MACH + Open Source: The Future of Composable Digital Architecture

The draft idea is a result of one of my recent chats with the MACH Alliance member. Over the call we established a value in exploring the use and contribution of OSS in the MACH ecosystem.

Drawing from my experience working with enterprises, I've observed firsthand how businesses can unlock MACH’s full potential by leveraging OSS. Following a brief of my view on how integrating OSS into a MACH-driven enterprise would be a game changer!!

The Rationale

Some of the key pain points and drivers observed during customer engagements

• Avoid vendor locking: We saw this as one of the key pain points, where tools drive the architecture and operational aspects and dwell into locking any in-house innovations whatsoever. Enterprises these days are leaning towards building in-house solutions, and OSS tools are the preferred stacks. For example, one of my customers switched to Apache and Hashicorp stacks to build an internal iPaaS platform, which performs equally fast and cut short a 5+ year old costly and shiny vendor tool

• Community driven and cost efficient: I like the idea of how OSS projects like Apache or OWASP operate and drive community towards a goal. For me, I took the same path for my OWASP project and moved from an incubation phase to tool phase and trying to make my project a flagship project. With Kubernetes hitting 3.7k contributors, it is one of the best examples of how OSS drives community-driven approach works and is one of the key drivers of efficiently managing Microservices in a cost-efficient way by enterprises. The list goes on for API first, Cloud native and Headless principles like Swagger, Terraform, Strapi, etc.

The Strategy

• Formal recognition: Establish an “Open-Source MACH Stack” that highlights OSS tools aligned with MACH principles.

• Drive contribution: MACH certified companies, individuals should start contributing to incubated or tools labelled OSS projects. We should encourage partnerships between OSS products and MACH certified vendors

• Community initiatives: OSS+MACH got lots of content, which can be offered in the form of certifications, webinars or hackathons

Final thoughts

I do see a value in MACH endorsing OSS tools and enterprises using OSS-based MACH architecture references. This combination or partnership has the potential to accelerate the innovations and solidify MACH leadership in composable digital architectures.