All you need to know about the Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 Upgrade

Transcript

Please welcome to your screens, Bethan Williams-James. Hi everyone and welcome to this Skill Builder session this morning. My name is Bethan. I am a solution consultant here at Adobe specialising in commerce and today we’re going to go through all you need to know about the 2.4.4 commerce upgrade. As we go through today, please put any questions in the chat and we will endeavour to get back to you ASAP. So before we start on the 2.4.4 upgrade, I think it’s best that we just cover some of the changes that we made to the upgrade strategy in the 2020. Next slide please. Thank you. So we made three changes to the strategy that was announced earlier on this year, which is essentially the first one being a thinner core. We are essentially reducing the complexity of the core application by releasing new features as independent services separate from the core code, similar to how we did with live search and recommendations. The second part is that we are really kind of committing to simplifying that release schedule. So in 2022, we are reducing those core releases so that we can essentially make things easier for you. And then lastly, to make our schedules simpler and more predictable and to allow you to know when things are coming up, we’ll be updating our lifecycle policy to align Adobe Commerce end of support dates with similar products, such as the PHP end of life dates. We know that the upgrade process can be challenging for many of our merchants and it’s really part of our strategy to work on making the total cost of ownership and the ease of upgrading a lot easier. As you upgrade to these new versions, you’re essentially going to be setting your business up for success and ensuring that your store stays performant and secure. Updates to that core code that I mentioned will become lighter and lighter as we continually innovate and release features separate from that core code. That means that any future upgrades to the core code will be easier to implement and any updates to features that you’ve adopted. As I mentioned, they will happen automatically and frequently with minimal cost or efforts. Overall, what does this mean to you? You’ll spend less time and money on future upgrades to the core code and receive updates to SaaS features you have installed with that minimal effort. So getting into 2.4.4. Essentially, Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 is built on the latest technologies. So we have upgraded PHP to 8.1 to boost site stability and also ensure that you remain secure, performant, compliant, both now and in the future. So new functionality is going to be delivered through those independent modular services that we have already mentioned several times rather than through those core updates. Second of all, we’re not getting rid of that innovation and really one of the reasons why we’re moving towards that kind of SaaS services is because it allows us to innovate quicker and it allows you to adopt features quicker and innovate more quickly. So essentially we’re going to continue to build on that leadership in headless commerce. So increasing that GraphQL API coverage for B2B and admin features, adding personalized content and promotions to PWA Studio as well. But also Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 unlocks access to more innovative merchandising, more enhancements in the B2B commerce, experience management, payments and additional cloud functionality. And finally, the thing that I’m probably the most excited about is the scalability. So 2.4.4 is our most scalable version ever. We are confidently handling much more complex catalogs and much higher volumes of transactions. So by upgrading to version 2.4.4 or higher, you will be ensuring that obviously your business is staying resilient in this ever-changing commerce landscape that we see and setting up your business for success for the next several years of Adobe investments and innovations. Now this is obviously a very wordy slide, so we’re going to go through the highlights of this, but really, really kind of digging down into each of those sections, the future proofing, the innovation and the scalability. We’ve said this already, but it’s really important to maintain that this is, you know, part of our strategy is to be future proof and to allow you to up maintenance and grades, less frequent upgrades moving forward means that you get to spend your time and your money on other initiatives rather than on the upgrades. Getting to 2.4.4 at your earliest convenience also means that you’re going to stay supported for longer as this version will be supported through till November, 2024. Obviously this is going to allow you to have access to innovative features such as those existing SaaS services plus the many more that are coming. And we also offer a managed services offering and other support offerings if you need to alleviate some of those technical tasks so that you can focus on other tasks. So with these service supports, if you are of any interest to you, please just read the innovative section again. 