There’s a new acronym in town, and this one is well worth paying attention to. The definition of MACH architecture is:

M for Microservices. This means that the software is either made up of a series of totally independent software services or, the software in question is able to act as a microservice in a broader series of microservices and tools, making up a Digital Experience Platform (DXP). 

A for APIs. APIs, another acronym, stands for Application Programming Interface. Think of this as a language that software can use to communicate and share information with.

C for Cloud-Native. This means the platform in question is capable of acting like a SaaS (Software as a Service), without the need for customers to host, maintain, or update the software or its infrastructure. 

H for Headless. This refers to headless CMS, headless commerce, or headless software in general. 

MACH Architecture: Your Route to a Composable DXP

A composable DXP is a digital experience platform made up of best-of-breed technologies. With an enterprise headless CMS at the core, each additional technology serves to provide a unique set of features and solutions. When they all work in tandem, all sides of your business are well served.

Plus, you can easily “compose” your technology stack again and again. Because each solution works both independently (as a microservice) and together with the rest of your stack, you can swap and change individual parts of your DXP at a moment’s notice. So, you can opt for a more nimble CRM, a more marketer-friendly DAM, and a more agile e-commerce experience at any time.

But the only way for 5, 10, or 15 different technologies to work together, is through true integrations and interoperability. That’s where your APIs come in.

Each of your solutions should also be could-native, easing the pressure on your team when it comes to updates, maintenance, and uptime. And finally, if each platform is API first, and your CMS is headless, you have all the ingredients you need to connect technologies and push your content or products to wherever they need to go.

CrafterCMS: A MACH-compliant Content Platform

The acronym may be relatively new on the scene, but CrafterCMS has been a MACH platform for many years.

Our truly decoupled architecture, which features a content authoring platform (Crafter Studio) totally decoupled from its content delivery platform (Crafter Engine), is in fact a great example of microservices at work. Both are API-first platforms, supporting a variety of API types including REST and GraphQL. And our microservices architecture doesn’t stop there, as we have separate services for search (Crafter Search), publishing (Crafter Deployer), the authoring experience (Crafter Studio UI), site/app experience rendering (Crafter Core), and more.

CrafterCMS is also available in the cloud (Crafter Cloud), and of course, enables headless content and headless commerce.

Plus, CrafterCMS was built to be the foundation of your broader technology stack, enabling you to build a best-of-breed digital experience platform in a straightforward manner.

Leading enterprises and brands including Marriott and Harvard Business Publishing have used CrafterCMS’s MACH capabilities to build modern global websites, corporate intranets, video portals, and other headless content applications in the cloud. Their technology stacks are built on a flexible, composable, and agile API-first foundation that’s ready for any and all market changes.

To learn more about CrafterCMS’s headless, MACH architecture-ready solution, read our guide to all things headless CMS.