PUBLISHED DATE: 2026-09-10 04:05:28

COMPOSABLE COMMERCE ON GOOGLE CLOUD:

Unlock Agility, Innovation and Personalized Experiences


A Publicis Sapient white paper in collaboration with tech ISVs: commercetools, Quantum Metric, Bloomreach, Contentstack and Optimove.

Introduction

In the world of digital computing, there are regular shifts in technical architectures that occur every 10 to 15 years. We are currently at one of these inflection points in the technology industry, particularly in the e-commerce space.

Over the past decade, several megatrends have led to a convergence of factors causing systemic changes in how we buy and sell things online. These megatrends include the rise of public compute clouds and hyper scalers like Google Cloud Platform, the proliferation of smartphones that double as supercomputers, the increasing number of endpoints like smart speakers and IoT devices, the emergence of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, and rising customer expectations for seamless experiences across all channels and devices. These factors are the essential ingredients of a technological revolution.

While these shifts present numerous opportunities to improve experiences for employees and customers, expand into new channels, and rapidly test and deploy products and strategies, they also introduce new levels of complexity, risk and cost.

Until recently, all e-commerce systems shared a common trait: they were monolithic platforms. However, the continued growth in e-commerce, along with the developments mentioned above, has led to the development of alternatives to these traditional architectures. The industry now recognizes that new architectural paradigms, such as Microservices-based Composable commerce, will provide tomorrow’s leaders with the speed and flexibility they need to drive rapid evolution in the technology ecosystem, including digital and omnichannel commerce.

As leaders shaping the future of commerce, we understand the need for visionary solutions that enable you to adapt and thrive in this dynamic environment.

“Organizations that…become composable in their orientation and organize their technology and business around MACH principles can take advantage of new opportunities and pivot quickly. It’s becoming a strong differentiator.”
Kelly Goetsch
Chief Strategy Officer, commercetools

A Microservices-Based Approach

Support the Real Needs of Your Business

Though a composable approach consists of independent components, organizing principles still determine whether a system is composable.

After coining and trademarking the term MACH® to describe how they build composable solutions, commercetools chose to promote MACH as an industry standard that identifies vendors who support and embrace a composable future.

Today, the MACH Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the development and adoption of composable commerce. The alliance defines Microservices, API-first, Cloud-nativity, and Headless as the necessary attributes of a genuinely composable system. Understanding how these principles contribute to a system’s composability is critical to understanding how this approach undergirds modern e-commerce architecture.

Behind the Name

“Four in five decision makers state economic volatility has impacted their organizations’ attitude toward MACH. This has been one of the key drivers behind 85 percent of organizations increasing the percentage of their MACH infrastructure in the past 12 months.”
MACH GLOBAL RESEARCH 2024

1 https://machalliance.org/newsroom/mach-global-research-2023

Our Composable Commerce Offering on GCP

Our Composable Commerce on Google Cloud (GCP) solution provides a vision-setting and rapid implementation approach, leveraging the industry-leading scalability and security of GCP to provide a solid foundation to build a secure and scalable foundation for your composable architecture. Similar to prior evolutionary periods of commerce, the current composable period has leaders in innovation, execution and market share.

To simplify your journey to adopting a composable approach, we have assembled and orchestrated a carefully vetted set of best-of-breed vendors and components into the most comprehensive composable commerce accelerator in the GCP marketplace.

At its core lies commercetools, a robust headless commerce platform offering unparalleled flexibility and developer experience. Contentstack, a powerful content management system, ensures seamless integration of rich product information and engaging stories. Optimove, the industry’s first Customer-Led marketing platform, leverages AI to continually optimize customer journeys. To further elevate your customer experience, we incorporate Bloomreach, a best-in-class personalization solution for tailored recommendations and offers that resonate deeply with your audience.

With expert guidance and reduced costs, these offerings are ideal for both companies starting their composable journey and those expanding their existing stack.

Our Composable Commerce on GCP offering provides leaders with the following:
How do these composable offerings on the GCP marketplace benefit you?

