Back in 2022 the MACH story felt fresh and full of promise. But it wasn't all smooth sailing. I wrote about that at the time in "The MACH Monolith", and looking at where we are now, it feels like we've lived through a few cycles of hype, confusion, and some very real lessons. Composability is still powerful, but anyone who has tried to run it beyond the demo stage knows how quickly complexity takes over.
A bit of context
I wrote the original piece while leading developer relations at Uniform, an orchestration platform. Note that this post reflects Uniform at that time. Their product might have evolved, but I wouldn't know in what direction as you can't just sign up and use it. Today I'm at Contentstack working on platform experiences. That shift wasn't random. It reflects what I learned about what teams actually want versus what we thought they needed.
The core idea from 2022 still stands. Composable architectures need orchestration or they turn into a knot. What changed is my view on where that orchestration should live. The industry made it clear that teams want this built into their platforms, not as another layer to maintain.
This update comes from seeing the same problem from two very different angles.
TL;DR
MACH has matured, but not in the way early advocates imagined. Instead of stacks made of dozens of tiny tools, the 2026 reality is platforms that stay modular and API first, but ship with more integrated capabilities out of the box.
The orchestration concept was right. The form factor wasn't. Modern platforms absorbed those ideas directly instead of relying on a standalone coordination layer.
Composability now has less to do with picking tools and more to do with handling complexity, governance, and long term cost. Many companies learned that too much flexibility becomes chaos without boundaries. Platforms like Contentstack show the new direction: still agnostic, still API driven, but bundled in a way that actually helps teams go faster. The next wave is AI supported orchestration, stronger governance, and systems that reduce decision fatigue instead of adding to it.
The why
I think, in 2022, I got diagnosis right. Without orchestration, composable architectures collapse under their own weight. But assuming orchestration would live as a separate category was off the mark.
Teams didn't reject the idea. They rejected the overhead. From both sides I've seen how a standalone orchestration layer adds a vendor, a contract, a team, and another critical path. Leadership wasn't exactly happy hearing they needed a CMS, commerce, search, personalization, and an orchestration layer on top.
On paper composability is perfect. Pick the best tools, connect them, done. In reality you need people who understand distributed systems, you need governance, and you need a cost strategy that survives usage based pricing. And you need something to keep it all in sync.
This gap created ongoing tension for leadership. They bought the promise of speed but found their teams buried under integration work with fuzzy ownership across systems. By 2025 many hit a wall. They needed simplicity without losing the modularity they invested in.
I've seen teams spend huge integration budgets only to discover their so called "composable" setup was more rigid than the monolith they replaced. I've seen governance fall apart when no one could answer who owns a piece of content across five tools. I've seen projects shut down because the ROI never materialized, not due to bad architecture but because the operational load wiped out any gains.
This is why platform focused vendors started to grow. They offer products designed to work together without forcing a traditional monolith. You keep composability, but with boundaries and built in coordination.
The how
Platform integrated orchestration shows up in a few clear patterns:
- Unified composition layers so teams can mix content from multiple systems without custom integration code. The platform handles the orchestration underneath.
- Native experience management for variations, personalization, and A/B tests. These choices stay out of your content models, exactly the separation we argued for back in 2022, now managed inside the platform.
- Integrated but replaceable connections to commerce, search, and other services. You get smart defaults that reduce the operational burden while staying API first.
- Governance that's built in instead of bolted on. Workflows, approvals, and publishing rules that understand your composed architecture automatically.
Contentstack is a good example of this shift. They moved from a single product CMS to a platform with multiple products that stay agnostic and API driven. You can still bring your own stack, but you also get pre-connected capabilities that lower operational cost. And they're not the only ones. The pattern is becoming common.
Think about a retail brand launching a new collection. They need commerce data, editorial content, reviews, recommendations. In 2022 that meant custom integration work across multiple systems and ongoing maintenance. In 2026 the platform handles the composition, you configure it once, and everything flows.
You're not buying a suite. You're buying a platform that knows how to coordinate.
Challenges
This evolution fixed problems and introduced new ones.
- What we gained: lower operational complexity, fewer vendors, faster time to value, orchestration without specialized skills.
- What we lost: clean separation. When orchestration lives inside a platform, you follow their approach even if components remain swappable.
- What still matters: discipline. Integrated orchestration makes good patterns easier, but also makes shortcuts tempting. Without governance you slip right back into the type of mess we warned about years ago. Cost can also spiral unless ownership and usage expectations are clear.
The biggest challenge left is complexity fatigue. Developers, architects, and editors are tired of endless choices. Even when the tech works, the human side struggles under too much decision making.
Integrated platforms help because they reduce cognitive load without removing flexibility. Smart defaults let teams focus on creating value instead of wiring everything together. But this only works when those defaults match how your team operates.
Concluding
The market made it clear that architectural purity matters less than operational reality. Standalone orchestration was right in theory but too heavy in practice for most teams.
The 2022 idea nailed the problem but not the delivery. Composable systems need orchestration or they fall apart, but that orchestration belongs inside platforms, not layered on top.
If the last decade was about breaking systems apart, this one is about building platforms that can coordinate the pieces without forcing a return to a rigid monolith. It's not easy, but it's where the market is heading and what teams are asking for.
The risk of drifting into a MACH monolith is still real. The answer isn't more layers. It's better platforms. And in 2026, we're finally getting there.
Frequently asked questions
What was wrong with standalone orchestration layers?
Teams didn't reject the idea of orchestration—they rejected the overhead. A standalone orchestration layer adds another vendor, contract, team, and critical path. Leadership wasn't happy hearing they needed a CMS, commerce, search, personalization, and an orchestration layer on top.
How has orchestration changed since 2022?
The orchestration concept was right, but the form factor wasn't. Modern platforms have absorbed orchestration directly instead of relying on a standalone coordination layer. You get unified composition, native experience management, and integrated connections—all while staying API-first and modular.
What are the main challenges teams face with composable architecture?
Complexity fatigue is the biggest challenge. Developers, architects, and editors are tired of endless choices. Teams also struggle with governance, cost control, and operational complexity. Many discovered their "composable" setup was more rigid than the monolith they replaced, with fuzzy ownership across systems.
What's the difference between a platform and a suite?
You're not buying a suite. You're buying a platform that knows how to coordinate. Platforms stay agnostic and API-driven—you can still bring your own stack—but provide pre-connected capabilities that lower operational cost without forcing a traditional monolith.
