The Cloud & Retail: Navigating the new MACH Era

In 2024, the retail industry in Europe and beyond is evolving rapidly as retailers respond to shifting consumer behaviors and growing demands for personalized, seamless experiences. With increasing pressure to integrate omnichannel strategies and manage complex supply chains, many retailers are turning to cloud solutions that offer both flexibility and scalability.

The Rise of MACH and Composable Commerce

In response to these challenges, new architectural approaches such as MACH (microservices, API-First, Cloud Native and headless) commerce systems have emerged. In these modern approaches, breaking monolithic architecture into independent microservices can allow it to be developed, deployed, and scaled independently.

Embracing Composable Commerce: Benefits and Flexibility

Let us start by defining composable commerce as e-commerce functionalities that have been split up into discrete switchable components. It allows companies to “compose” an e-commerce stack on a case-by-case basis, based on business needs, switching out parts whenever a better solution becomes available. The underlying values are the MACH principles.

Benefits of composable commerce

• Scalability: Each component can scale independently based on the demanded performance level, allowing one to optimize the resources being used. This applies even in those occasions when shopping peaks and major promotional events offer themselves
• More rapid impetus for innovation: Services can be decoupled, so new and improved technologies can be introduced or unflattering ones replaced without remaking the entire architecture. This allows companies to accelerate their innovation pace and stay competitive
• Resilience: Modular composition allows for the introduction of complete dissociation with composable commerce since in such composition, a breakdown of one part can get away from shutting down the whole system, improving reliability and uptime.

European Retailers Adopting MACH Architecture

Several European retail giants are making bold moves towards MACH architecture. This transition reflects a broader industry trend: moving away from monolithic systems and toward more modular, scalable, and agile solutions.

A prime example is Carrefour. By adopting MACH, Carrefour aims to enhance its ability to integrate new services such as AI-powered recommendations and real-time inventory management, while maintaining the flexibility to respond to market demands quickly.

Similarly, OBI, the German DIY retailer, has unified its sales across multiple channels by adopting MACH principles. OBI has integrated its e-commerce and in-store experiences through an API-driven approach - source).

Why European Retailers are Moving to MACH and Composable Commerce

• Increased Agility: Retailers like OBI and Carrefour are turning to MACH to achieve greater agility. By decoupling various services, they can roll out new features like personalized promotions or real-time stock updates without overhauling their entire system
• Cost Efficiency: Traditionally, monolithic applications require scaling the entire infrastructure when demand spikes. MACH allows retailers to scale only the components that need more resources. For instance, OBI can scale its inventory systems during seasonal sales periods without affecting the entire e-commerce platform
• Future-proofing the Business: As European retail continues to move towards omnichannel strategies, MACH architectures enable businesses to integrate new channels quickly, such as mobile apps or in-store kiosks, and keep pace with evolving customer expectations.

How Scaleway Supports European Retail Transformation

As European retailers embrace MACH, they are seeking cloud providers that can support such agile, API-driven architectures. Scaleway’s Kapsule Kubernetes service, combined with Instances, provides the flexibility and performance required for retailers looking to implement a MACH strategy. By leveraging Scaleway’s managed cloud services, companies can build, deploy, and manage microservices without worrying about the complexity of scaling their infrastructure.

For example, Scaleway’s cloud infrastructure allows European retailers to easily integrate AI-powered tools (like Managed Inference or Generative APIs), personalized marketing campaigns, and real-time analytics, further enhancing their ability to provide a seamless omnichannel experience. By combining cloud-native services with a modular architecture, retailers can future-proof their operations and stay competitive in a constantly evolving market.

Scaleway provides a myriad of scalable cloud solutions which enable MACH or composable commerce approaches. The infrastructure allows companies to build fault-proof and high-performance e-commerce platforms in an effort to support the ever-demanding market of today. Supported by Scaleway, companies can more easily ensure agility, flexibility, and scalability and remain in the race for e-commerce.

Scaleway and the MACH Principles

• Microservices: Deploy decoupled microservices in either Scaleway Kubernetes or containers, which means they can be independently scaled and updated for various functions of e-commerce, such as inventory management or user authentication
• API-First: While Scaleway’s API-first architecture gives businesses the ability to create headless frontends for any touchpoint (mobile apps, web, voice assistants), the system allows integration with any back-end systems such as CRM, ERPs or PIMs
• Cloud-native: Scaleway’s cloud-native services allow businesses to scale up or down based on demand without worrying about the underlying infrastructure
• Headless: Scaleway services ensure omnichannel trips for businesses by decoupling frontend from backend, thanks to the headless CMS platform (for instance, Strapi) and headless eCommerce solutions (for instance, Sylius).

Implementing Headless and Composable Architecture with Scaleway's Ecosystem

The diagram below illustrates how to totally leverage Scaleway's cloud services to establish modern event-driven or headless architecture into scalable retail platforms, in a manner that decouples the frontend and backend for flexibility, scale, and performance optimized across different devices (web browser, smartphone, etc.).

Key Components include: Frontend, Public Load Balancer, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Managed Database, Managed Redis, Public Gateway, Messaging and Queuing, Serverless Functions, Object Storage and CDN (Content Delivery Network).

MACH Implementation on Scaleway

• Scalability and multi cloud architecture: Kubernetes Kapsule clusters provide the capability to scale microservices based on the demand in real time, and on any cloud provider within Kosmos clusters, which is particularly vital during peak shopping hours or when a product launches.
• Resilience: By deploying independent microservices, system failures are isolated, minimizing the impact on other services.
• Cost Efficiency: With Scaleway's flexible infrastructure (block volumes, serverless jobs, serverless functions and containers), businesses can optimize costs by scaling resources only when necessary.

This approach positions Scaleway as a key enabler of composable and MACH commerce for eCommerce businesses, supporting agility, scalability, and the freedom to choose the best tools and frameworks for each part of the system.

Conclusion: Scaleway as a Catalyst for the Future of E-commerce

Scaleway’s extensive range of cloud services supports the MACH principles, enabling businesses to build modern, scalable, and high-performance e-commerce platforms. By leveraging Scaleway’s infrastructure, businesses can adopt microservices, API-first, cloud-native, and headless architectures, ensuring agility, resilience, and innovation in their digital strategies.

This blogpost is an extract from Scaleway's MACH & retail ebook, coming soon!