[00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to Commerce Today. I'm really excited about today's episode because Adobe has done something big at their Adobe Summit conference. They have launched a I'm just gonna come out and call it a Shopify competitor. So they have launched a SaaS version of Adobe Commerce that has many of the advanced features of Adobe Commerce Cloud, even some of the ones that kind of surprised me that they bundled into a SaaS offering. And they've got it out there ready to go. The first GA of it will be available in June, and that was actually just one of two big new Adobe Commerce product announcements.

So I'm gonna walk through each of those two announcements and then I will dive into what this means for you as a merchant, as an agency. I'm sure many of you are wondering. From the Magento ecosystem standpoint, what does this mean? And honestly, I think it's mostly good news. So first of all, the names.

This is, hopefully there will be some further evolution of these names because I've heard it called a few different things. But [00:01:00] basically Adobe commerce. Cloud service or Adobe Commerce as a cloud service is the new fully SaaS offering. Not to be confused with Adobe Commerce Cloud, which is the pass or platform as a service offering.

Then there is Adobe Commerce Optimizer and that is the other product that we're gonna talk about as well. So we'll have Magento Open Source Adobe Commerce. Adobe Commerce Cloud Service, Adobe Commerce Optimizer. All slightly different products. So Adobe Commerce Cloud Service, it is a fully self-service setup, provisioned in minutes, fully SaaS based, all the benefits of a SaaS, so always up to date, no manual patching or updating required.

Cloud native elastically, scalable services, all that work that Adobe's been doing of building things out as services for the new features in Adobe commerce makes a lot more sense now, doesn't it? One of the things that surprised me the most is it uses edge delivery services. So this is Adobe's newest approach to [00:02:00] front end.

So the last major change to the Adobe Commerce front end was PWA studio. A few years back before that Adobe Commerce launched with a framework called Luma. So Edge Delivery Services, this is the thing that I've been talking about for about a year now, where Adobe has been getting just amazing lighthouse scores, amazing results on core web vitals through just these lightning fast storefronts, and that is built into the Adobe Commerce Cloud service.

Another thing that surprised me that they built in is product asset management. Powered by a EM assets, Adobe Experience Manager assets. This makes a lot more sense though in light of some of the other announcements at Summit around the new generative AI tools that are built in a EM. So this is how they're bringing all of those tools in.

You have advanced catalog scalability. The benchmarks I've seen say that it will support at least 250 million SKUs. Up to 30,000 prices per SKU. That's huge. That's way beyond the other SaaS platforms. [00:03:00] It also has the full B2B module and B2B functionality in addition to the B2C functionality. So it's not held back on features you get, everything you would get feature wise with any type of Adobe commerce implementation.

It does tie a little bit deeper into the world of a EM. So you can use the Adobe admin console to have unified user management. If you're already using other a EM products, this will make it so much easier to roll out to your team. I already mentioned has those gen ai content and asset creation tools built in, and it is very extendable, so they built it in a modern, composable way.

There's a reason I've been talking about that a lot lately. So it's API first, so Adobe App Builder and Adobe API mesh are. Fully integrated into this new SaaS offering. So what are the pros and cons of this before I move on to the commerce Optimizer? So obviously it's gonna significantly reduce your total cost of ownership.

So [00:04:00] it's gonna be as a fully SaaS platform, not an open source on premise or pass platform. It can lower your TCO simply because you don't need as many development resources. You don't need assist admin. There's so many things that. Adobe then is gonna take care of for you the site performance compared to sites that aren't using edge delivery.

It is just a night and day difference seen up to four times faster page loads that's leading to substantially higher organic traffic and four to 8% higher conversion rates just from moving. From other SaaS platforms onto this platform. It has those great merchandising, content creation tools.

If there's anything Adobe knows super well, it is how to create those assets and manage them. It has auto scaling just like Adobe Commerce Cloud does. It's highly composable. It's not. I feel like a lot of SaaS platforms are designed to lock developers are out or eliminate developers, and it's probably the most developer friendly SaaS platform I have seen.

