect or compromising the well-being or fully functioning nature of a solution. And while pre-composed solutions have a place in the market, he believes that the need for this level of flexibility is foundational.   

“There’s this concept of whether you have choice when you outgrow the pre-composition that you might have started your transformation journey with,” he explained. “But at the same time, the MACH Alliance also recognizes the value of portfolio companies. They can be pre-composed and have some degree of built-in interoperability, but it can't exclude you from actually starting to augment or compose your own up against it. That's really the line that we want to make sure the market isn't stepping across, because then we're starting to compromise on the flexibility and the choice the market actually needs.”

New year, new possibilities

Recently, Mike Lowndes – an industry analyst at Gartner – shared some new research that reflects what he calls the “MACH-lash,” or when composable goes wrong. We’ve known for a long time that the journey to composability is replete with challenges, making it the domain of digitally mature enterprises. This phenomenon of “composable regret” is real, but as he points out, there are things organizations can do to be prepared for things like composable commerce.

As we stand at the precipice of 2025, preparation is on everyone’s mind. Are you ready for what’s next? Do you have the right tools, resources, and mindset to face uncertainty and thrive in an evolving digital economy?

While the MACH Alliance has struggled with its own challenges, it continues to be a lighthouse in the choppy seas of composability. Its fervent commitment to transparency and education is serving an important role in shaping the composable movement, and buyers are increasingly expressing their interest in MACH-certified software when building their future stacks. Add to that the expansion of market adoption in the U.S., and MACH is poised for growth in the year ahead.

As Casper telegraphed, the impact of AI can’t be understated. Will it make everyone a developer? Perhaps. But regardless of where it manifests its impact, professionals and organizations need to embrace AI if they want to remain competitive. Ultimately, it all comes down to value, and how these new technologies are enabling people to realize their potential.

“Value needs to be in every single minute, every single second of your day,” he said.

I predict that Carnac would agree. 

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