Spartacus is a storefront technology that uses Javascript. So It allows you to build a headless commerce Storefront much like a Single Page Website (SPA) for SAP Commerce Cloud. Therefore, In this article, I will provide you with a few reasons to seriously consider using Spartacus for your B2C and B2B storefronts.
The Headless Moment
The way to launch storefronts, in keeping with recent trends, is headlessly. Meaning that there’s intentional segmenting of front end UI and core commerce capabilities. I have explained headless commerce and its advantages in my previous blog.
You should run your storefront decoupled, as the gap between front and back-end technologies continues to widen. This way you’re able to update your Storefront UI and offer the best customer experience, independent of your backend system and applications. With front and back-end decoupling, teams can work independently with their own release cycles.
You can easily update and deploy UI changes without worrying about your Commerce platform. This Javascript Storefront leverages REST-Services available out-of-the-box in SAP Commerce Cloud. It’s easy to offer various commerce capabilities using the Commerce Cloud platform. Like product catalog, pricing, stock, shopping cart, checkout, and order details. With a Spartacus based UI, you are setting the foundation for a Headless Commerce Architecture.
Cloud Deployment
You can use native SAP Commerce Cloud CMS like SmartEdit, or from a 3rd party CMS like e-Spirit to retrieve contents. So if SmartEdit does not meet your CMS requirements, you can use the e-Spirit CMS solution supported by Spartacus. ASAR has performed Spartacus integration with e-Spirit CMS using standard API integration. A Spartacus based site delivers contents from the CMS of your choice, either native SAP Commerce Cloud CMS (SmartEdit) or any 3rd party CMS.
SAP Commerce Cloud supports the build automation and deployment capabilities out of the box with Spartacus storefront. So you can easily deploy your storefront on the Public Cloud infrastructure (as SAP Commerce Cloud). You can support the build and deployment of your Spartacus Storefront on dedicated nodes independent of the SAP Commerce Cloud solution. Also, it supports web crawlers to easily browse your website as SAP Commerce Cloud supports server-side rendering.
Spartacus
Spartacus is developed by the same team as SAP Commerce Cloud. However, this product comes with an Open Source license. So you can leverage Spartacus and all the future enhancements to it without worrying about any licensing costs. Additionally, you can access the Spartacus code to explore, test, and modify a Storefront as needed. SAP runs The Spartacus project using Agile methodology, with 2 weeks’ release and update cycles.
Spartacus is modular and extensible. So you can continuously upgrade and benefit from the latest version of components. You are also free to design and add your own components. SAP offers Spartacus as an Angular libraries package. To extend you the advantage of receiving new features and fixes as soon as they are available. You shouldn’t copy and paste the source code when you build a new Storefront. Rather, you should create a new Angular app and add dependencies to the Spartacus libraries.
Lastly, If you would like to explore what it would take to migrate your B2B or B2C Accelerator-based Storefront to Spartacus, please contact us. The SAP Commerce team at ASAR would love to help you migrate to Spartacus as quickly and efficiently as possible. I hope this blog was helpful. Please feel free to share your comments. For details on Spartacus, please contact Team ASAR.