The leading brands and retailers are already done working with outdated Oracle Commerce platforms. Still, many of them are worried about huge investments which they have already made in ATG.

commercetools is a modern commerce platform designed for today and tomorrow based on MACH principle which encompasses Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless. They help you migrate from ATG to this modern commerce technology at a suitable pace, price and strategy. They have the philosophy of “pay only for what you use” with industry-standard tech and componentized architecture. In this blog, we will go through the reason of why it’s time to move on and the required competencies for a successful migration.

It is time to move on from Oracle Commerce as there is a whole new way to approach commerce. The reason why Oracle Commerce is outdated and it’s time to move on are:

1. Decreased Focus on On-premises: The new product “Oracle Commerce Cloud” is taking all the development efforts by the Oracle. Its on-premises product is now on maintenance mode as reported by many Oracle Commerce users. The enterprises using traditional Oracle Commerce are not getting required attention due to the changed priorities of Oracle.

2. Wrong Stack: The Oracle Commerce solution has everything you require to set up a website just like Shopify. The retail stores have their own software along with an E-commerce platform which makes it messy and divides the organization in two. In result, there are distinct reporting lines for digital retail head and physical retail head. In commercetools, there is only one API which can be hit by any client for inventory, promotion, cart, coupon and content. commercetools offers individually consumable APIs for separate functionalities of businesses.

3. Obsolete Approach to Commerce: Most of the leading E-commerce platforms were started in the 90s having characteristics of that era. Oracle Commerce is of no exception and has outdated attributes like Centralized monolithic applications, Waterfall style development, large annual updates, Single application inclusive of UI and backend and more.

What does it take to Migrate?

A great way to develop these competencies is to adopt commercetools for one of your smaller brands. Every Oracle Commerce customer has multiple sites — maybe it’s an outlet site, or a country-specific site, or a brand-specific site. Everyone has one. Or 10. Pick one without a lot of traffic so the team has the freedom to really learn the new approach without all of the pressures of replacing your flagship .com. The capabilities you require for this transition are:

• Pick up individuals from different disciplines to form a small vertical team and it should be independent of other teams. The team should be given the freedom to discover, responsibilities to deliver and accountability. It’s already halfway done if the organization part turns out right.
• Get engrossed in this modern world and learn about Microservices, Public cloud, Container ecosystem, DevOps and Agile development methodologies. The fundamental shift here is consuming services from third-party vendors rather than software and will take time to get hold of. Before initiating, be ensured to have a deep understanding of the factors.
• The team has been formed and understanding has been gained, now it’s time for some coding. First, pick a source control system, like Git. That’s probably not a decision you’ll have to spend any time making! Then select a CI/CD pipeline, like Codeship, Travis or CircleCI. This system will build your code, run your regression tests, and (optionally) deploy your artifact. Start with something small and then repeat speedily like a product microservice or a product detail page.
• Once a small microservice is mastered, crack the books for SUNRISE, a reference application by commercetools. It is like ATG’s commerce reference store, but it is open source, modern and commercially supported. Apart from this, a custom user interface can also be built using JavaScript framework or your or your native client’s SDK or content management system.

• Learn to extend and customize the APIs you use as the APIs consumed are hosted by commercetools, unlike Oracle Commerce. Commercetools continually push changes to production, often four times a day or more
• Build a Roadmap of Pieces to Build as Microservices

Final Words

Once you start using commercetools for product catalog, its consumer management capabilities should also be adopted. Move on to shipping rules, personalization, discounts etc. which have strong dependencies on profiles and orders but a necessary step to leave Oracle Commerce. When the product catalogs and profiles are out of Oracle Commerce, go for migrate order functionality including carts and checkouts. commercetools have the capability to support advanced requirements with extension techniques. This is the time to move off of Oracle Commerce and go for far better Headless commerce.

About SynergyTop

SynergyTop is a proud commercetools partner and it’s working towards achieving commercetools vision to help the rest of the industry embrace #MACH with the same passion as the 250+ commercetool’ers around the world.

SynergyTop leverages all the facility provided by commercetools like Accelerators, Integrators, Merchant Center, Marketplace etc. to provide seamless commercetools implementations.  At SynergyTop, we have a team of best in the industry consultants on headless commerce experience and cloud solutions. Our experienced team is looking forward to support you through this migration. Write to us at contact@synergytop.com.