Why working with a global SI that understands not only composable (MACH-based) architecture but also the ability to help you start and scale is important.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) enhances composable commerce with a 50% improvement in infrastructure scalability and agility.

UNLEASHING THE POWER OF COMPOSABLE:

Accelerate innovation and time-to-market by 30% in composable commerce using GCP’s advanced AI and machine learning capabilities.

Beyond Technology

Our accelerator goes beyond tools. We provide expert guidance throughout your journey, helping you define your strategic vision, select the right composable components, and navigate the implementation process.

Ready to embrace the future of commerce?

Partner with us and unlock the power of composable commerce on Google Cloud. Contact us today to learn how our accelerator offerings can propel your business forward.

Reference architecture:

Prepare for What’s Next with Composable Commerce on GCP

The headless architecture based on MACH®, spearheaded by commercetools, can become even better with Google Cloud. Reap the benefits of cloud-native and containerized architecture, enabling autoscaling to handle peak season sales traffic spikes at a lower cost with the enhanced security, reliability and continued innovation in AI, data and analytics technologies that make Google Cloud the hosting provider of choice for leading retailers globally.

Only Google Cloud brings together innovations from across Google to help customers digitally transform with AI that’s ready for what’s next, data insights that speed innovation, infrastructure that’s designed to meet industry needs, collaboration tools that help teams do their best work, and security that can proactively stop threats.

Roadmap that Evolves at The Pace of Today’s Change

Put Your Data to Work

Bring the simplicity, scale, security, and intelligence of Google’s information approach to your organization.

Modernize Your Infrastructure

Google Cloud helps developers build quickly, securely, and cost effectively with the next generation of modern infrastructure designed to meet specific workload and industry needs.

Create a Culture of Innovation

Empower teams of all sizes to do their best work—anywhere, and across a variety of devices.

Get Built-In Security

Benefit from the same security capabilities that Google uses to keep more people and organizations safe online than anyone else.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers the industry-leading scalability, security and cost-efficiency needed for a robust composable commerce foundation.

BENEFITS OF BUILDING COMPOSABLE ON GCP:

A Fusion of Best-of-Breed Market Leaders: Crafting the Ultimate E-commerce Ecosystem

WHAT’S IN THE OFFERING?

“By 2026, 75% of organizations will adopt a digital transformation model predicated on cloud as the fundamental underlying platform.”
Gartner

The flexibility of commercetools on Google Cloud enables you to further extend and customize commerce functionalities with Google Cloud services to fully meet your business needs:
Key benefits of procuring our Composable Commerce on Google Cloud (GCP) solution through the GCP Marketplace:
Increase operational efficiency by 25% in digital commerce platforms with GCP’s reliable, high-performance cloud computing services.

Unleashing Unprecedented E-commerce Speed and Adaptability

Commercetools is a leading GCP cloud-native, headless commerce platform renowned for its API-first approach that offers a high degree of flexibility and scalability. It revolutionizes the traditional e-commerce model by providing businesses with modular and microservices-based architecture. This enables seamless integration and customization, allowing companies to create unique, omnichannel shopping experiences. With its focus on innovation and agility, commercetools empowers businesses to rapidly adapt to market changes and evolving customer needs, driving digital commerce success in today’s fast-paced marketplace.

commercetools insights:
CLOUD-NATIVE | COMPONENT-BASED | TECH-AGNOSTIC

Tackle constant change to achieve continuous growth with composable commerce

Sephora, Ulta Beauty and BMW run on commercetools to leverage the benefits of true composability.

Infinite scale

Choose any strategy to scale and grow: run multiple brands, expand internationally, try out new business models or increase conversions through unique customer experiences.

Unlimited flexibility

Launch faster, experiment easier and move away from heavily depending on IT: whether it’s omnichannel, personalized customer journeys or innovative experiences—no idea is impossible.

Lower costs

Optimize your commerce investment and stop paying for features, systems and processes you don’t need or that don’t drive value for your business.