2.4.4 offers personalization at scale, which you know, we’ve been talking about for a long time now, but our AI powered product recommendations and search features, if you’re not using them today, we highly recommend you begin implementing them and using them because the impact that we’re seeing is really, really incredible for some of our customers. It’s really tailoring that buying experience for each customer. It’s speeding up product discovery through live search, which is, you know, AI intelligent search and it’s increasing conversion rates and also boosting average order value across customers that have implemented it. Additionally, we’ve got that GraphQL coverage that I was talking about. I know that it’s been something that a lot of people have been waiting for to get additional coverage across B2B functionality and it is here and more is coming. The platform also obviously allows your customers to engage both on the B2B and B2C side from that single platform. That’s not changing. We are continuing to offer multi business models from one platform and we also are seeing more and more customers adopting emerging business models as well and looking at hybrid business models and because we have asset and inventory management and improved purchase approval workflows and payment services that are in this upgrade, that is allowing our customers to be even more flexible. Additionally, and this is something we’ll go into a little bit more detail a bit later, is more tooling. So site wide analysis tool, if some of you have used that already, you will know that it essentially will allow you to review what’s going right in your site and what’s not and we are really, really boosting real time insights on the platform health and making it even easier to keep track of all of these tools. We will be creating one dashboard, which I will show you a little bit more about later. And yeah, finally, I’ve told you about the scalability, but to be honest, nothing speaks better than numbers. So really, when we’re talking about the scalability, here are some of the numbers that we’re seeing with 2.4.4. So those improvements to asynchronous order processing, it’s allowing for processing five times the transaction volume, up to 60,000 orders per hour. Other enhancements that have increased the catalogue size we support by 10 times compared to the previous versions, and we’re now supporting up to 200 million e-scues and 750 items in the cart with an average API response time of 300 milliseconds. And with that comes obviously more stability. So that scalable site is also more stable. And with that comes a 32% improvement in site health index scores using that site wide analysis tool and a 34% lower chance of experiencing site outages at a platform level. So what we are really, really proud of, I think, with this upgrade is particularly these scalable and stable benefits that we’re seeing. So on to something a little more lighter, shall we say. This is the foundation of our future proof platform 2.4.4. And so to visually signify this turning point, we are finally replacing that Magento logo in the admin with the Adobe logo. And this really marks our kind of next steps into a best of breed e-commerce platform. And this will change in the login screen and then the admin section. So we’ve got additional brand changes, including updated fonts and colours and things coming in 2.4.5. So look forward to those. But these are really just to signify change and progression. Finally, on this part, we are really kind of as exciting as those brand changes are, it’s more exciting to talk about, obviously, the UX journey that we’re starting on and what we’re trying to do to make Adobe Commerce as accessible as possible. And, you know, part of the change is also making this platform more accessible for those individuals with limited or without vision. And so you will see that this really important initiative that we’ve addressed throughout the year is going to take place in 2.4.4 in the following ways. Your admin will have significant improvements for those with limited or without vision, meaning that you will be able to have accessible naming and tagging, and you will be able to, there’s essentially enhanced content buttons and form fields that are going to allow those who are visually impaired to use the admin more easily. And additionally, there will be further support in the front end, three page builder, so native support for alt text on all images. And so not only is this going to benefit accessibility for the site for your users, but it’s also going to improve your SEO. So the other thing that we have with 2.4.4 is our latest release of PWA Studio. And this is version 12.3. And if you were sticking around for the next session on headless and PWA, you’ll hear me talking about that a little bit more. And but essentially with this new version, we are going to be supporting dynamic blocks and cart promotions for customer segments. So I mentioned that earlier at the beginning, we’re going to be enhancing that personalization, the ability to pull through on a PWA, personalized content blocks in page builder, and also customer segmentation for things like promotions. This has been a really highly requested feature from our customers. So we’re very excited to bring it to the market. And what this means is that obviously, you can now set up those personalized experience experiences through using your PWA. And if you aren’t using the PWA, then yeah, I definitely recommend that you watch the next session, where we will be talking about that in a little more detail. So there are two notes, we just want to call out about the technology stack specifically, that you should be aware of before beginning the upgrade to 2.4.4. So first of all, you should all be familiar with vendor bundled extensions, which are obviously our strategic third party extension bundles that are in the commerce platform code. So in line with our new release strategy that obviously emphasizes that smaller core code for easier upgrades, lower TCO, faster feature delivery, we will be removing VBEs from the 2.4.4 release and migrating them to marketplace extensions. So they’re not necessarily going anywhere, you can still obviously use them, but they’re not going to be native in the core code. So what you just need to be aware of is make sure that you are looking at those VBEs that are in that red box on the screen on the right hand side there. If you’re using any of those, they will