- If you're considering using Adobe Commerce,
the more you know about it, the better.
In this video,
I'm gonna define what Adobe Commerce is
by breaking down its history,
talking about its tech stack,
laying out where Adobe is taking the platform
so you know where it's going to go,
and discussing the platform's
general strengths and weaknesses.
If you're new around here, my name is TJ Gamble.
I'm the Founder and CEO of Jamersan,
where we've been helping accelerate
businesses' ecommerce growth for over 20 years.
We're also an Adobe Commerce Partner,
and I was lucky enough to be awarded a Magento Master Award
back when Adobe Commerce was called Magento.
But we'll get into that in a minute.
What is Adobe Commerce?
Well, according to Adobe's marketing material,
"Adobe Commerce is a leading open source
enterprise ecommerce platform
where you can build multi-channel ecommerce experiences
for B2B and B2C customers on a single platform.
From catalog to payment to fulfillment,
our future-proof technology gives you a commerce platform
that's endlessly flexible, extensible, and scalable."
As a merchant that's trying
to find the right ecommerce platform,
was that helpful at all?
Let's peel back that onion a little bit
and break it down in more detail.
To understand the context,
let's have a brief history lesson on Adobe Commerce.
Back in the mid-2000s,
the ecommerce platform landscape was a hot mess.
Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner,
these two guys decided to fix this
and released Magento in late August of 2007.
It was designed for modularity/flexibility
but also upgradeability.
which were things pretty much all of its competitors
at the time lacked.
The platform was open source, free to download,
and was met with instant success.
By 2009, the platform had risen to incredible popularity,
and a paid enterprise version was introduced based
on the open source platform.
In 2011, eBay decided to acquire Magento
and immediately began development on Magento 2
to modernize the architecture of the platform.
In 2015 though, eBay finally figured
it'd get back to doing what it knows best
and sold Magento to a private equity group
right as they finally released the long-awaited Magento 2.
In may of 2018, Adobe acquired Magento for $1.68 billion,
with a B.
In early 2021, they rebranded the enterprise version
of the platform to Adobe Commerce
with Magento remaining the free-to-download product.
And all of that basically boils down to Adobe Commerce
being the paid enterprise version of Magento,
obviously, with some additional premium features added.
Before we get into the tech stack,
consider hitting that like button and subscribing
as both help us out a lot.
And drop your questions and thoughts in the comments
or feel free to contact me using the link
in the description if you wanna discuss it further.
Also, I've created a download
where I go through the five types of ecommerce businesses
that I think Adobe Commerce is perfect for.
And just as important,
I include some projects that I think should avoid it.
A link should pop up here,
but there's also one in the description.
You can click once we're done.
Let's talk about Adobe Commerce's architecture.
As I go through this,
I'm only going to touch on the high-level stuff,
and I'm just going to treat you
like you know what you're talking about.
If these technologies don't make sense to you,
then it's probably not important that you understand them.
It'll only take a minute, and then we'll get
into the fun businessy stuff here in just a second.
Adobe Commerce's backend code is written in PHP.
Of course, the default theming uses JavaScript
and some libraries like Knockout.js and RequireJS,
and it's powered by MySQL database.
Like most platforms, you'll also need to use XML
for a lot of the configuration of custom things.
And because it's open source,
there are some tools you'll wanna get familiar with
that you'll probably be using such as Redis and Composer.
Adobe has released a progressive web app front end
that you can opt for instead of the traditional theming.
It's built in React
and uses the UPWARD proxy server architecture
and connects to the platform using GraphQL.
This open source tech stack gives Adobe Commerce
some very obvious strengths and weaknesses.
It's also an evolving conversation
with where Adobe is taking the platform.
Now I'm gonna hit on these strengths and weaknesses,
but it's important for you to stick around
to discuss the future of Adobe Commerce
so you'll understand how all of this is changing
as time progresses.
The primary strengths with Adobe Commerce lies
with its open source architecture.
It's incredibly flexible,
and you can build unbelievably complex user experiences
and integrations with the platform
because you have access to all of the source code.
Adobe Commerce has also adopted the third party
and community support from the Magento platform.
Now, although the community is not as strong
and passionate as it once was, it's still one
of the most active ecommerce platform communities out there,
and something that just about any other platform
is desperate to recreate.
And that means it's easier to find experienced developers,
and having access to third-party tools off the shelf
lowers your time to market.
Adobe also has an entire suite of enterprise applications,
like Experience Manager that integrate with Adobe Commerce
if you have that enterprise budget
and you wanna take your user experience up a few notches.
So if you're already in
or considering the broader Adobe ecosystem of applications,
then Adobe Commerce definitely makes sense.
The primary downside of Adobe Commerce is really the tax
that comes with open source software.
You're gonna have to patch it and update it
as new features come out and security flaws are found.
There's just no way around it.
It also requires more technical knowledge
to develop and maintain the platform
because there is an entire hosting infrastructure
to consider.
Let's now look to the future of Adobe Commerce.
Adobe has started to accelerate the development
of enterprise functionality.
Things like Live Search
and AI-powered Product Recommendations
are really cool tools,
and their PWA Studio project is developing nicely.
If you ever get a chance
to watch a Sneaks episode at Adobe Summit,
you'll have some insight as to the types
of creative engineering task Adobe is trying to tackle.
There's no doubt that they have the ability
to take the platform to the next level.
However, all of these new enterprise features
are being released as individual SaaS microservices.
And that overcomes some of the disadvantages of open source,
but SaaS has its own limitations
because you don't have access to the source code.
But it falls in line
with the composable commerce microservices architecture
that the enterprise ecommerce space is moving towards.
As a result, I expect Adobe
to continue to push the architecture
toward a series of SaaS-based microservices,
all tied together
with the open source Adobe Commerce platform,
but we'll have to wait and see.
As I mentioned before,
I have a guide that outlines the five project types
that Adobe Commerce is perfect for
and a few projects that should avoid it.
Here's the link that should pop up,
or you can find it in the description
to download that guide.
Of course, contact me using the link in the description
if you have questions.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments,
and I'll see you next time.