Clouds are great, aren’t they? So fluffy and inviting, just floating around in the sky and going about their daily business without a care in the world. But we’re not here to talk about those clouds today.
Adobe Commerce Cloud does a lot more than those aforementioned colourless congregations of moisture in the sky. But what is it? How does it work? And, most importantly, how can it benefit you and your business? Well today, we’re going to answer those questions and give you a deeper insight into this extremely powerful, flexible and scalable end-to-end platform. But firstly, let’s take a quick look at what the term ‘cloud’ actually means in this capacity…
Clouds in the digital world
These days, you may have noticed that the term ‘cloud’ occurs quite frequently in the digital realm, particularly with regards to hosting. That’s because this hosting method has evolved to become one of the most popular ways to deploy websites and solutions in the current age that we live in. But what does it actually mean?
Essentially, cloud hosting means deploying and hosting a site or solution across a multitude of different servers that are all connected to each other. This differs to traditional hosting, which typically meant that the entirety of your site and data was hosted on a single server. Cloud hosting enables users to manage their site and data via a virtual machine that is able to access each of the different servers across the cloud (network of servers). The actual name ‘cloud’ is based on the fact that these hosting servers pretty much only exist in this virtual environment.
Cloud hosting offers a vast range of benefits, such as the fact that having multiple servers (or machines) provides you with much greater computing power and potential, as well as a wealth of different services that can be accessed through those same machines. By utilising cloud hosting, you’re essentially outsourcing your storage and computing resources to a provider who is able to deliver an enhanced infrastructure with exceptional security, maintenance and setup capabilities. Cloud hosting also offers intuitive scalability that enables an organisation to increase or decrease their resources as and when they need to (which is extremely useful for sites who suddenly experience a high amount of traffic that their current resources may struggle to deal with). That scalability often includes data storage capacities, processing power and networking capabilities. Cloud scaling is most often able to be done extremely quickly and easily too, meaning it can be done with next to no downtime to prevent any disruption to a site’s services. This is one of the biggest benefits when compared to traditional physical server hosting.
How has cloud hosting impacted ecommerce?
One word. Positively. Cloud hosting has brought about a long list of benefits that has had a direct positive impact on the ecommerce world. The scalability itself has enabled many organisations and businesses to actively tackle a multitude of situations without having to worry about investing funds in larger physical IT infrastructure, enabling that money to be utilised for business growth instead.
It has aided overall site stability in this respect, and that has given businesses the peace of mind they need to operate effectively. Services such as Amazon Web Services has enabled millions of individuals, including everyone from start-ups to government agencies, to lower their costs, increase their site’s performance, and build a solid platform with exceptional flexibility to assist with their long-term growth.
Adobe Cloud Commerce brings you those same benefits and more. The ability to utilise all of the benefits of cloud hosting in order to enhance your business operations and resource allocation means you can be prepared for any situation, lower your physical IT infrastructure investments, take advantage of impressive responsiveness and site speed and much, much more. So, let’s take a look at what Adobe Commerce Cloud consists of…
What is Adobe Commerce Cloud?
Adobe describes their Commerce Cloud platform as “an end-to-end platform to manage, personalise, and optimise commerce experiences”. Whilst this gives a good general overview of ACC in just a few words, there’s definitely a lot more to discover.
Adobe Commerce Cloud is part of the Experience Cloud, a complete suite of best-in-class enterprise solutions that have become the go-to-choice for organisations in almost every industry across the globe. That suite consists of a wide variety of tools that enable said organisations to create, deploy and manage a whole host of different digital experiences. Commerce Cloud essentially bundles some of the most powerful and useful ecommerce tools from this suite to give users and businesses an extremely flexible, scalable and fully-managed cloud-based platform to deliver these experiences with the precision and potential that the world has come to expect from Adobe and Magento. Let’s take a look at the bundle in more detail.
ACC is built with Magento Commerce Pro at its core, and is integrated with Adobe’s Experience Manager (AEM) content management system. This means you’re able to take advantage of one of the most popular and powerful storefronts currently available, as well as being able to effectively manage everything across a vast range of different channels and devices with ease. AEM has been a staple CMS for countless organisations, and it’s easy to see why. But it doesn’t stop there. You can take advantage of Adobe’s powerful personalisation features with Target, and gain intelligent and meaningful insights through Adobe Analytics. You can even choose to implement more add-ons in order to meet your specific needs, enabling you to create a platform that truly works with you.
The bundle also includes all of the integration framework that enables each one of the separate ACC systems to work in harmony. What this means is that even in its most basic form, Adobe Commerce Cloud is an extremely potent platform bundle that enables you and your business to take your operations to the next level in an efficient and intuitive manner.
Does Adobe Commerce Cloud differ from Magento itself?
Currently, there are a small number of different standalone Magento offerings available, including Open Source, and Commerce (previously known as Enterprise). If we want to look at the actual differences between the ACC bundle and a standalone Magento offering, we would find it a little difficult. But that definitely does not mean that ACC and a standalone Magento platform are the same.
As we mentioned earlier, ACC utilises Magento Commerce within the bundle. That means that the Magento you may have (or may not have yet) experienced will work in the same manner. Where the differences start is when you look at everything that comes bundled with Magento in Adobe Commerce Cloud.
We’ve mentioned the extensive portfolio of tools and integration framework that ACC offers, and that’s one of the biggest differences between the two. At the heart of it all, it’s still Magento Commerce, but the integration with other Adobe solutions such as Target and Analytics, as well as the framework itself, is what really sets ACC apart. Adobe Commerce Cloud puts everything that’s needed from a complete end-to-end solution right at your fingertips, enabling seamless workflows and powerful operational capabilities that aren’t immediately available in a standalone instance of Magento itself, in a single package.
