Since 2022, our status as a best-in-class retail software vendor has been recognized and certified by the prestigious MACH Alliance. Sitoo has now been issued the 2023 certification badge.
The MACH Alliance is an organization that promotes the use of open and best-of-breed enterprise technology ecosystems. It aims to provide the necessary standards and capabilities for different systems to communicate with each other and solve the software puzzle in the retail industry.
The MACH mindset emphasizes the freedom to choose the technology solutions that best suit one’s needs, rather than being locked into a single proprietary system. It’s like being able to pick and choose the box of candy that you want at any time, rather than being restricted to a pre-packaged set.
As far as we’re concerned, being part of the MACH Alliance is a quality stamp and one we’re delighted to receive. Innovation, a pioneering approach, and pushing boundaries of what’s possible with retail technology sit at the heart of everything we do – and this is why MACH matters to us.
What is the MACH Alliance?
The MACH Alliance, a not-for-profit industry body that advocates open and best-of-breed enterprise technology ecosystems, was only founded in June 2020 but has already been referred to by leading global market research company, Forrester, as ‘the coolest tech in town club.’ Membership approval is now seen as a gold standard for retail tech companies to secure.
As the MACH Alliance explains on its website, MACH stands for:
M – Microservices: Individual pieces of business functionality that are independently developed,
deployed, and managed.
A – API first: All functionality is exposed through an API.
C – Cloud-native SaaS: that leverages the cloud, beyond storage and hosting, including elastic scaling and automatically updating.
H – Headless: Front-end presentation is decoupled from back-end logic and channel, programming language, and is framework agnostic.
In essence, MACH Certification gives enterprises confidence they are choosing best-in-class vendors that can deliver future-proof technology.
MACH architecture is a prerequisite for experimentation, innovation, and finding out what works for your business. That’s one of the main purposes of having a loosely coupled system and it makes it much easier to find the right setup and fit that best serves your customers, store associates, and your business.”
– Jörgen Ingelström, Chief Strategist, Sitoo
What MACH does is ensure that the SaaS companies you’re working with are actually delivering what they say they’re going to deliver on from an architecture perspective – and this means they can talk to all the other pieces of software within the Alliance. For example, to be part of the MACH Alliance a software vendor has to actually be microservices-first and not a big, monolithic system with an API bolted on to it.
Why the MACH Alliance matters to us and our customers
We’re passionate forward thinkers. We lead by inspiring others around us, knowing that excitement drives innovation. We dare to dream big and act brave, and by turning curiosity into knowledge and knowledge into innovation we push the limits of what’s possible with retail tech.
The MACH Alliance brings together tried, trusted, and proven software vendors that are cloud-native, API-based and built for the current and future needs of retailers. The MACH Alliance is the seal of approval for these vendors that retailers know they can trust.
MACH technology gives retailers efficient deployment and automated updates. It ensures easy integration between services and systems. It gives retailers elasticity, automated scaling and only one single version of the software. Power, flexibility and composability are then in the retailers hands. They can create an ecosystem based around what they need and how they want to run their business.
And it means retailers can innovate, experiment, be agile and nimble, and deliver great experiences across every single touchpoint.
To break the benefits in the MACH acronym down:
Microservices result in flexibility, efficient deployment and faster updates.
API-first ensures the APIs are efficient, reliable and easy-to-use.
Cloud-native SaaS means auto scaling, elasticity, flexibility and automated updates.
Headless Commerce eliminates all cross-channel friction related to payments, campaigns and order data.
This is the future of retail and this is why MACH is so important to the industry.
Stepping into the future of retail with the MACH Alliance
In line with MACH Alliance’s mission, we’re very much about tearing down barriers, encouraging retailers to question what they know about retail technology and helping them embrace the enormous possibilities of composable best-of-breed technology.
The software retailers choose – whether it’s a CRM, eCom, footfall counter or a Unified Commerce Platform anchored by Point of Sale (POS) – and their IT architecture, play essential roles in helping them deliver the kind of experiences their customers desire.
Membership of the MACH Alliance gives our customers – and future customers – an additional level of assurance that we are the best of the best and firmly committed to an API-first, open, cloud-native approach to our development.
Being part of the MACH Alliance is a quality stamp. Innovation, a pioneering approach, and pushing boundaries of what’s possible with retail technology sit at the heart of everything we do. We truly ARE all that MACH stands for: Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless and that’s why we joined.
If you want to learn more about our approach to retail and how it can benefit your business, we’d love to talk to you.
