Oracle Commerce Cloud has been slowly dying for quite some time now. It appears that this is now speeding up, as they’ve had several layoffs recently. If you’re still using Oracle Commerce Cloud, you should be concerned. There hasn’t been any official news about the sunsetting of Oracle Commerce Cloud (OCC) yet, and it’s likely to be supported for a while post-closure too. We think it’s time to call time of death on OCC and get started on your migration plan. Let us walk you through why, how, and where you should migrate.

How it started…

Let’s go back to the beginning of this story. In the early 2000s, ATG (Art Technology Group) created an eCommerce platform. In 2004, Oracle bought the platform. It was rebranded as Oracle ATG Commerce. In 2014, this on-prem platform was soft-sunsetted. It was moved to the cloud as Oracle Commerce Cloud (OCC). This was built with pieces from other Oracle tech, such as Endeca. However, OCC is largely seen as the same legacy platform; just on the cloud.

A few years later, Oracle bought Netsuite (ERP). This caused problems for OCC. That’s because Netsuite has an eCommerce bolt-on. The focus on OCC reduced. Of course, this was not an official position.

… vs How it’s going

According to one source, 1700 businesses currently use OCC. If you’re one of them, we get why you chose it. After all, from 2009 to 2021 it was a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce every year. However, Oracle hasn’t featured on Gartner’s Leaders quadrant since 2021. This was due to changing corporate priorities.

You may have already begun to see the issues with customer service for your OCC website. As Oracle acquired other tech products and companies, Oracle Commerce Cloud began to see less investment, layoffs and a declining user base. If it isn’t already obsolete, it will be soon. There’s no investment in innovation and not enough people to do much more than keep the lights on. It can’t compete for much longer.

What is Oracle Commerce Cloud?

Oracle Commerce Cloud – Cloud-native

• Oracle Commerce Cloud is a cloud-native solution that provides hosting for B2B and B2C businesses on Oracle Cloud.
• The native cloud support enables stores to scale effortlessly and minimize hosting infrastructure cost.
• Oracle Cloud ensures uptime, availability across regions, and automatic upgrades of new versions and security patches.
• Oracle Commerce Cloud integrates with other product clusters like Marketing Cloud, Customer Experience Cloud, and ERP (NetSuite).

Oracle Commerce Cloud – SaaS

The SaaS model helps brands to choose from multiple plans or build custom plans based on their business requirements. With the essential infrastructure and hosting available the brands can go to market faster without having to spend months on development.

Oracle Commerce – Target audience

Oracle Commerce Cloud caters for both B2B and B2C market segments. Under B2C, the platform caters to industries like FMCG, automotive, healthcare, Travel, hospitality, education and so on. In the B2B segment, the platform caters to distributors, wholesalers and retailers.

Explain the difference between OCC and on-premise solutions

• Cloud: Oracle Commerce Cloud is a cloud-native eCommerce platform that caters to the enterprise-grade B2B and B2C businesses.
• Availability: Oracle Commerce Cloud is available in a SaaS model (hosted on Oracle Cloud) which eliminates the tasks of hosting, version upgrades, and maintenance.
• Customizability: Since OCC works on a SaaS model, the platform lacks the flexibility to build features and functionalities by customizing code. Whereas, on-premise solutions can be customized easily.
• Cost: The cloud version of Oracle Commerce demands less upfront cost compared to the on-premises version. On-premise solutions demand huge upfront capital.
• Maintenance: The need to maintain on-premise solutions increases operational costs. Version upgrades, security patches, new feature rollouts, and so on have to be handled by an in-house team. While using Oracle Commerce Cloud, version upgrades happen automatically.
• Scalability: Oracle Commerce Cloud enables brands to scale rapidly as the demands rise, such as traffic, order processing, support requests, and so on. You pay only for the cloud space you use, and no hardware investments are required. Brands using on-premise solutions require business owners to install server infrastructure, hardware, etc.
• Time to Market: OCC provides faster time to market as it offers all the essential eCommerce features and Oracle Cloud hosting out of the box.

Oracle Commerce – Key Features and Benefits?

Headless Commerce

The support for headless commerce means liberty in building storefronts with personalized experiences. Headless Commerce support enables you build storefronts responsive for multiple devices like web, mobile, tablets and IoT devices yet maintaining a consistent experience.

The API and Microservices support enable you to integrate and manage data transfers with third-party systems. An customizing frontend doesn’t need respective code changes or tweaking on the backend enabling faster rollout of new features ot the market.

Scalability and Performance

Oracle Commerce Cloud is powered by Oracle Cloud. The cloud-native nature of the platform enables brands of all sizes to minimize hosting cost and also pay only for the resources utilized. Auto scaling equips your store to handle sudden traffic spikes, process more orders and transactions.

However the downside is, you might experience performance issues due to the shared cloud ecosystem. Customization requires heavy coding and tweaking of the core architecture resulting in performance slow down.

Integrations and Extensibility

In terms of integration, Oracle Commerce Cloud has advantages and downsides too. On the positive side are the platform’s ecosystem of the tools like ERP, CRM, marketing cloud and so on. These tools also inherit cloud support like the platform enabling adaptive scalability. The platform also has pre-built connectors for a selective set of the third-party systems to iron out the integration process.