And then you get immediate access to new features and [00:05:00] security updates. You're not having to worry about patches and all that fun stuff. There are some cons though. Like anything, there is no perfect one size fits all solution. You don't get direct database access. You don't get direct server access, all customizations, you have code access.

So it has to be, all customizations are via APIs or App Builder, so it's not gonna be as flexible compared to Magento Open Source or Adobe Commerce Cloud. But this, I think, is intentional as I've talked to different people at Adobe. They understand that there's a place for a pass, there's a place for an open source product, and there's a place for a SaaS, and they are trying to clearly differentiate between those three.

And we'll talk about that a little bit more at the end of the episode. Also another con, if you are a Magento developer or a Magento merchant or an Adobe commerce developer or merchant there's not really support for your traditional. Now, old school theming methods. So Luma and even Page Builder are not supported.

You will have to use Edge Delivery [00:06:00] Services and now. That's a pro andana con because those edge delivery services powered sites are incredibly fast. It just means you're gonna have to upskill your team. If you're hoping to make a quick move, say from Magento open source to this new solution you will have to change your theme or change your design.

So that means a little bit of training, a little bit of re-skilling. Luckily I know there's a number of agencies, including creativity that are already ready to support these new products, so we can help you get your team up to speed. Now, real quick, Adobe Commerce Optimizer, I think this is gonna get lost in the noise and excitement around the new SaaS offering, but I think this is an even bigger potentially more interesting part of Adobe strategy here.

Adobe Commerce Optimizer is designed as a. Composable solution. It is the front end and merchandising layer that can sit on top of an existing e-commerce platform. So if you're on Salesforce, SAP e-Commerce Tools, some [00:07:00] ERP provided, legacy e-commerce platform that you just can't get off of commerce Optimizer can actually sit in front of one of those and be your front end.

So it's on a full replatform. It allows you to focus on just incremental improvements. It provides your storefront merchandising and asset management capabilities from Adobe. It's also powered by edge delivery, so it's a very fast, high performance storefront. It's really designed for advanced catalog management, so it can pull from multiple backend sources.

PIM, ERP, legacy e-commerce platform. It has all the great catalog management that Adobe Commerce has. So sophisticated segmentation, pricing, promotions, great analytics segmentation and experimentation tools. So the pros on this one. It offers modernization without the disruption and the cost of a full replatforming.

It's very attractive to businesses. They're deeply embedded with a legacy e-commerce platform can give you just amazing front end [00:08:00] performance and merchandising improvements immediately. If you haven't seen my conference presentation from Meet Magento, Florida about technical debt, one of the things I actually showed is how by just replacing your front end, you can greatly reduce your technical debt, improve your performance, lower your TCO, and improve your conversion rate.

Commerce Optimizer actually gives you a very easy way to do that. And to get just one of the fastest storefronts that you can even find, one of the fastest front ends you can find anywhere deployed onto your site can also greatly simplify the integration and management of complex multi-source catalogs.

That's something that Adobe Commerce has been great at for a number of years, and so that brings that kind of power into these legacy e-commerce platforms. And it gives you a way to have quick scalability without a whole lot of operational overhead. Now, a few cons, just like with the SaaS platform as well.

It's not a complete end-to-end e-commerce solution, so it's gonna require a backend from another system for checkout. And also the integration complexity [00:09:00] really depends on those backend systems. If you're dealing with a legacy e-commerce platform that has no API or that's very hard to deal with, it's gonna be challenging to implement if you're dealing with someone that has adopted a composable mindset.

Then it'll be much simpler to implement. So it's primarily aimed at the larger, more complex enterprise setups. But I think there's gonna be some really interesting builds using this technology. Where does all this fit? What is the strategy here? And I mentioned earlier that I've had some great conversations with folks at Adobe.

I'm continuing to participate in the other sessions at Summit that relate to these new announcements and more of the technical details. And I see a very clear strategy here. First of all, just to get it outta the way, Adobe actually already emailed Adobe Commerce Cloud customers and said Adobe Commerce Cloud is not going away.