Harnessing AI for Unparalleled Customer Engagement in Composable Commerce

In the dynamic arena of composable commerce, mastering customer engagement is more critical than ever, and Quantum Metric is at the forefront of this revolution, integrating cutting-edge AI technology into its suite of solutions. This integration elevates the ability of businesses to gain deep insights into customer interactions and experiences, moving beyond traditional analytics to a more predictive and personalized approach. By leveraging Quantum Metric combined with AI and smart integrations in a customer’s tech stack, companies can not only interpret user behavior but also anticipate future needs and preferences, setting a new standard in crafting customer-centric buying experiences.

Quantum Metric’s platform, enhanced by AI, excels in capturing and monitoring a wide range of customer engagement metrics. These include detailed analysis of user actions like clicks and scrolls, as well as more advanced insights such as emotional responses and predictive behavior patterns. The AI component allows for a more nuanced understanding of customer data, enabling businesses to identify underlying trends and potential friction points before they become problematic. This proactive approach ensures companies can tailor their digital environments to align closely with consumer expectations, fostering a more engaging and satisfying shopping journey.

Furthermore, the real-time analytics and machine learning algorithms of Quantum Metric offer an unparalleled advantage in the fast-paced digital commerce space. Companies can swiftly pinpoint and rectify issues, thanks to AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data quickly and accurately. Using Quantum Metric, e-commerce teams can better prioritize product improvements based on the impact of those optimizations on the business, using benchmarked revenue impact associations.

This immediate responsiveness is vital in maintaining a seamless and engaging customer experience, where delays or glitches can significantly impact satisfaction and retention. By continually adapting and enhancing the digital experience based on AI-driven insights, businesses can maintain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving landscape of composable commerce.

Quantum Metric’s FelixAI leverages generative AI to summarize the data of a customer session to quickly draw attention to the key points and behaviors of the user’s visit. This allows:
In summary, Quantum Metric, with its AI-enhanced analytics platform, is an essential tool for businesses aspiring to excel in composable commerce. It goes beyond traditional metrics to offer predictive insights and personalized experiences, ensuring businesses are not just responding to customer needs but anticipating and shaping them. In an era where the customer experience is paramount, Quantum Metric, powered by AI, provides the key to unlocking a new realm of customer engagement, driving satisfaction, loyalty and success in the digital marketplace.

The Best Experience Platform for Composable Commerce

Limitless personalization. Limitless shopping experiences. Limitless ways to reach your goals.

With Bloomreach, marketers and merchandisers have the freedom to create truly personalized experiences with lasting impact—all from a single place.

Single Customer View

A rich dataset and deep customer insights empower you to connect customers with what they want—in real time.

AI Optimized for Marketers

Loomi, Bloomreach’s AI built for e-commerce, optimizes for metrics that matter to you while helping you create personalized content, build high-intent audiences, and generate custom reports.

Marketing Automation Across Channels

Create and execute personalized, data-driven campaigns across 13 native channels.

Intelligent Site Search

Lead the pack in innovation and true customer understanding with our self-learning AI, Loomi. With 33 patents related to e-commerce search, Bloomreach is the market leader in intelligence, delivering the right results to your customers and driving more conversions and revenue.

Personalized Search

Use both historical and in-session data to segment customers in real time and deliver personalized experiences. Drive faster ROI, including up to 8.5% more revenue per visitor.

Strategic Merchandising

Loomi helps you focus on your biggest opportunities for improvement so you can spend 50% less time on operational tasks and more time on strategy. Use our built-in A/B testing to ensure that every change you make is the best for your e-commerce site.

Recommendations

Tailor your product recommendations to your customer’s needs for greater upsell and cross-sell revenue. Get started faster with ready-to-go recommendations like “Trending Products.” Or create rule-based recommendations to execute specific strategies.

Automated SEO

Increase your organic site traffic by creating a better link structure and filling in content gaps on existing pages. As a result, you’ll boost keyword rankings and revenue.

