Convictional joins the MACH Alliance

I’m excited to share that Convictional has been certified as a member of the MACH Alliance. This certification is important validation for the technical path we’ve chosen at Convictional. 

MACH Alliance members produce future-proof enterprise technology that adheres to rigorous standards, giving organizations the confidence they need to choose the right tools for their operations. 

In this post, I’ll share some background on the Alliance, why we chose to become a member, and what this announcement means for you. 

What is the MACH Alliance?

MACH stands for:

1. Microservices-based — applications are built on multiple loosely coupled services.. 
2. API-first — each microservice is delivered through an API gateway that connects it to its desired endpoints.
3. Cloud-native SaaS — applications are accessible from anywhere, at any time, without the vulnerabilities and inconveniences of on-premise systems.
4. Headless — an application’s front end and back end are separated, so that programming work on one doesn’t affect the other. 
   

Technologies with a MACH stack are highly composable, scalable, adaptable and flexible. We wrote about the benefits of microservices, APIs, and headless in a previous article:

Taking the microservices route means taking a best-of-breed approach to your software engineering. Microservice architecture allows marketplaces to choose and swap technology providers – microservices – for each business function without having to change the rest of the system. 

The MACH Alliance was formed by an independent group of companies in June 2020 to advocate for open and best-of-breed technology ecosystems. 40+ companies are MACH Alliance members, including commercetools and Myplanet, two of our partners. 

Why we joined MACH

The MACH Alliance is rooted in the common belief that the interoperability and open architecture of modern software will propel current and future digital experiences. They share our ethos around what future-proof technology looks like for our customers.  

Earlier this year, we earned our SOC 2 certification. At the time, I wrote:

Trust is hard fought, and easily lost as a startup working with some of the largest, oldest and more operationally mature companies in our industry. Convictional’s SOC 2 compliance shows existing and future customers that we take compliance seriously - sometimes even more so than they do.  

We decided to join MACH for similar reasons. While our SOC 2 certification focused on compliance and security, our MACH Alliance certification is focused on performance. Our multi-tenant system can fit into any existing environment because we have the flexibility to talk to any ecommerce and retail system. When an organization is evaluating Convictional in their vendor management stack, this certification offers assurance that we can scale with their needs as their marketplace or dropship program grows. 

Convictional is the first MACH alliance member to be 100% focused on marketplace and dropship supplier enablement. One of the reasons we’re able to move quickly and reduce seller onboarding times by orders of magnitude is our MACH observant technology stack. There’s no better technical solution to onboard and transact with your sellers. 

The MACH certification process

We got certified by MACH through a comprehensive three-step process.

First, we submitted our MACH member application form. In this application, we shared specifics around our tech stack and whether we met MACH’s member criteria. We also shared our API documentation and some information about our architecture. 

Second, our team and I sat down with the Alliance’s Technology Council for a technical interview. The interview involved verifying the information we shared in our application form and getting into specifics. 

Third, we performed a demo of our platform for the Alliance. We also shared our architecture diagrams so that our eligibility to join the Alliance could be validated. 

What this means for you

If you’re an existing Convictional customer, this certification offers a reminder that you’ve made the right choice from a technical perspective for your supplier enablement needs. 

If you’re not a Convictional customer yet and you’re considering us, this certification offers another reason to choose us for your marketplace or dropship program. If you’re interested in using our MACH-certified platform for your retail marketplace or dropship program, you can get started by contacting our sales team. 

We’re proud that we’ve been accepted into MACH and we look forward to working with its members to spread the word about the importance of MACH technologies, especially in retail.