Oracle has provided Oracle Commerce (ATG+Endeca) customers a path to the cloud. However, Oracle Commerce customers with these traditional on-premise solutions are apprehensive about making the move. There are genuine concerns with this enterprise paradigm shift and the impact it will have on their business. These concerns need to be addressed as part of modernizing the Oracle Commerce on-premise solution and moving it to the cloud.

This is where experts in the platform step-up to address these concerns and lower the risk of upgrading from Oracle Commerce to Oracle Commerce Cloud. Object Edge as an Oracle Gold Partner has worked with many great brands to solve some of the greatest problems for large companies with enterprise-scale commerce implementations. This experience with Oracle Commerce, previously ATG and Endeca, and now as the #1 Oracle Commerce Cloud implementation experts of Commerce Cloud has set the foundation to help enterprises navigate and address these concerns.

The three main concerns of moving to the cloud

Lack of documentation on current state – ATG implementations tend to balloon and be heavy with customization and hidden services forgotten over the years.
Potentially millions of dollars in sunk cost and investment in implementation and enterprise integrations, some of which are still being amortized.
Feature and customization parity between Oracle Commerce and Oracle Commerce Cloud

These are valid business and technical concerns that are addressed with business and technical solutions.

At the core of these solutions is the notion that this is an upgrade not a platform change. It is an upgrade because the Oracle Commerce Cloud foundation is still Oracle Commerce running both ATG and Endeca in the background. Oracle has wrapped this foundation with a true API-First SaaS solution to provide Oracle Commerce as a service with a modern architecture and all the benefits gained when treating the commerce platform as a service rather than using it as an enterprise behemoth heavy with customization and technical debt.

The main business benefit of treating this like an upgrade

The main business benefit of treating this like an upgrade is a financial one. Many Oracle Commerce customers have invested millions of dollars that are not fully amortized. Treating this like an upgrade allows the company to treat future investments in Oracle Commerce Cloud as an extension of previous investment in Oracle Commerce. This avoids writing-off previous Oracle Commerce investments and maintaining continuity between the investments. There is continuity in the investment because there is an upgrade and migration path, just as if the company was upgrading from Oracle Commerce 11.1 to 11.3.

The four main steps to the upgrade process

This solution is realized through Object Edge’s Upgrade Assistant and the processes Object Edge has created to treat this as an upgrade. Born from Object Edge’s previous upgrades of Oracle Commerce this Upgrade Assistant now tethers the old world to the new. At its root, the Upgrade Assistant is part of an overall upgrade process and has 4 main steps:

Automated discovery
Expedited analysis and planning
Repository and Configuration migration
Oracle Commerce Cloud migration validation

Key benefits that help de-risk the upgrade and ensure business continuity

Documentation of the current state and creation of an audit trail
Identification all key components, extensions, and modifications
Automation of migration tasks to reduce time and de-risk human errors

The Automated Discovery Step

This step generates analysis reports as it scans the Oracle Commerce code base

The Components report (includes both custom and out of the box) – This report is a summary of all custom components within the code base.
The Module and dependency summary – Identifies key technical modules. This report identifies all 3rd party software modules that exist in the current state. The dependency summary identifies any key dependencies in the app and leads to more discovery questions
The Custom Repository Analysis – Documents all the custom repository items in the key commerce repositories. The key repositories report includes catalog, profile, pricelist, promotion and orders.

This step is also often used to provide an estimate to Object Edge’s customers considering upgrading to Oracle Commerce Cloud.

Expedited analysis and planning

Expedited analysis and planning is realized with the help of an architect and business SME who can quickly review the generated reports. Together, they use the identified key customizations and elements utilized in the existing system, compare them against Oracle Commerce Cloud capabilities and determine what should be migrated and what should not. Object Edge highly recommends deprecating as much customization as possible.

Repository and Configuration Migration Step

The Repository and Configuration Migration step moves key repository elements and custom data structures into Oracle Commerce Cloud. This steps does the following:

Creates catalog, price, profile, promotions and order related extensions in the Oracle Cloud Commerce repository
Migrates all Endeca search configurations including keyword redirects, keywords, dictionary and thesaurus in to the cloud environment
Migrate and upgrade all site configurations, multi-site setup and attached assets
Migrates the repository data into cloud repository to respective domain areas
B2B specific pipelines are also identified, upgraded and migrated to the cloud

Oracle Commerce Cloud migration validation step

Finally, the Oracle Commerce Cloud migration validation step is an inventory review of the migrated elements. Object Edge’s Upgrade Assistant uses the Oracle Commerce Cloud API’s to insert the migrated elements and the migration can be instantly validated through the Oracle Commerce Cloud Admin Console.

Object Edge’s Upgrade Assistant is available through Object Edge. Object Edge will typically run the initial Automated Discovery step as a step in the estimation process. This results in more accurate estimates and greatly reduces risks to the upgrade project.

Reserve a time today to learn more and see a demo of the Object Edge Upgrade Assistant