Bloomreach insights:

Future-proof Digital Experiences for E-Commerce

A composable commerce platform designed for delivering differentiated digital experiences that convert.

Boost engagement, increase conversions and nurture customer loyalty with the power of Contentstack’s composable DXP:

Contentstack—the leading Composable Digital Experience Platform (DXP) provider—empowers marketers and developers to deliver digital experiences at the speed of their imagination. Contentstack has achieved the industry’s highest customer satisfaction rating and is a founding member of the MACH Alliance, which sets the industry agenda for open and composable technology that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless.

Contentstack enables businesses to:
With Contentstack, businesses gain:
Contentstack insights (as determined by Forrester’s Economic Impact Study):
Businesses that adopt Contentstack see the following results, on average:
  1. 295% ROI
  2. 80% reduction in content-related dev time
  3. 90% reduction in time to publish

The First Customer-Led Marketing Platform Delivering Personalized Omnichannel Campaigns and Journeys

Optimove’s Leading Approach to Journey Orchestration

Optimove’s approach combines marketer-led frameworks with next-generation AI, orchestrating personalized multichannel journeys that never crossfire or break. Optimove’s AI-driven orchestration platform, powered by Google Cloud, determines the next best action for each individual customer, dynamically updating campaign content for maximum personalization and relevance. When integrated into a “Path to Purchase” context with commercetools, Contentstack and other tools, we can define the best campaigns that drive conversions online or in-store.

Our platform excels because of:
Optimove insights:

The Composable Difference

How our Composable on GCP Accelerator empowers technical and business leaders to embrace change, manage complexity, and seize the opportunity of what’s next.

Benefits of Composable for a Business User

Composable Commerce May Be Right for You If:

Evolution vs. Revolution

“What if I don’t have the budget or resources for a full replatform today?”

Evolution versus revolution in digital commerce refers to taking a more gradual approach to tech stack transformation rather than a more radical approach and changing everything in one full sweep. Evolution refers to the gradual enhancements and improvements in e-commerce systems, while revolution refers to making massive changes all at once. Modern e-commerce companies can adopt the evolution strategy thanks to composability.

This strategy offers a significant departure from the “one-size-fits-all” approach of traditional systems, providing businesses with the flexibility to adapt and optimize their tech stack as market dynamics change. It also allows you to get the most out of AI to serve end customers properly.

Thanks to adopting “evolution” rather than “revolution,” change doesn’t have to be done all at once, making it more financially feasible and less taxing on commerce-driving teams. Instead of relying on a single, all-encompassing platform, businesses can now choose specialized tools to build a commerce stack that meets their specific needs. This has redefined the architecture of online retail, enabling brands to deliver top-notch, multichannel, personalized experiences.

Ensuring your team is asking the right questions is step one in aligning the right strategies for your tech stack. Some key questions that you may consider:
  1. What are the key benefits from composability, and do they align with our internal KPIs?: Benefits are wide-ranging (improved customer experience, scalability, increased revenue growth, etc.) but it is important to fully understand your internal KPIs and what benefits are most important to your team before setting out on this journey.
  2. Is our organization’s maturity level and team structure conducive to maximizing the benefits of composable architecture?: Composable commerce is often best for mature organizations with strong commerce-driving and IT teams. Make sure the answer to this question is “yes” prior to making any significant changes to your tech stack.
  3. How will our teams adapt to the workflow changes and efficiencies brought about by adopting a composable approach?: Adopting a composable approach may require changes in how teams work together. Is your team prepared for these changes? Some previously manual tasks may now be automated, and processes may be more streamlined and efficient. It’s important to understand what opportunities composability may open up for your internal teams.

Evolution vs. Revolution diagrams:

Current-state style:
Composable evolution style:

Addressing Common Concerns

Composable is too expensive!

Composable is too complex!

Let Publicis Sapient Guide You

“How do I get Started?”

