Why move from SAP Commerce (Hybris) to SAP Commerce Cloud?

Why move in the first place?

This is a question we at Elision hear a lot. Why should we move to SAP Commerce Cloud while our current SAP Commerce on prem platform is doing great?

With SAP Commerce Cloud there are three key benefits that are worth considering:

1. It keeps you current on the latest technologies and innovations.
2. It frees your team from multiple e-commerce technology operations and processes.
3. The pricing is aligned to business metrics.

Capturing the Latest Technologies and Innovations

It is well known that the key focus for SAP is based on the Customer Experience suite (SAP, 2018) and SAP Commerce Cloud is the flagship within the CX portfolio. Because of this, we have seen SAP’s R&D focus shift from the SAP Commerce on prem to SAP Commerce Cloud.

Architecture

One of the biggest changes in SAP Commerce Cloud compared to the on-premises variant is the separation of the front- and back-end modules. SAP Commerce Cloud positions itself as a headless e-commerce platform. Spartacus acts as an Angular-based storefront for SAP Commerce Cloud, and communicates exclusively through the Commerce Rest API. It is highly extendable and customizable, giving users more freedom for the look and feel of customer touchpoints. It also allows front-end developers to make the process of development, testing, and deployment easier, because the front-ender no longer needs to understand the details of back-end technology.

Our customer Ethnicraft launched their new website based on SAP Commerce Cloud with Spartacus storefront. As the first Spartacus-run storefront in Europe, Ethnicraft now offers visitors and partners a high-quality experience on a modern platform.

Check out the Ethnicraft website to see Spartacus in action.

Not only does the new architecture grant the possibility to work with a preferred (SAP or non-SAP) front-end solution, but it also offers access to the extension factory, which contains a huge library of already integrated SaaS-based APIs.

Free Up Your Team

SAP Commerce Cloud allows you to:

• enjoy high ‘up-time’ (99,95%) with automated scaling for peak performance requirements.
• build and deploy quickly and easily with zero downtime.
• use the SAP C/4HANA Cockpit for self-service tools to maintain Commerce cloud systems.
• make use of micro-services to extend the Commerce Cloud installation.
• have a fully Geo-Redundant setup with automated disaster recovery.

Pricing

The SAP Commerce Cloud pricing is more simplified and updated than more common models. The two main metrics are based on generating business value via the SAP Commerce Cloud platform, not technical performance metrics likes the number of ‘Cores’ in place on a current infrastructure. Instead, the pricing is based on the number of orders that the SAP Commerce Cloud platform creates or based on the amount of revenue. Overall, the new pricing metric is focused on medium-sized companies. This means that SAP Commerce Cloud is built to be accessible for B2B companies who are looking at taking their e-commerce strategy to a next level.