“I can’t think of any way that the MACH Alliance has assisted customers in accelerating the implementation of anything, including well-reasoned buying decisions. If anything, maybe MACH suggests that it accelerates sales for their members?”

That excerpt came from CMS and DXP Solutions Architect John West’s LinkedIn post last week, in which he shared his opinion on the MACH Alliance’s shortcomings. One of the areas he questioned was missed opportunities around “defining interoperability standards based on domain-driven design.” Interestingly enough, the MACH Alliance released its latest interoperability standards a few hours later, and the discussions raged on across LinkedIn. 

Elsewhere, Optimizely celebrated reaching $400M in ARR, Tina CMS joined Australian company SSW, and Bloomreach was recognized in the Magic Quadrant for Commerce Search.

Featured Stories

• Building on MACH’s Interoperability Foundations: “Our latest release includes comprehensive materials that guides you through the new MACH Reference Architecture and its role in fostering seamless interoperability, our reference whitepaper for understanding key Concepts and Patterns in Composable Architecture, and finally a code-first MACH diagram generator.”

• Optimizely Reaches $400M ARR Milestone as Demand for Marketing Operation System Surges: “We are immensely grateful to our employees and partners, who have worked tirelessly to deliver the world’s first operating system for marketers.”

• Orium, commercetools, and Google Cloud Present New Report Offering Practical Insights on AI and Data Utilization in Commerce: “By setting the right foundations today, commerce businesses secure quick wins now and can make incremental improvements over time as gen AI continues to evolve.”

• TinaCMS is Now Part of SSW: “Tina has been acquired by SSW, an Australian software development company and long-time Tina customer. There will be no disruptions to our service and no action will be required by any of our users.”

New RFPs From DXP360

• [New] [RFP Value: $550,000] [UK] Travel Website Development: UK-based travel company owns several services and websites. Each of these sites has been built separately over time by different suppliers as the TIL offer has evolved, and each provides separate but related services. TIL would now like to bring its web offerings into one family, with a common look and feel and customer experience across the sites.

• [New] [RFP Value: $20,000] [Germany] Construction Marketplace Development: We are seeking an experienced developer or development team to create a specialized marketplace for the construction trades.

• [New] [RFP Value: $15,000] [Canada] Marketplace App Development: Flutter is the UI kit of choice for this project.

Stories that caught our eye

1. Bloomreach Placed in 2024 Magic Quadrant for Commerce Search: Positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s latest report.

2. Headless CMS Differentiating Factors: Areas where headless CMS vendors can differentiate their offerings from the competitors in their field.

3. QBurst and Strapi Partner Up: “QBurst has demonstrated exceptional product knowledge and industry expertise in developing composable applications powered by Strapi. With this partnership formalized, we’re thrilled to expedite the development of successful projects for a broad client base,” said Pierre Burgy, CEO of Strapi.

4. Creating a Unified Editor Experience: dotCMS’ new universal visual editor. 

5. Transforming Retail: Can composable commerce be the answer?

6. Going Headless and MACH Architecture: An interview with Amplience CTO John Williams. 

7. What to Ask Your Headless Vendor: Key factors to consider around security and data management during CMS selection.

The word on the street…

1. [LinkedIn]: What’s holding back headless adoption?: According to content architect Michael Andrews, it’s the absence of standards for content models and taxonomies in CMSs.

2. [LinkedIn]: MACH Alliance interoperability standards: A followup from John West hot on the heels of the MACH Alliance’s latest release. 

3. [LinkedIn]: The future of content management?: VP of Product at dotCMS Preston So explains why universal CMS will usher in a new era when headless becomes the default.