MACH Masterclass 2024

On April 18, our MACH Masterclass 2024 took place at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. There was a lot of productive exchange, exciting presentations and new insights into the possibilities of advanced technologies. Find out what it was all about here.

How did the event come about?

The foundations for the MACH Masterclass were laid back in summer 2023. In conversations with partners and customers, we kept noticing that although the whole topic of MACH is present somewhere for many, there are still hurdles to understanding and implementing it. This gave rise to the idea of bringing together different people and their perspectives on the topic of MACH in order to initiate a joint transfer of knowledge and exchange. Together with Contentful as a partner, we started the detailed planning - supported by Coveo and Dynamic Yield as sponsors of the event.

What is MACH actually?

But before we start our recap, let's briefly define it: What is behind the acronym MACH, to which we have dedicated an entire masterclass?

• M – Microservices: Individual business functionalities that can be developed and operated independently.

• A – API-First: All functionalities can be addressed via interfaces that connect two or more services.

• C – Cloud-Native: Software-as-a-service for hosting, elastic scalability and automatic updates.

• H – Headless: The frontend is independent of the backend, for freedom of design of user interfaces and channel independence.

The use of a MACH architecture enables companies to offer their users a better customer experience, optimize omnichannel orchestration and achieve a faster time-to-market through greater agility in the processes. Such a structure also offers the advantage of fewer dependencies overall: both individual tools and the entire CMS can be easily replaced. This makes it easier to scale projects, teams and infrastructure. A technical philosophy that offers a lot of potential - and at the same time creates plenty of room for the exchange of ideas.

The MACH Masterclass 2024 at the Porsche Museum

Last Thursday, on May 18, 2024, the time had come: almost 60 people attended the MACH Masterclass and accepted our invitation to the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. The invitees came from many different industries - we were delighted with the wide range of companies: Bergfreunde, Mercedes Benz, BOSCH, Porsche, Dürr Dental, 1&1, Harting, AVM, Deichmann, Emporix, Epam and Treppenmeister - just to name a few. Contentful, 1&1, MeinAuto.de and we from Becklyn provided the technical input on the topic of MACH. The wonderful Dennis Heyn led us through the evening with his charismatic moderation.

What MACH makes possible

In the presentations, the speakers opened up different perspectives and implications of MACH: Contentful gave a relaxed introduction to the highly relevant topic to get all participants on the same page. The presentation by our Managing Director Engineering, Christoph Hautzinger, was about the evolution of MACH (grab your popcorn, the lively presentation is available here as a video recording to watch). Marc Lenzhofer, Product Owner at MeinAuto.de, gave an exciting insight into the influence of guided selling and AI technologies on the customer journey in the automotive industry in his case study. And Andreas Parusel, luminary for frontend, platforms, requirements and quality at 1&1, shed light on the connections between organizational structures and MACH.

This was followed by an open panel discussion in which all participants were able to ask questions and share their thoughts. The topics were explored in greater depth during further networking, experiences were exchanged and one or two similarities in terms of MACH were certainly discovered. The event was rounded off with Swabian delicacies: Saetzle and Maultaschen – as well as a fascinating tour of the Porsche Museum.

Our conclusion: More of the same.

As the main initiator of the event, Florian Schwarzbeck, Managing Director Business Operations at Becklyn, draws a positive balance:

"My conclusion of the MACH Masterclass at the Porsche Museum is that it was of great importance for us at Becklyn to promote the exchange and understanding of the implementation of the MACH architecture. As a design-driven tech agency, we see ourselves as a bridge and advisor between innovative MACH providers and industry leaders. This enabled us to highlight practical connections and solutions - and bring people together for a lively exchange. This enabled participants to understand more deeply the benefits of an agile, service-oriented architecture that offers rapid adaptation to market changes and an improved customer experience. "

Good news for all those who were unable to attend: Planning for the next MACH Masterclass is already underway. The second round of the event will take place in spring 2025. Stay tuned.