be removed from the core code and moved to a marketplace extension. What this allows you to do is then manage that extension and manage the core code without impacting any of these. The second important thing is that those of you who are on cloud, you will need to migrate from Elasticsearch to OpenSearch when upgrading to 2.4.4. For more information on that migration, please reach out to your CSM and we will provide links and details to more articles for that. But without further ado, what I am going to go on to next is essentially talking through what our recommended upgrade paths are. So you’re all going to be on a different version, you’re all going to be in different stages of how close you are to 2.4.4. What we have done is put together some recommended paths to try and make things easier and simple for all of you so that we can get you to 2.4.4. So initially, what we are doing to support you with this upgrade is obviously we have shifted that end of support date. So the end of support date for 2.3, for those of you who are on it, has now been shifted to September 8th of this year. This provides all of the customers, all of you who are on 2.3, additional time to upgrade. Even with this additional time, we do encourage you to upgrade at your earliest convenience so that you can get on a version that’s PCI compliant and access all of those new features that we’ve covered as soon as possible. Next, with this new end of service date, we’re adding two security patches, one for 2.3.7 and one for 2.4.3. Those will be added to the release calendar in August and this essentially is to help those of you who are on those stay secure and PCI compliant whilst you’re still under support. And lastly, we are providing new extended support offerings for customers who are on versions that use PHP 7.4. So if you remember at the beginning, we were saying we, you know, our 2.4.4 is on the latest PHP version. But what we want to do is offer some extended support offerings for those of you who are on the lower versions at the moment. So those of you who are on PHP 7.4 are versions 2.3.7, 2.4.0 to 2.4.3. If you have any questions around this, if you have any questions around what exactly your path is, do not worry because that’s what we have for you. So there’s a lot of numbers and dots and versions in there and I don’t blame any of you if you’re scratching your heads a little bit, but this is where we’ve also provided you with additional support. So what you can see on screen here and is an example of our upgrade paths that we’ve recommended. So in these upgrade paths, you can see there is a different upgrade path for each customer and depending on which version you’re on. So in this example, this is for those of you who are on 2.3.6 and lower. And within this recommended path, you have two options. With these two options, you obviously, we’ve laid out the pros and cons of each. And we’ve also laid out how you can go through those processes and what you would need to do in order to maintain secure PCI compliant and fit in with the end of support dates. So I’m not going to go through all of these, but you can see very quickly that we have put together these options for every single version that you may or may not be on. So reach out to your CSM, let them know which version you would like to see, and we can pass these plans over to you and we can provide support in understanding pros and cons, really giving you the opportunity to weigh up what is right for your business. So the other thing that we need to talk about when we are talking about upgrading is our upgrade compatibility tool. So this is really the tool that we recommend every single customer uses to help you prepare for upgrades. We developed this upgrade compatibility tool to really help you understand the scope and the impact of upgrading from your current installed version to the next one or whatever your target is. So in this case, we’re talking 2.4.4. So when the tool is run against your current core code, it identifies essentially potential conflicts that need to be resolved prior to performing the upgrade. So it’s a really good way of future proofing, making sure that you don’t go through an upgrade and then you realize that perhaps an extension that you had or some customization that you had is in conflict with that upgrade. The tool literally takes a few minutes to run and it yields a detailed list of issues that look at your current one and your future state and say, okay, these are the things essentially that you can add to your upgrade checklist. It makes it faster and easier for you to identify issues and fix them and it simplifies that upgrade process even further. It’s also important to say that tool actually now has HTML visualization capabilities as well. So it can help you really pinpoint the exact modules that may require the most effort. And we also have some documentation that provides recommendations on how to fix each type of issue that you’re likely to encounter. So the tool is now compatible with PHP 8.1, which obviously we will be using in 2.4.4 and it is integrated with the PHP storm plugin if you are familiar with that. If you are not familiar with that, it is essentially a developer tool for PHP. This obviously makes it really easier for developers to use it in their environments. The other thing about upgrade compatibility tool, it’s available for everybody. So if you’re not using it today, have a look into it. Let’s see how we can utilize it to help you kind of make the upgrade path smoother and easier. And we also have information on how to use it and all of that that’s available on our website. So I am going on now just to discuss something that we obviously touched on. We talked about extended support, which we have stated obviously we are offering for those versions until September 