MACH

E-Commerce Technologies

We do not pursue a dogmatic approach, nor are we bound to any software manufacturer. Rather, we implement solutions that suit our customers, who value us for our objectivity and broad range of knowledge.

E-Commerce Platforms

Broadleaf Commerce

Broadleaf Commerce is an e-commerce platform known for its flexibility and customization. It provides businesses with a solid foundation to create unique and customized online shopping experiences.

With its modular architecture, Broadleaf Commerce enables easy integration of various extensions and third-party applications, allowing businesses to efficiently customize and scale their e-commerce operations.

Broadleaf Commerce is only partially a platform, as it offers an SOA architecture. We list it here because the company offers the solution both as a cloud and on-prem version. The latter tends to be the exception these days but is still very attractive for some companies.

The clustering of functionalities is also a good solution so that services that can come under particular strain are separated from those that are used less. This can reduce costs.

Commercetools

Commercetools is a founding member of the MACH Alliance and the inventor of the word “headless”. The solution is cloud-based and is generally regarded as one of the oldest professional commerce solutions in this technology area.

The services are stable, the scaling works flawlessly and customers can easily implement their additional services on top of the services offered by Commercetools. There are virtually no restrictions and you can choose your front-end technologies as you wish.

Emporix

Emporix is also a member of the MACH Alliance and is suitable for complex projects in all conceivable e-commerce application constellations.

The e-commerce services are very comprehensive. Emporix enables a high degree of scalability. Although Emporix has been on the market for some time, the solution has only recently come to the attention of customers.

A bridge to Celonis uses their process engine, which is offered as CXP under Celonis, a powerful tool for implementing and integrating processes.

Greenfield

There are several reasons why developing an e-commerce solution on a greenfield site can make sense. This is the case, for example, if you want to be independent of a solution provider or if you want to run the software in your own environment and not in the cloud.

Then you would choose open source libraries to write your software yourself with your team. A good starting point could be the Spring framework. However, be aware that all the maintenance, service, hosting, and support will fall on your shoulders. If you are ever thinking about such an approach, talk to us to refine the overall vision.

Hybrid
Approaches

When you have to choose an e-commerce solution, you have to make several fundamental decisions. It starts with the question of whether it should be SAAS, MACH (SOA), a platform, or greenfield. The next selection criteria then follow: In which programming language should the solution be implemented and do you want to accomplish this with internal and/or external resources? Only then does the evaluation of software and service providers begin.

However, some of this stems from pure black-and-white thinking, especially with regard to the basic technology approaches. Hybrid approaches often make the most sense. For example, a platform in conjunction with SOA could be very promising. Individual functions can be exchanged. A good example is search, which is ideally outsourced to an enterprise search.

Another consideration could be to outsource load-intensive functionalities in order to keep the overall operating costs low, especially during high-load periods such as Black Friday, Christmas, or Valentine’s Day.

The concept of a service layer that is used by all display channels is also a very valid approach, especially as it makes it easier to mix e-commerce and CMS. In addition, the service layer can be expanded for any query of data or content between systems, and internal as well as external requests.