Do Magento extensions work in the same way with Adobe Commerce Cloud?
Yes. You’re still able to make use of the extensions that work with Magento (including those available from the Magento Marketplace) with ACC. The Magento Commerce instance within ACC works the same way in that respect and maintains support for third-party extensions.
What are the benefits of Adobe Commerce Cloud?
So now we know what ACC is, let’s take a look at how it can benefit you and your organisation…
A fully integrated suite of tools with Adobe’s integration framework – Most of our article so far have revolved around the inclusion of Adobe’s Experience Cloud tools and their integration with Magento Commerce in a single intuitive, fully-managed package. But that’s because that really is one of the biggest benefits of ACC as an end-to-end commerce solution. ACC is integrated and synchronised with Adobe’s Experience Cloud cluster including Marketing Cloud, Advertising Cloud, and Analytics Cloud. The ability to access class-leading products as part of a completely integrated suite enables your enterprise to streamline its operations and take advantage of the excellent built-in features to maximise your sales and growth. Aside from the already-included Adobe products within the bundle, you’re also able to make use of optional add-ons, such as Magento Order Management and Adobe Campaign. The integration framework itself means that working with each of the package’s tools is seamless, reducing the need to go through potentially lengthy integration processes from the get-go.
Magento Commerce forms the beating heart of the ACC package – If you have pre-existing experience with Magento already, you’ll know just how powerful the platform really is. It offers an outstanding way to manage your product catalogue, pricing, tax configurations, promotions, offers and more. The enterprise edition of Magento (Magento Commerce) is at the very heart of Adobe Commerce Cloud, giving you and your business all of the positive benefits of a platform that is utilised by thousands of organisations all over the globe, but with the ability to manage everything else with the Adobe Experience Manager CMS…
Adobe Experience Manager provides powerful capabilities – Creating, handling and managing content can be a monstrous task for any business, particularly those with large inventories and page counts. That’s why ACC integrates Magento’s intelligent storefront features with the power and flexibility of AEM as the content management system. Adobe Experience Manager provides extremely powerful and flexible page building and templating capabilities, as well as enabling effective and efficient content management, site management and workflow approvals. It also allows you to manage all of your marketing content and assets, and even build mobile apps and forms. The ability to utilise such a powerful CMS enables your business to deliver an exceptional digital experience for your customers that can aid brand loyalty, drive demand, and improve conversion. You’re also able to remain consistent across all of your channels whilst delivering responsive and relevant personal experiences that prioritise your customers’ needs.
Adobe Target for effective personalisation – Personalisation is one of the most effective ecommerce strategies currently in existence. With Adobe Target working seamlessly with the rest of the ACC package, you can ensure that the right content is delivered to the right people at the right time. Target allows you to easily A/B test campaigns, utilise automated behavioural targeting, provide relevant and effective product recommendations and more. Essentially, Target gives you the ability to further build the trust that both your new and existing customers have in your business, enhance loyalty, and improve the entire customer journey throughout your website.
Adobe Analytics for deep insights and exceptional data management – Knowing what’s happening with your site is crucial. Knowing how your customers are interacting with it is even more so. That’s why Adobe Cloud Commerce features seamless integration with Adobe’s best-in-class analytics solution. Adobe Analytics works in real-time, providing rich insights with detailed segmentation across each and every one of your marketing channels. Analytics allows you to effectively understand user behaviour in order to influence your operations moving forwards. It also enables you to view problem areas and how your efforts are performing with an in-depth collection of metrics that you’re able to utilise for a wide variety of situations. When it comes to integrating your most important customer data into key business processes and breaking down every aspect of your business’ data, Adobe Analytics is a phenomenal solution.
Fully-managed cloud-based system – One of the biggest benefits of ACC is Adobe’s dedication to performance, security and agility within the cloud-based platform. With a fully-managed cloud-based design, Adobe Commerce Cloud offers rapid time to market capabilities and the ability to make all of your operations quicker, easier and much more streamlined. It also means that your business is able to take advantage of the latest in Adobe innovation to ensure long-term success right from the beginning.
Effective omni-channel solution – Take control of every aspect of your business with ease. Adobe Commerce Cloud enables you to organise and manage every single channel that you use in an intuitive and effective manner. In fact, ACC allows you to utilise its powerful suite of tools and solutions to power and manage almost any commerce use you want to. It can handle global, multi-site and multi-brand deployments, and offers a wealth of features and functions for B2C, B2B and marketplace business models. Amazon integration means that handling your product catalogue on one of the most popular sales channels in the world is simple too.
Scalable system with exceptional support – The last thing you need, particularly during busier times of the year, is a performance problem preventing your operations from working effectively. Slow performance can have serious knock-on effects that can eventually result in lost revenue and brand loyalty. Adobe ensure that your Magento Commerce site can remain secure and stable thanks to ACC’s scalable nature and outstanding support, even in the event of extreme traffic situations. That means that you can allocate your business’ resources elsewhere during those busy periods.
We could go on…
The benefits to Adobe Cloud Commerce are extensive, and the adaptability and flexible options available to you and your business mean that ACC offers a lot more to a variety of different business models than is immediately obvious.
If you’d like to know more about Adobe Cloud Commerce or Magento Commerce, get in touch with us today! We’re always on hand to help and discuss your needs.