8th. But we also offer a paid extended support offer for customers. So essentially what this does is this extends the support for 2.3.7, 2.4.0 to 2.3.4 as you can see on screen beyond that September date that we’ve already extended. And essentially it gives you an extra allowance for up to a year. So it really gives you a little bit more time to plan that upgrade. And if you feel that the time restrictions of September and November are not going to fit in. So essentially, under the paid for extended support, you have the ability to continue to receive Adobe support for quality fixes as well as security patches. So that is really what we are offering as a part of that. And again, if this is something that you’re thinking you may need to consider, then get in touch with your CSM and they can provide you with more information. So onto our next bit, which is some important updates and announcements. So first of all, talking about that site wide analysis tool. So we discussed this briefly and I kind of talked to you about how it can be used and what its benefits are. But essentially for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s that central repository that provides a single pane of glass, so to speak, to insights from your support tools. So it allows you to get that real time access to system insights, proactive steps to resolve any site problems. If for example, you’ve got, you know, really your page speed is struggling or so on and so forth, it really helps you monitor the overall site health. Now, customers can benefit from this, essentially because it’s 24 seven monitoring, it identifies those potential issues and it gives you greater visibility and oversight into the health and performance and security. It also provides you with recommendations on how to solve those issues. So if you’ve got a page that’s particularly bearing a load and image quality or whatever it is specific to that. So essentially that helps you solve those issues quicker. It can help improve their stability and also of course the customer experience. Now, the key change that we are announcing today is that the Sitewide Analysis tool was originally only available for commerce cloud customers. But we are also now able to provide this service for any of our customers who are managing on premise. So you will be able to have access to what we call SWAT, and you will be able to use that. We also have our dev docs and user guides have been updated so that you can install this onto your on premise instances. So the reports that you can get off of Sitewide Analysis tool, here’s a little preview. Essentially, you can get a PDF that includes those end to end findings that I was talking about. They’re easily digestible, there’s shareable site details and insights and those reports being able to provide those means that you can work very hard on making sure that your platform is always performant. And as I’ve mentioned before, performance is a real focus for us with this 2.4.4 update. Now, the other exciting thing, and I did mention this a little earlier, is that those enhancements to Sitewide Analysis tool, plus our upgrade compatibility tool, plus our security scan tool, managed alerts, visibility into third party extensions, all of those additional tools and resources and services that we provide to you are now going to appear in one friendly dashboard. So you will no longer have to go into each individual tool to look at the data and analyze. You will have one consolidated dashboard where you will be able to access all of your support tools and you will be able to focus really in on what requires your attention. And visually, it’s looking really good. It’s really going to help our customers focus on performance, focus on how they can make those little tweaks and changes that can really have a big impact on the customer experience. So this is also something that, as I said, we are very excited to offer our customers in the near future. So that is the end of my content today. I don’t know if we’ve got any questions in the chat.

Hi, Bethan. Hello. No questions at this point, but I did have a question regarding the upgrade. Are there any costs associated to this upgrade? When you do any upgrade, there will be costs in terms of development. So it’s likely that you will need to work with your SI or your partner to implement that. We also can offer upgrade support through managed services. This is something that we can do and you can discuss with us if that’s something you feel that you don’t necessarily have the support for in-house. But this is something that is purely based on the upgrade of your code and your website. There is no cost to the new version of the platform, if that makes sense. So 2.4.4 doesn’t cost anything, but you will obviously have to implement this on the site upgrading. There may be some development costs that you will incur around customizations that are slightly different. So every customer is going to be different on how much it’s going to cost. But what we are seeing is that those, especially those performance numbers around scalability and stability should really, really push your store and allow you to see a TCO lower over time. That’s why we’re making that core application thinner, is because we want to make it easier for all of you and cheaper for all of you to update. We don’t want you to have to continually update the core code, which is the expensive bit. And by expensive, I guess it’s all relative. But I think the way that we’re moving forward is really in line with the market. And we are calling upon that kind of microservices API first, which we have always been, to be honest. But we’re really calling upon that heritage and using it in a way that benefits our customers to make upgrades lighter and easier and quicker and cheaper. Great. Thanks, Bethan. And