MACH Architecture vs Microservice: Challenges and Best Solutions

About MACH Architecture

MACH architecture is an acronym for four key components: Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless. Overall, this is a modern approach that emphasizes flexibility, scalability and maximum performance for business growth, especially when operating on an ecommerce platform.

Each component in the MACH architecture is capable of operating independently, allowing you to proactively arrange, install and connect to integrate the tools and services that best suit your business’s development needs.

When using MACH architecture, you can fully take advantage of the outstanding advantages of API to ensure seamless operation between internal and external services after completing the integration process. At the same time, it also relies on the unique properties of the cloud environment to automate the scaling process, and manage resources effectively.

MACH architecture’s signature headless commerce also helps separate the front-end layer from the back-end presentation, empowering businesses to create unique and personalized customer experiences.

About Microservices

When mentioning MACH architecture vs microservices, microservices is an architectural form in which a system is divided into many small microservices. These ones are able to communicate independently with each other through APIs. Each of them will focus on a specific business function, and operate completely separately (of course, they can still interact with each other when needed with the help of APIs).

With a modular approach, microservices help increase the flexibility of business operations and your proactiveness on the journey. It also leads to faster development cycles and easier maintenance processes. 

They, at the same time, also improve fault isolation. An error occurring in a microservice will not affect or disrupt the operation of other microservices, as well as the operating process of the entire enterprise system.

About the connection of MACH architecture vs microservices

MACH architecture vs microservices are closely related. In particular, microservices are the fundamental component of MACH architecture. Thoroughly applying both microservices and other components of the MACH architecture helps your ecommerce business increase scalability, become flexible in adapting to market trends, and always is ready to change whenever possible.

To differentiate more clearly between MACH architecture vs microservices, you can follow the summary table below:

Complex integration process

Challenges

Integrating different microservices within the MACH architecture when applied to an ecommerce business can be an extremely complex process, due to the independent nature of microservices. 

You need to ensure the communication flow of all data is seamless between microservices. This requires an API management strategy that is consistent, appropriate, and includes advanced elements that do not disrupt uptime for too long.

Solutions

Understand and learn how to deploy a comprehensive API platform, including API gateways, monitoring tools, and basic documentation resources. Besides that, you should also apply standardized API design methods, such as RESTful APIs or GraphQL APIs, to ensure consistency and maintain good interoperability between microservices vs MACH architecture.

Difficulties in the process of monitoring, checking and handling errors that arise

Challenges

Although the ability to isolate errors is a plus point worth mentioning when it comes to MACH architecture vs microservices, finding specific errors in a large and independently operating microservices architecture system is considered a big challenge. 

Without regular observation, you may not even be able to determine the root of the problem. This may not affect business operations, but it will likely have a negative impact on customer experience.

Solutions

Implement regular monitoring and recording of business performance and operational issues by using tools like Grafana, ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) or Prometheus. These tools can aggregate metrics and measurement results from all microservices, providing an overall and comprehensive view of the operating status of the entire system.

Some specialized tracking tools like Zipkin or Jaeger can also help track requests across different microservices. Using these applications along with MACH architecture vs microservices gives you the ability to be notified when a problem arises, thereby quickly identifying and resolving it consistently and easily.

Issues in data management

Challenges

In MACH architecture, data is often distributed across multiple microservices, each one managing a separate database. This can cause certain complexity in data management and synchronization.

You need to make sure your data is consistent and updated periodically to avoid going out of date, especially for ecommerce businesses that don’t want to miss out on what’s trending in real time. This process when using MACH architecture vs microservices will most likely take you time, and of course, cost you a certain amount of money.

Solutions

Implement an event-driven architecture using message brokers such as RabbitMQ or Kafka. They handle data synchronization and communication between microservices efficiently and automatically.

Use popular database planning strategies such as CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) to separate read and write data operations. Always observe and update regularly to ensure consistency in data development and management.

Risks in transforming organizational activities

Challenges

When migrating your business from your current architecture to MACH architecture vs microservices, you must determine that there will be significant changes taking place in the management process for each function.

Tools and features that are used to operating in a monolithic way, as a specific example, may have difficulty moving to a decentralized microservices approach. This can lead to some resistance and cause inefficiencies when initially implementing new infrastructure.

Solutions

Consult with ecommerce experts or ecommerce consulting companies to find the right conversion and increase compatibility for your business. Foster a DevOps culture that emphasizes collaboration, continuous improvement, and automation. 

Carefully check the features and requirements of each one when performing a migration, to consider changing the corresponding feature (you can be completely proactive in this step when empowered by MACH architecture vs microservices).

Difficulties in optimizing business performance

Challenges

Due to the distributed nature of microservices, maintaining optimal performance of MACH architecture vs microservices can be complex and time-consuming. 

Each microservice needs to communicate with each other via a network of APIs, which can cause delays in controlling overall system performance, especially when placed under high load conditions and a sudden increase in the number of customers on ecommerce platforms.

Solutions

Optimize performance by implementing caching strategies at various levels. You can use Redis (in-memory caches) to ensure frequent data access, or use CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) to deliver and manage static content. Apply load balancing techniques to distribute content evenly across all microservices, prevent bottlenecks, and maintain high performance using MACH architecture vs microservices.

AFTCO

AFTCO, known for its specialty apparel and top-notch fishing gear, turned to the MACH architecture with the desire to enhance its digital presence with A/B testing, product personalization, and enhanced user experience. When comparing monolithic vs microservices architecture, the monolithic structure they were using before hit its limits, causing slower page load times as the number of customers increased or new features were added.

Switching to MACH architecture, in addition to microservices applications, AFTCO has also successfully applied a headless approach, increasing response speed and improving user experience. This change also helps them proactively innovate the user interface, as well as enjoy special functions such as multi-language or multi-currency, towards the goal of globalization.

Paramount

Paramount has adopted MACH architecture vs microservices to enhance delivery and user experience. By fully leveraging microservices, prioritizing API development, and cloud-native infrastructure, Paramount eases the content management and delivery process to enhance user experience.

In addition, the headless architecture also allows for flexible user interface development, making Paramount able to integrate seamlessly with many different devices and platforms.

Udemy

Udemy is a leading online learning platform, applying MACH architecture vs microservices to further support the creation of rich and diverse courses, as well as optimize the situation of an increasing number of users.

With a microservices-based approach and prioritizing communication via APIs, Udemy makes the customer learning experience smoother and uninterrupted under high loads. Each microservice takes care of its responsibilities perfectly at the same time, helping business owners easily scale the service, improve performance and automatically adjust to different load levels.

Reaching a huge number of learners worldwide is possible with Udemy using MACH architecture vs microservices.