SAP Commerce Cloud: Key Features, Benefits, and Use Cases

Wondering if SAP Commerce Cloud is the right e-commerce platform for your business? Come to compare notes with other platforms? This blog has all the details you need to make an informed decision when finding the right solution for your B2B or B2C organization.

• SAP Commerce Cloud Overview
  • What Is SAP Commerce Cloud?
  • SAP Commerce Cloud Pricing Model
  • Who Should Use SAP Commerce Cloud?
• SAP Commerce Cloud vs. Hybris
• SAP Commerce Cloud Features
• SAP Commerce Cloud Architecture
• When to Use SAP Commerce Cloud
• When Not to Use SAP Commerce Cloud
• Final Thoughts

SAP Commerce Cloud Overview

SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly SAP Hybris) is a B2B and B2C e-commerce platform used by large enterprise organizations to deliver rich omnichannel experiences to customers, from content management to personalization and order processing.

What Is SAP Commerce Cloud?

SAP Commerce cloud is an enterprise e-commerce platform used to provide highly complex scenarios. It focuses on creating an end-to-end buying process and detailed levels of scalability and performance.

SAP Commerce Cloud Pricing Model

SAP Commerce Cloud has two basic pricing options: Standard and Professional edition. Both are available to provide you different levels of support for your e-commerce solutions — but don’t expect it to be cheap. This tool is meant for large e-commerce solutions, and its prices (while not public) start at $100k per year per license.

Who Should Use SAP Commerce Cloud?

As the top-notch option for e-commerce solutions on the market, SAP Commerce Cloud focuses on clients that are creating very large and detailed applications with many services needed to be maintained simultaneously. Due to the large nature of the product, companies are more and more often requesting Hybris-specific engineers to handle the requirements presented with the product.

SAP Commerce Cloud vs. Hybris

SAP Commerce Cloud used to be called Hybris before it was acquired by SAP. So, if you’re wondering what the difference is between the two, the answer is: nothing at all. They are essentially the same product — just under a new name within the SAP portfolio of products.

SAP Commerce Cloud Features

There are four main benefits of using SAP Commerce Cloud: it’s omnichannel, provides a polished customer experience, comes with pre-loaded features, and enables teams to easily leverage a cloud-based infrastructure. 

1. Omnichannel 

SAP Commerce Cloud can seamlessly connect between all touch-points, creating a clean and professional purchasing process for all end users. These are run through headless APIs, which ensure your application runs smoothly.

2. Customer Experience

SAP Commerce Cloud allows users to really personalize the customer experience to their needs and guarantee a very clean, professional process of handling. This is done by recording the data patterns of the customers accessing the website.

3. Pre-Loaded Features

SAP Commerce is an incredibly immersive platform that provides you with all the pieces you need to create your own enterprise e-commerce application. Everything is included with the product; you don’t need to make all kinds of decisions on architecture or having to create it from scratch. You get a full e-commerce application with all the necessary connections available on day one. It’s much easier to onboard new engineers to the team knowing that the architecture is set in SAP Commerce Cloud.

4. Cloud Infrastructure

More and more, developing applications with the cloud in mind is the norm. However, the common reality is that the cloud is better suited to smaller or microservices-based applications.” However, that rule of thumb does not apply to SAP Commerce Cloud. It provides all the benefits of the robust environment and the agility and flexibility that comes from cloud-based infrastructure.

SAP Commerce Cloud Architecture

SAP Commerce Cloud’s architecture is one of the most important aspects of the product. Providing users with a clear and consistent architecture is one of the major benefits of using SAP Commerce Cloud. SAP Commerce Cloud creates all the necessary connections to get your application working properly through APIs.

Portions of the application are automated while also allowing for custom code to be written, so you have the option to build out important custom aspects of the application ranging from the storefront (customer view) to the web content management. SAP Commerce is mainly run through Java code as its main language. It uses a variety of different frameworks (Spring and Hibernate, for example) and runs on a Tomcat server. It’s also built using Ant, which allows for a great amount of customization based on the need of the company creating the application.

Figure 1: https://www.sap.com/cxworks/article/2589633403/sap_commerce_cloud_architecture

When to Use SAP Commerce Cloud

The solution provides users with one inherent benefit — not needing to worry about their infrastructure. The key to using SAP Commerce Cloud is to have a clear vision for a deeply complicated and intricate e-commerce platform. Having developers that work in Java will be a requirement as well to move into this solution.

When Not to Use SAP Commerce Cloud

SAP Commerce is not meant for any small, intro-level application. It is typically more ideal for those that have been working with e-commerce solutions frequently over several years and are looking for a more robust solution that allows a greater level of freedom.

Final Thoughts

For enterprise organizations looking for a scalable and proven e-commerce platform, SAP Commerce Cloud is a dependable commercial option. For those who don’t need the full suite of SAP Commerce Cloud features, or for those working on smaller applications, other technologies or platforms may be a better choice.”

SAP Cloud Commerce is unique in the marketplace since it’s designed for large, intricate applications but uses cloud architecture. Consider the benefits and ever-growing popularity of using a cloud-based solution as you search for a platform that meets your e-commerce needs.

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Additional Resources

•          Blog - What Is SAP Hybris? 
•          Blog - JRebel Accelerates SAP Hybris Development 
•          On-Demand Webinar - Learn How JRebel Accelerates Hybris Development 
•          Downloadable Datasheet - How JRebel Accelerates Java Development for SAP Hybris