ANSWERING THE MOST COMMON QUESTION:
“Embark on your composable commerce journey with our expert tech assessment—your pathway to innovative, adaptable success.”

One of the main benefits of a composable approach is that it encourages continuous incremental innovation, including the updating of the technology stack. Regardless of your current tech stack, you likely want to modernize and drive rapid innovation across the proliferating array of customer touchpoints—websites, apps, marketplaces, omnichannel, and CSR systems—and the ability to use best-of-breed solutions like e-commerce, CMS, Search, analytics, personalization, and so on.

Here at Publicis Sapient, we can help you identify and implement those best-of-breed, future-proof commerce components and compose them into a modern solution able to satisfy both your business needs and customer expectations.

If you are interested in understanding if your business is ready to adopt a composable approach to commerce, please reach out to John Panella, Group Vice President of Customer Experience Platform Practice, Publicis Sapient and Chairperson MACH Alliance, to request a complimentary “Composable Tech Assessment.” Leveraging decades of experience as the premier digital consultancy of retail commerce, our team will work with you to define your composable journey with the necessary vendors in this offering.

After engaging in this assessment, you will have a better sense of:
commercetools has collaborated with Publicis Sapient to implement its best-in-class technology for Publicis Sapient’s impressive roster of globally impactful enterprise clients such as Bang & Olufsen. The latter, known for its luxury electronics, implemented commercetools technology via Publicis Sapient to access the flexibility needed to integrate all of its sales channels into a single omnichannel strategy and improve its conversion rate by over 60%. Read more about that here.

commercetools and Publicis Sapient are champions of the microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native and headless movement (MACH) and members of the MACH Alliance. Dedicated to this approach, the companies’ commitment to spearheading innovation and implementing MACH-based solutions ensures that customers across industries can succeed in the ever-changing world.

“Publicis Sapient is renowned for setting bold, achievable visions for digital transformation and helping clients keep up with the evolving technological, societal, and cultural expectations of their clients. Together, we’ll empower enterprises at the intersection of adapting to the ‘now’ and being agile enough to handle what’s next seamlessly. We’re excited to work alongside Publicis Sapient to propel the next generation of commerce.”
Kelly Goetsch
Chief Strategy Officer, commercetools

Publicis Sapient and Google Across the Globe

As a Global Partner across Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Marketing Platform (GMP) along with Apigee and Looker, Publicis Sapient is committed to helping established organizations get to their future, digitally-enabled state by fusing strategy, consulting and customer experience with agile engineering and problem-solving creativity.

Google Dedicated Resources

“Our focus at Publicis Sapient is to use the transformative power of digital to help improve people’s lives. By leveraging digital as a force for good for consumers, citizens, diverse groups of people, and governments, companies that are on the path to make digital their core will benefit, too, from their transformation. Our goal is to leave mankind and our planet significantly better than we found it.”
Nigel Vaz
CEO, Publicis Sapient

Publicis Sapient is a technology company that provides enterprise AI platforms and services. With over 30 years of digital business transformation experience, we enable enterprise clients to transform how they operate and serve their customers, unlocking new value and enabling them to thrive in an AI-driven world. Our platforms Sapient Slingshot, Sapient Bodhi and Sapient Sustain use AI built off this deep enterprise context to help organizations modernize their legacy tech systems, build agentic solutions, and automate their IT operations. The combination of our AI platforms and the expertise of our people enables us to deliver faster and more effective outcomes through solutions that are specific to the unique needs of our clients’ businesses, their industries and their customers. Publicis Sapient is the technology hub of Publicis Groupe, uniting 20,000 people worldwide across 28 countries.

For more information, visit publicissapient.com.

Get in touch

This white paper is primarily authored by Publicis Sapient, with contributions from Jon Panella, GVP Technology, and Giancarlo Anania, Global Alliances, in collaboration with tech ISVs: commercetools, Quantum Metric, Bloomreach, Contentstack and Optimove.

Jon Panella
Group Vice President, Global Commerce Practice Lead

Giancarlo Anania
Global Alliance Lead