Research undertaken by the MACH Alliance supported by DJS Research has found 81% of IT leaders intend to increase MACH elements into their front-office architecture within the year. MACH is a new strategy for technology evolution, procurement and implementation. Built on four key principles, MACH stands for Microservices, APIs, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. The MACH Alliance is a global not-for-profit organisation dedicated to advocating for an open, best-of-breed technology ecosystem for enterprises. The MACH Alliance supports companies to take advantage of the most innovative and flexible enterprise technologies available.
The report sought to understand views on digital technology in the workplace around the world. The research surveyed senior level technology decision makers (CIOs/CTOs, VP/SVP, Senior Manager) across the US, UK and Germany.
The research indicates upgrades are putting a strain on budgets. A quarter of IT decision makers surveyed said they spend over half of their IT budget on front-office upgrades. The report also suggests upgrades are distracting IT teams from innovating, and that comes at a cost, too. Respondents said their teams spend an average of 40% of their time delivering front-office upgrades.
Customer expectations are key driver
A large portion of respondents agree that customers’ expectations are on the rise. They recognise the importance of organizational innovation and delivering improvements to customers. While being ahead of the competition and keeping up with end-user demands also received high levels of agreement.
Companies are struggling to meet evolving customer needs. More than half of respondents cannot deliver improvements to the customer and end-user experience at speed with their current infrastructure. And only about 1/3 (35%) said their infrastructure is keeping up with customer/end-user demands.
Improving CX is the largest driver in urging IT leaders to further explore MACH. 63% of respondents said customer experience is the main driver of their transition to a modern MACH infrastructure. While 57% noted the ability to innovate faster. Furthermore, 55% noted the desire to improve competitive advantage as their top drivers.
C-Suite drives the shift to composable
94% of those surveyed said they would not maintain the status quo in the future regarding their intention to increase MACH investment.
“We’re encouraged to see c-level executives are driving the adoption of MACH across organisations,” said Matt Bradbeer, MACH Alliance co-founder. “The executive suite has clearly seen how a composable architecture can deliver real bottom-line impact. Especially at a time when quickly adapting to evolving customer needs is so crucial. This modern approach allows a degree of flexibility, performance and cost savings we’ve not seen before.”
So what’s holding companies back?
IT team resistance to change is the main barrier to moving to a MACH front-office infrastructure, according to respondents. 40% noted this as the top barrier within their organisations. This is followed by the length of time between making the initial investment and seeing long-term benefits. Furthermore, dependence on the current vendor for business continuity (tied for the second most commonly chosen option at 31%).
“We know there’s still trust in the age-old way of doing things,” said MACH Alliance President, Kelly Goetsch. “A new architectural approach means re-thinking and re-learning how things get done, and that takes a willingness to embrace change. That’s a big part of why the MACH Alliance exists. – To advocate for this approach and support companies, on how to go about bringing it into their own enterprise. Moving to a new digital maturity model is not a small undertaking, but it’s worth it. And once the shift is made, things are easier going forward, for good.”
Enterprise Times: What this means for business?
Out with the old, in with MACH. That’s what the survey of global IT leaders found regarding their plans to revamp, or retain, their enterprise architectures. MACH enables enterprises to leverage composable technologies to build continually evolving digital experiences with remarkable speed and scale. Not surprisingly, the research indicated a huge willingness to adopt MACH technologies amongst respondents.
A consistent key driver for this continues to be customer demand. Something the MACH Alliance has noticed amongst its own members since its inception in June 2020. The research has clearly confirmed expectations that MACH is the way to go for composable enterprise software. The widespread embracing of emerging technologies including AI and machine learning. Together with the rise of automation, in all its forms, mean modern technology is getting far more complex and intricate. Hopefully, the Mach Alliance will live up to its aims, to help organisations navigate their way through these challenging times.