What are Oracle Commerce’s major issues?

Agility, speed, scalability, and low TCO (total cost of ownership). Oracle Commerce scores low on all these.

It uses multi-layered architecture. This increases time and cost for any change. It’s hard to meet enterprise performance standards. eCommerce sites built on OCC are time-consuming to maintain. And TCO is off the charts.

How should you prepare for your migration from Oracle Commerce?

If you know all that we’ve said thus far, but haven’t migrated from Oracle, we think we know why. You’re looking at a complete replatforming, and are disheartened by the process. Don’t aim to migrate all in one go. This is needlessly disruptive. Opt for a composable commerce strategy instead. You can replace pieces of the tech stack, one at a time. This way, you increase agility and lower cost.

Composable is the future of development. 77% of those who have used it say it increased their agility. They could make storefront changes faster. 80% of those without such a plan intend to implement it in the next two years.

Using a composable migration strategy

A composable migration strategy is both time-efficient and cost-effective. It allows you to select the best technology options across vendors, with minimal disruption. If you’re tied to a single vendor, you’re forced to accept whatever functionality they deliver. When you go headless, you can work with multiple vendors each specializing in their own deliverable. These modular pieces of technology – checkout, payment gateway, etc – are easy to integrate with a headless backend using APIs.

With an API gateway as a middle layer, you can take a modular approach to migration. You can run services from both old and new systems in parallel. You can move individual services away from Oracle to route calls to new backend components.

So which module should you redevelop first?

Identify a pain point where there’s value in making a change. If you have something in mind, start with that. Else we recommend Checkout as the first module to be migrated. OCC’s Checkout experience has received criticism. Your Checkout experience is key. Purchase intent is highest there. Half of all shoppers abandon their purchase during this stage of the customer journey.

Remember, your website and its microservices still exist on Oracle. That’s the benefit of this approach. You’re just routing calls to your new backend components using your API gateway. It acts as an interface between OCC and the new system. Since you’re adding one service at a time, test to ensure it’s working as per plan. You can change the routing call to revert easily to the earlier service.

Parallelly, export data from Oracle to an XLS or CSV file. You can also export the entire database to an XML file. You’re moving to a new system. Now is the right time to assess your data architecture. You can use the same data structures or make some changes. Next, use JavaScript to import data into your microservices.

What features did Oracle lack, and how can other platforms use this information?

It’s a legacy platform with very strict, complex architecture.

Oracle Commerce was a monolith legacy platform. It used old code and obsolete technology. The backend logic wasn’t always clear. When it moved to the cloud, this was not fully updated. Most of OCC’s problems arise from this. Developers work with many layers. Even a seemingly simple front-end update takes days to implement. This results in a very long time to market.

It has an extremely high total cost of ownership.

While other eCommerce platforms are expensive too, OCC is on another level. It’s sold in the form of core-based licenses. That’s an issue, especially when your business is looking to scale. As you need more hardware, you have to keep purchasing more licenses. Similarly, each database VM, Content Management instance, and TB of file storage is chargeable – and is expensive. You can expect to pay significantly more on OCC for your online store than on other platforms.

It doesn’t have a comprehensive feature set.

This one is the icing on the cake. Oracle Commerce Cloud has very limited functionality. You can customize the system, but that’s complex and makes the overall system expensive. Another problem is that OCC uses its own database language. This isn’t compatible with other databases (most of which use SQL).

It has all the negatives of a cloud platform and none of the positives.

OCC runs on the cloud. So if your customers have a poor internet connection, your website won’t load as fast as it should. At the same time, it doesn’t offer seamless scaling. That’s a key benefit of most cloud-based platforms! You have to add web servers, app servers and databases independently. Adding one could risk overloading the others. Planning for seasonal high traffic becomes complex. You’ll need to start preparation at least 2-3 months in advance.

Which eCommerce platform should you choose?

Pick a composable commerce platform. Start moving microservices one by one to the new platform. Some good options are Adobe Commerce, BigCommerce, commercetools, SFCC, and Shopify Plus.

We’ve covered the factors you need to consider when choosing a platform: Which platform can you choose if you are migrating away from Oracle Commerce?

What lessons can other platforms learn from the death of Oracle Commerce?

Keep your platform up-to-date and competitive. Keep innovating. Create functionalities that differentiate you from the market. Use an open SaaS and an API-first strategy. Enable composable commerce. Lower the total cost of ownership. Prioritize customer support. Include a real partner team.

Focus on innovations that your customers appreciate. Enterprises want a user-friendly open SaaS composable eCommerce platform offering low TCO. Create specific features for B2B, B2C, D2C or omnichannel eCommerce.

Are you migrating from Oracle Commerce Cloud? Wondering which eCommerce platform is the right fit? Ziffity is ready to serve as your enterprise tech development partner. We work with you from end to end of the migration process. We help you choose your eCommerce platform. We work with you to strategize your migration plan. We execute a seamless migration journey without disrupting daily business activities. Talk to Ziffity today about your enterprise migration plan.

If you need help preparing a pre-migration checklist, consult with eCommerce agencies experienced in Oracle Commerce Cloud migration. It’ll help you prepare a project scope and determine the time and budget required to go to market.