Spartacus Storefront – The Future of SAP Commerce!
Abdul Wahab
Director of Technology – SAPFebruary 28, 2022
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SAP Commerce Cloud has been rapidly evolving and greater expectations are set with the new Spartacus Storefront. In a traditional e-commerce system, the front end, where customer directly interacts with your business, is tightly coupled with the back-end that deals with the database, code and integrations. What this means is that any changes required to the storefront need changes in back-end as well. There are many limitations on what can be changed or updated without significant risks or that would affect future updates.
With the emergence of Headless commerce, we now have a more powerful and versatile architecture. Developers can develop a new frontend from scratch or use the existing frontend depending on their needs. With users interacting with content in new ways, traditional CMS might not be enough for many companies.
SAP Commerce Cloud has a dedicated headless storefront catering to both B2C and B2B businesses.
What is Spartacus?
Spartacus is an Angular-based JavaScript storefront for SAP Commerce Cloud. It is an opensource project that anyone can access by downloading the source code freely. It is also published as a set of libraries that can be used to create a branded storefront app – import the published Spartacus libraries into the custom app, change styling, add features and publish the branded storefront!
Spartacus storefront pulls products and content from the back-end as needed. It is a single page application where the first page loads and the rest is driven by code. This has inherently good performance as Spartacus only loads the parts of the page that require updating. The whole page is not reloaded whenever something changes. This also provides a good user experience not just because of the speed, but also because you control everything in the UI.
Spartacus Storefront is Easy to Create
There are some prerequisites to create a Spartacus storefront. Have an SAP Commerce Cloud Backend running, preferably from 1905, but you can also use 1811. It is configured to accept OCC (Omni-Commerce Connect) REST API calls to communicate with SAP Commerce Cloud environments. Your development environment is to be set up for angular coding.
The endpoints used in OCC adapters can be configured so that the customization of Spartacus can be very lightweight.
The primary step in creating the first Spartacus app is to create an angular app, add the dependencies that Spartacus requires to configure the app to use the Spartacus storefront module, and then add the default styling localization. It is better to use libraries to maintain upgradability.
Why would you use Spartacus?
With Commerce Cloud out-of-the-box accelerator, you get JSP-based templates that are provided as part of the Accelerator storefronts. Then why would you move or start your project with a Spartacus based storefront?
Here are some of the key benefits.
- Decoupled Architecture – Spartacus storefronts are decoupled from SAP Commerce Cloud instances, allowing you to completely separate front-end and back-end development. Spartacus app runs on its own server node and makes OCC REST API calls to SAP Commerce Cloud backend servers. The benefit is that you can update Spartacus app separately when you update the platform, and you can also scale and cache different servers independently from each other.
- Upgradable – Since Spartacus is published as libraries, upgrades are totally under the user’s control. The architecture of Spartacus ensures compatibility. It is configurable and extendable. That means you can add your functionalities or hide the existing ones based on your needs.
- Faster Implementation – Spartacus is fast to develop and it is a PWA, a Progressive Web App. It supports SEO even though that it is a single page application.
Extending SAP Commerce – SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory
Highlights of Recent Releases
Version 4.0 (July 2021)
- Angular 12
- CPQ Configurable Products Integration: Display of Prices for Attribute Values
- Cleanup and Removal of Deprecated Code
- Checkout Moved to a Library
- Cloning Option when Restoring Saved Cart
Version 4.1 (September 2021)
- SAP Digital Payments Integration
- Quick Order
- B2B Inventory Display
- Authentication Improvements
- SSR MaxRenderTime Option
Version 4.2 (November 2021)
- Import Products to Active or Saved Cart
- Export Products from Active or Saved Cart
- Product Image Zoom
- Quick Order Improvement: Search by Product Name
- Cart Validation
- Scroll Position Restoration
- Order History Library
- Improvements Related to Support for Screen Readers
Watch our recent Royal Cyber and SAP joined webinar webcast:
Embracing Headless Commerce with Spartacus for SAP Commerce Cloud
Spartacus Functionality Roadmap
Core/B2C Features
- Bundles
- Subscriptions
- Potential promotions
- Image zoom
- ASM Customer List & 360°
- Pickup in store
- Integrations with
- Subscriptions
- Potential promotions
- Image zoom
- ASM Customer List & 360°
- Pickup in store
B2B Features
- B2B Multi-Dimensional Products
- B2B Multi-Dimensional Order Grid
- Image zoom
- ASM Customer List & 360°
- Pickup in store
- B2B Registration
- B2B Export from Cart
- B2B Future Stock
- B2B Commerce Quotes
- B2B Punchout
Architecture
- New accessibility features e.g. screen reader support
- Fine-grained extensibility make it easier to extend and reuse updated code
- Site map
- Regular Angular framework updates usually twice a year, coinciding with new Angular releases
To conclude, Spartacus allows you to quickly create a fast, engaging PWA storefront for SAP Commerce Cloud, resulting in a delightful customer experience that increases conversion and revenue.
Future-Proof your Business
With growing customer expectations, content delivery is going to be of utmost importance. By moving to Spartacus, you can make sure that your business is moving in the right direction. Spartacus is the future and, the expectation is that within a few years, we will all stop using JSP-based monolithic accelerators and use Spartacus Headless Storefront. Our dedicated team of SAP Commerce Cloud experts at Royal Cyber can help you with future-proofing your business. For more details, you can email us at [email protected]. Click to know more about our SAP Commerce services.
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