This is not a replacement for the existing past solution. This is not a replacement for Magento open source. This is an additional product [00:10:00] offering that Adobe's offering, and I think it fits very well together. So they've made it clear that through things like the. Magento open source community prioritization efforts and pull requests.

There are new features being added to Magento and Adobe Commerce. There's continuing to be security patches, updates, new features. All the things that have been happening with Magento, open source and Adobe Commerce Cloud will continue to happen. Now they'll also just feed into this awesome new fully SaaS cloud service.

So they are encouraging everyone to take a composable and API first mindset. That way if you do want to move between these three options, you can, and it'll be much easier to do. So that's just smart. That's just where e-commerce is in 2025. We all need to be really building things in a composable first mindset, just to make it easier as tools evolve and change as needs change to be able to move between platforms or between services.

I really am excited about it. I really feel like this is [00:11:00] a great way. So best example is before. Someone comes to me and they have a small business. They don't have the budget or the technical know-how to set up a server and run Magento open source themselves. There's a limited number of options really at that point, and honestly, that's where it's okay, do you pick Shopify or BigCommerce?

And honestly, lately, if you've been following the news and following the markets, it's really. Do you pick Shopify or Shopify? And that's not good for the e-commerce ecosystem. That's not good for. Anyone that's not even good for Shopify really, for there not to be a true, solid competitor to that platform to literally have no choice.

And so this creates choice. This creates an opportunity for merchants to say, you know what? I'm already in the Adobe ecosystem. I'm already using some of the other Adobe tools. Why don't I start with Adobe Commerce Cloud as a service, the SaaS offering, and use [00:12:00] that. And be able to have all those super powerful tools, that deep integration into Adobe's generative AI feature set and all of those things, and at least have an option, a true option to compare against Shopify.

And I think for a lot of people it will work much better than Shopify. I'm surprised, honestly, I knew this was coming, but I didn't know to what level. And I am a little shocked at just how. Adobe's coming out, swinging. They put some big features and functionality into this cloud-based offering.

This is huge. This is a huge shot across the bow in front of Shopify saying, Hey, you've been going up market, trying to. Take more of our larger enterprise customers. You know what? We can actually bring a lot of our tools through the new technologies and this new composable commerce approach.

We can bring those down into the SMB market and we can bring the price and the complexity and the TCO down and now let's have a real competition here between the platforms. So I am excited. I also think if you [00:13:00] are someone in the Magento ecosystem. This is good news for us because it gets more people into our ecosystem and it keeps more people into our ecosystem.

For a long time I've always said, Hey. Okay. If you have the budget, the complexity, the needs for Adobe commerce, you absolutely should look at Adobe Commerce. If you don't, I would love for you to look at Magento open source, because then as you do grow in the future, you can much more easily move from Magento open source to Adobe Commerce Cloud.

Then if you do go to something like a Shopify or a BigCommerce. So this is a way that Adobe is getting even more people into our eCommerce ecosystem. I guess the last thing I would share is that Adobe has made it very clear that they understand that there are some businesses that need what they're calling in process customizations.

So they need to be able to change the code. They need to be able, they have a level of complexity of their e-commerce build that they need. PHP based customizations and modifications. That is why Adobe Commerce Cloud and [00:14:00] Magento open source are not going anywhere that basically now. If you don't need that and if your needs fit well with the new SaaS offering, that's gonna be the recommendation.

However, if you do need that higher level of customization than Adobe Commerce Cloud or Magento open source are gonna be the recommendation. I hope you are as excited as I am about all this and I am looking forward to sharing more. I actually may revive my old LinkedIn newsletter. I haven't sent out a newsletter in a while.

But there's even more announcements coming outta summit later today that I will be sharing and writing up and letting you know how this impacts the broader world of e-commerce. And in the meantime, I will see y'all next week on the next episode of Commerce Today.