It’s been a whirlwind of a week, being “Adobe’d” for two whole days! I had the pleasure of attending both the Adobe Commerce partner enablement session and Adobe Summit London this week, and there’s certainly plenty to be excited about.
The enablement event gave us a tonne of insight into Adobe Commerce Optimizer (ACO) and Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service (ACCS). I’ve got to commend Adobe on their transparency – they’re being incredibly open about these two exciting new products and how merchants can get the most out of them.
Adobe Commerce Optimizer (ACO)
I think ACO might even be a bit of a forerunner compared to ACCS. What I love most about the ACO proposition is its three core parts:
1. Merchandising / Catalog Services
Imagine having a single source of truth for all your products. With ACO, you can pull all your product data – SKUs, titles, descriptions, all the different attributes, videos and images – into this Catalog Service. Then you can pick and choose where that data goes: your website, ERP, another website or brochure, or another marketplace. Keep enriching that data and you can push it to multiple places.
You can also apply policies and create different price lists. So, you could have 50 different price lists for the customers you deal with, feeding into the whole B2B side of things. The great thing about this is the huge performance gains it gives you. This catalog sits outside the monolith of Adobe Commerce (the PaaS solution or Magento), meaning you get great speed and flexibility.
2. Edge Delivery Services (EDS)
With Edge Delivery Services (EDS), Adobe offers various ‘drop-ins’. Just like the catalogue services, you don’t have to have the Adobe Commerce piece. As a headless solution, you can keep EDS completely separate from Adobe Commerce or any legacy commerce solution.
You can update content using familiar tools such as Googe Docs or Microsoft Word. These Adobe ‘drop-ins’ – essentially code snippets – allow you to pull data from your commerce platform or, of course, from the new Catalogue Services.
3. App Builder and API Mesh
This piece is really interesting. Think of App Builder and API Mesh as a middleware layer that connects Commerce to any third-party solution. You can now easily bring in or push data to your ERP, whether it’s SAP Business One, Business Central or even a bespoke system.
What’s brilliant about this modular approach is that even if you’re happy with your legacy commerce system, you can start leveraging ACO. When you’re ready, this provides a clear pathway to Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service (ACCS).
Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service (ACCS)
Moving to ACCS doesn’t mean reverting to a monolithic system. This is still very much a modular system, allowing you to pick and choose the key parts that best benefit your business. The goal here is agility and flexibility in your digital stack, leading to superior performance, not just in terms of website speed, but by empowering teams to attach new products and implement new features faster than ever.
The fantastic thing is that once you’re part of the Adobe family, even if you’re just using ACO or a few of its modules, you’re set up to plug into other powerful Adobe solutions, such as Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics or even Customer Journey Optimizer.
Adobe Summit London
Yesterday, we headed to Adobe Summit London. Although ACCS and ACO weren’t centre stage here, the Summit was very much focused on creativity, marketing and AI – the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) side of Adobe’s offerings.
However, it all ties into a full solution. With ACO, for example, you can use image services powered by tools like Firefly to automatically create product images and videos.
The AEM side of things is truly pushing the boundaries of customer experience. You can create a single campaign and at the click of a button have the copy and images automatically optimised and ready to push out to all of your social channels, whether that’s LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok or something else.
What’s also clear is Adobe’s commitment to the LLM (Large Language Model) arena, ensuring your site is optimised for different AI engines. We saw a brilliant demo showing how it identifies content weaknesses and suggests changes to improve your AI search results.
The Future of Commerce is Exciting!
Even with the Summit’s focus on creativity, marketing and AI, conversations about ACCS and ACO were happening aplenty – I even had people approaching me to ask me about them!
The biggest takeaway for me is this: when I talked about ACCS or ACO, I never once had to sell it. I simply explained what it does, how it works and the potential roadmap. Whether you’re on a legacy commerce platform or a current Adobe Commerce Cloud PaaS solution, there’s a clear pathway to ACCS and all the amazing benefits that come with it.
A Fantastic Show!
Adobe Summit London was a fantastic event! They expected 1,000 attendees, but apparently, 1,600 showed up, with 1,200 of those being actual customers. It just goes to show the immense interest and engagement within the Adobe ecosystem.
We’re incredibly excited about these new Adobe products and what they mean for the future of commerce.
For more information about Adobe Commerce Optimizer and Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service, check out our recent blog.
Ready to explore how these new Adobe innovations can transform your commerce strategy? Contact us today!