you did mention the compatibility tool, which would give you an indication on, I guess, the scope and the impact of your current version. Now, as we look to kind of September, November as where we need to kind of make the upgrades, does that compatibility tool give you an indication of the level of effort based on the current version? So, you know, if we look to partners or if we’re going to manage it in house, would that give me a sense of how much effort we’re going to have to incur here? Essentially, it would. It would give you a very clear indication of where the platform has maybe pieces of that core code that are going to clash. And if you are looking at, for example, the other two technology changes that we mentioned. So the fact that those vendor bundled extensions are coming out of the core code that essentially shouldn’t necessarily have an impact on cost, but it depends how heavily you rely on those in your if you’ve got a particular customization around some of those. And as I said before, those extensions, those extensions are going to be available on the marketplace. So it’s really not it’s more a matter of architecture and where the code is rather than is the feature available. And then the other change around the technology to consider is, of course, for cloud customers moving from Elasticsearch to Opensearch. So I think if you have a view of which vendors vendor bundled extensions that you’re using alongside, you know, that potential move to Opensearch plus your details from your upgrade compatibility tool and alongside the PHP upgrade, you will have a good sense of efforts and sense of potential cost involved. And this is something that we recommend all of our customers work alongside with their partners or, as I said, reach out to us for any paid service support should you need it. We have all of the partners have had enablement on 2.4.4. So they know all of this good stuff, too. And so if this is something that you are looking to do, my recommended course of action would be look at that upgrade compatibility tool, reach out to us for the recommended upgrade paths. So you can weigh up the pros and cons of the various options. We’ve given you multiple options for a reason. And that’s because not one size doesn’t always fit all. And every single business is different, and you have different peaks and troughs and the timing needs to be right for everybody.

So my recommended steps would be to reach out for those upgrade paths, run the upgrade compatibility tool, speak with your SI or your partner, and start to build a picture out of what your options are and how you can do this and make this move. Because the investment that you make in moving to 2.4.4 is really a long term one, because the changes that we’re seeing in that upgrade strategy mean that from that point onwards, things are going to be easier, things are going to be less costly. We will be deploying new features as SaaS services similar to live search and product recs, as I mentioned. So this is really an investment in the future of Adobe Commerce. And that’s kind of why we’ve chosen this point to change the branding too, because this is really this is really us making the platform future proof and innovative and scalable as hell.

Thanks Bethan, that sounds great. And I guess just to clarify, both tools, the compatibility tool and the site wide analysis tool are both available via the dashboard, the new dashboard. And should anybody have any questions, we can just reach out to support directly through the dashboard. Yes, exactly. So site, site wide analysis tooling and upgrade compatibility tool for those of you who are obviously not yet on 2.4.4, which I’m guessing if you’re here, you know, and if you haven’t installed those, and have a look at getting those up and running, the installation guides are available on Devdocs. And as I said, we can now offer swap to on premise customers too. And the dashboard itself will be coming soon. And once that dashboard has been released, that will be announced and you will be contacted about that. So at the moment, the two site wide analysis tool and upgrade compatibility tool are still separate. But very soon there will be one beautiful dashboard, one place to go for all of your site health and performance needs. Thanks, Bethan. Those that was it for me. Thank you very much.

Great. Well, if there are any further questions, please put them in the chat. And we will endeavor obviously to get back to you as soon as possible. And or if you’re like me, and you think of questions like three hours after something and you wish you’d ask that question, then please just reach out to your Adobe CSM and we can support you on getting those questions answered. As I said, we have a huge amount of information to support you in getting you to 2.4.

And I think those resources are there. Those assets, those resources, that support is there, because this is really a big release for us. And we see it having a really, really positive impact on all of our customers and how they are and can conduct their future business and future upgrades. So yes, if you do have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. But other than that, I think I must have spoken very quickly because I covered quite a lot of information. So I’m imagining there’s probably some questions out there coming.

But thank you so much, everybody, for your time. And if you are free at 11, then feel free to come and join me talking about Headless Commerce and our PWA studio. If there are two things that you know nothing about, great, come join. I will let you know what it’s all about. And if you do know something about it, but you want to know more, then please come and join. And it’s a session for everyone, really, we’re going to be covering it at lots of different levels.