Java Basics: What Is SAP Hybris?
SAP Hybris, as a collection of e-commerce and product CMS solutions, is used by many enterprise companies to power their applications. With its blend of customer behavior analysis, extensive support, and scalability, it's a good choice, too. But it does have drawbacks.
In this blog, we give a high-level overview of SAP Hybris, what it is, what it does, how it's used, and discuss the pros and cons of Hybris for development teams considering the platform.
- SAP Hybris Overview
- What Language Is Hybris Written In?
- SAP Hybris Architecture Example
- Pros and Cons of SAP Hybris
- Redeploy Times in SAP Hybris
- Final Thoughts
SAP Hybris Overview
SAP Hybris provides solutions for any organization interested in creating a cost and time efficient customer experience. But what sets it apart is that it does this while reducing the complexity inherent to building a scalable enterprise system capable of delivering a good customer experience.
What Is SAP Hybris?
SAP Hybris is a large family of products that at their core will provide any given user the ideal customer experience possible. SAP Hybris focuses on a variety of different areas, including:
- E-commerce - provides easy channel communication for B2C, B2B, merchandising and more to better understand exactly how to figure out what any given customer wants and how to convert them into regular buyers of your product.
- Marketing - Hybris enables analysis of customer behavior done in real-time.
- Sales - Hybris helps process customer details in a way that allows sales teams to better target customers and optimize each opportunity bought in.
- Services - Allowing for great customer engagement is what keeps your customers coming back for more and the services aspect ensures that you can employ effective strategies to ensure that.
Why Use Hybris?
When it comes to working with all these different systems for any given e-commerce company, it is difficult to identify what tools and technology will be best to work for each scenario.
Often companies, especially smaller companies, will purchase technology to address each need as the problem arises. This results in all kinds of difficulty making each of these different technologies to work together and pass information properly. And even if you do get this figured out, the information being passed as well as the maintenance required to maintain is quite expensive.
Having one product that can provide all these connections provides users with an easy solution that requires minimal work to setup.
What Language Is Hybris Written in?
Hybris is written mainly in Java with some Javascript used for the front-end.
It is created using storefronts that are built using the Spring MVC framework. The extensibility provided by Hybris makes it very easy for any Java developer to be able to pick up Hybris and learn how to use it with relative ease.
What Is SAP Hybris Used For?
SAP Hybris is principally used to create eCommerce applications for enterprise level companies. Mid to large companies would be most likely to use Hybris in their applications. Hybris can provide users with all the connections necessary to be develop and grow their business.
Pros and Cons of SAP Hybris Development
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, Hybris does have some drawbacks. Because of the size of the platform, and the default technologies incorporated into it, the build process can be long. It also had a considerable learning curve, requiring extensive training and expertise in order to modify the business application.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Single product for all e-commerce platform for company. | Robust build process with excessive and often unused technology built into it. |
| Highly scalable and customizable with numerous features available. | Requires intensive training in order to develop in Hybris resulting in only highly skilled developers being able to modify the business application. |
| Enterprise level support for product. | |
| Able to analyze customers using the company’s product and ensures promos are executed swimmingly. |
But the benefits of Hybris typically outweigh the cons. Because it provides a large suite of functionalities that work well together, it makes developing and scaling with Hybris easy. Add to that the ability to analyze customer experience and manage customer relationships, and it's easy to see why Hybris is a popular choice for enterprise Java applications.
Redeploy Times in Hybris
As shown discussed above, Hybris has a number of great benefits that can be utilized by companies to create and maintain e-commerce business within an enterprise company.
However, one of the more glaring issues on Hybris is the fact that the application is built into one Ant build. While this makes production easier overall, it also makes it very painful for Java developers to modify and build out the Hybris application that they are working on.
We find that the median Java developer working on a Hybris application is spending somewhere around 1 hour per day waiting for their Hybris application to build after a change to the application. JRebel provides Java developers with the ability to see those changes on the fly — without having to run the Ant build.
JRebel does this by modifying the classloaders run in the Tomcat server embedded in the Hybris build. By having those classloaders monitor the classes updated through the developer’s IDE, JRebel makes changes occur on the fly without having to build or restart the Tomcat server.
Final Thoughts
In this blog, we gave a high level overview of SAP Hybris, and why teams may use it to help power their business. With a great set of benefits, and a suite of impressive and synergistic functionalities, it's easy to see why so many medium to large-scale businesses rely on Hybris to accomplish their goals.
But those benefits do come alongside some obvious downsides, like long redeploy times. But for teams who are interested in the functionality, JRebel offers an easy, cost-effective way to get those features and while avoiding lengthy redeploy times.
Want to see how JRebel can streamline your Hybris development?
Additional Resources
Want to see how JRebel works with SAP Hybris firsthand? This webinar gives a real-time demonstration of how it works.
Looking for additional insights into SAP Hybris from our Java experts? Be sure to check out these related resources.
