SAP announced a new pricing strategy for SAP Commerce Cloud in March this year. It should make SAP Commerce Cloud more affordable for the initial implementation than before in some instances. The new pricing is divided into two categories Composable and Premier.
With the Premier edition, you will have all the functionalities currently available as in a legacy license with one small dev environment, one medium-stage environment, and one large production.
The Composable edition gives more flexibility regarding license cost but does not contain all the features as the premier edition and only comes with two environments: 1 small dev environment and one production.
The basic Composable edition comes without the following modules/add-ons:
Product Information Management Add-on
The Product Catalog Management (PCM) feature enables customers to effectively handle and maintain product catalogs for Commerce-managed stores. With PCM, customers can import and transfer products between different catalogs. However, if customers wish to manage products sold through alternative channels such as retail stores, social selling, print, or utilize Commerce PCM as a comprehensive Product Information Management (PIM) system, they will need to buy this add-on. The PIM add-on, formerly known as Product Content Management, serves as a standalone PCM solution with advanced PIM capabilities. It offers expanded functionality beyond PCM, allowing customers to manage products across multiple channels and handle complex product data more effectively.
Storefront Composer
This composable module includes an Angular-based storefront formerly known as Spartacus, currently rebranded to Sap Commerce Cloud, a composable storefront. Spartacus versions 5 and above are only available on SAP private repository, accessible only with an S account. So if the SAP customer is not interested in buying a storefront module for the project, there is still a possibility to use the older version of Spartacus (4). However, this version is no longer maintained.
There are other storefront solutions like Vue Storefront that come from developers from Divante who mainly contribute to the Spartacus project. Smart Edit, a powerful CMS tool, is also part of this module. Without it, there is an option to use more specialized products such as Contentful or Bloomreach Content, which is focused only on CMS capabilities and can be integrated with composable commerce via API.
Order Management Add-on
The Order Management add-on is a tool that facilitates the management of the entire customer order process. It allows users to handle tasks like order entry, payment, fraud checks, warehouse integration, customer notifications, delivery, and returns.
SAP Commerce OMS and SAP Order Management differ in their usage and audience. SAP Commerce OMS is a standalone tool used in composable commerce, mainly for legacy reasons. In contrast, SAP Order Management, which includes several modules, is strategically designed to provide OMS capabilities for B2C prospects.
Search Add-on
Solr is a hugely customizable search module included in SAP Commerce. A possible reason to exclude this module is that it is sometimes replaced by another more specialized product such as Bloomreach Discovery, Algollia, or others. Those products come with simplified user interfaces, providing a more convenient configuration of indexing and recommendation rules.
Note that Solr is used for search functionality not only on Frontend but also for Backoffice.
Special Modules
Scalability Add-on
This product will be for customers exceeding the specified resource limit used in the SAP cloud environment. We assume that SAP will notify concerned customers to optimize their system, or they may be forced to buy this add-on. We do not have information about specific limits or how this add-on will be charged at the moment.
However, this makes sense since SAP pays for the resources in Azure, and with the growth of some businesses with a combination of legacy, not-so-performant code, the demand for more resources is increasing. Customers concerned about this issue should perform a technical audit to evaluate the current implementation of SAP Commerce Cloud. Proper optimization of code could remove the need for this special add-on.
Does your SAP Commerce platform require improved performance, and its management costs are unnecessarily high? Schedule a technical audit with our expert!
Additional Logging Option
There is also an option to buy an additional logging option that provides up to 5TB storage capacity compared to 500GB in the Composable edition and processes up to 15 000 logs per second, dramatically increasing from only 3 000 logs per second in the Composable edition.
Extra Environment
For every edition, there is a possibility to buy additional cloud environments if needed.
Composable Vs. Premier - Which Edition to Choose?
If you plan to use at least two modules, it’s better to go with the Premier edition. It contains all standard modules and an additional environment.
If you are trying to get the most affordable license or don’t want to pay for the modules you will replace for other products, go with the Composable edition. We recommend buying an additional environment as a staging environment for UAT testing. This kind of testing is usually at the later phase of development, so it is suitable to buy it later after consultation with your SAP license provider.
Modules will not be technically separated yet by SAP, so they will still be available in your codebase and your project, but without the Premier edition or purchased individual add-ons, you are not liable to use them.
The Composable edition with two additional modules should be cheaper than the Premier, but prices still need to be officially listed, and they may vary according to your SAP license provider.
What is the Recommended Composition of SAP Commerce?
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Out-of-the-box functionalities that come with the Premier edition may save development time, and there were designed to use with SAP Commerce Cloud.
But you may choose the Composable edition if you want better flexibility and to replace out-of-the-box functions such as search and storefront builder. But in the end, it really comes down to what your requirements are and, of course, your budget.
