Posts Tagged: ‘HCL Commerce’

OneDB for Commerce – The best option for Cloud Native Commerce?

30. August 2021 Posted by John Beechen

HCL Commerce has supported traditional relational databases such as DB2 and Oracle for many years.  In 2021 we added support for another option, OneDB. This blog talks about why customers are asking us to do this, what features it offers and how you can use OneDB as a cloud native database with HCL Commerce.

OneDB isn’t a completely new database technology. It is based on IBM Informix which HCL provides engineering support for, but OneDB is its own product with its own development stream and roadmap.  HCL’s goal with OneDB is to provide customers with a cloud native database solution that can work in the cloud or on premise with the performance that makes it automatically the best choice for solutions like HCL Commerce.

Why introduce a new database for HCL Commerce? The primary reason is that our customers have been asking for a fully cloud native solution to the database component of Commerce. Going fully cloud native for the entire Commerce infrastructure offers many benefits for scalability, high availability, ease of management and costs. For example, with Commerce and OneDB in Kubernetes, install and configuration can be done with a single Helm chart, greatly simplifying deployment, configuration and future updates.

DB2 and Oracle are proven database technologies that helps HCL Commerce deliver the highest performance for its transactional operations and other needs, however they are owned by IBM and Oracle and therefore we have no control over their roadmaps, support, end of service announcements and the like.  With HCL OneDB we wanted to have more control, so that we can imagine and deliver on innovation that our customers want without being constrained by other software vendors. The HCL teams working on OneDB and Commerce are joined at the hip, so when Commerce has a requirement, the OneDB team is able to turnaround a new release for it within days – accelerating our overall time to market.

Customers are asking for capabilities that go beyond just a transactional database.  OneDB offers versatility to Commerce customers who can use it for the following:

  • As a transactional database for Commerce to replace DB2 or Oracle.
  • As a time series database for event data, such as from IOT devices.
  • As a data warehouse to capture data for analysis.

The fact that its cloud native is big for our customers. HCL Commerce has been cloud native and containerized for some time, so the ability to bring a database that is ALSO containerized and cloud native, sits well with our vision.  The cloud native capabilities of OneDB solves some problems for Commerce customers, such as:

  • Achieve near-zero downtime for the commerce platform helps clients sell more products and services, with hot-hot capabilities reducing the need for a disaster recovery (DR) site.
  • Ability to scale the database layer using Kubernetes, the same way the Commerce application containers can be scaled.
  • Ability to distribute those containers into different cloud data centers to create active-active database availability across those different zones and geographically distributed databases for performance or compliance reasons.
  • Ability to deploy the database together with Commerce using a single Helm chart, which is much simpler faster and easier for clients, thereby reducing time to market.
  • Small footprint, low resource usage for cost efficiency.

For Developers, OneDB for Commerce has also been developed with interoperability in mind.  You can use familiar JSON to document data store patterns, but you can do “join” queries across SQL databases and document databases using SQL Drivers and OneDB’s support for the MongoDB API.  This avoids having to move all the data into OneDB, and respects customer’s desires to keep data where it is and not create data silos that are difficult to manage.

OneDB’s heritage had an emphasis on low administration.  The database was designed to work well in environments where there was no Database Administrator, and so the admin overhead of running it is low.  This helps customers with their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), as many manual tasks are automated with OneDB.  The OneDB Explore console shows you whats going on, but there isn’t as high a level of active involvement due to its low admin nature.

With Commerce, scaling for peak loads is important.  The Commerce and OneDB teams took a lot of time to ensure that prior to launching Commerce with OneDB we tested it under a variety of load scenarios, such as storefront browsing, checkout, search and administrative loads such as data ingest (loading Commerce related product or inventory data in large volumes).  Our goal was to provide equal to or better than performance than existing Commerce database options (DB2 or Oracle) with Commerce.  We wouldn’t release the product until we had that, and we’re delighted to have achieved that goal.

To learn more, schedule a demo of OneDB – available as an option with HCL Commerce Summer 2021 release.

 

 

 

 

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Top Three Requirements for eCommerce Success 

26. August 2021 Posted by Amanda Tevis

eCommerce sales for 2021 will be more than $147 billion greater than forecast before the pandemic. If you are not already invested in a robust e-commerce solution, you will need to get started to survive in the pandemic economy. Many companies initially jumped into ecommerce with a low-cost platform but found that it can’t handle the number of transactions. If companies cannot keep up with the growing number of transactions, they will miss out on sales and customers, limiting their business’s growth.  

The exponential increase in online transactions is driving a significant need for powerful enterprise class databases to help support these eCommerce platforms. In addition, cross-platforming has become necessary with the amount of complex data coming from different online channels. Of course, having a single eCommerce platform will not ensure success, but it’s a good start.  

Running an eCommerce business is not easy. Having a store and offerings to sell does not mean that people will flock in and buy your products. However, there are a few things you can do to try to ensure your company will be a success. 

As enterprises are ramping up for more transactions, let us kick things off by reviewing three key elements to eCommerce successes.  

    1. High Availability is Critical: With High Availability (in short: HA), technology vendors indicate a system that guarantees the highest possible availability. Downtime can be catastrophic. Online customers do not observe closing times. They will always want to have access to their favorite portals and platforms at any time or they will go elsewhere. With high availability, customers can place their orders with confidence, any time and happy customers will come back and repeat the process, translating to revenue growth. Most online consumers will not wait until you are ‘open’ again to buy from a particular business. Opening hours are obsolete online. They belong to the brick-and-mortar, not to today’s fast-growing world of online transactions. Bottom line: Lack of high availability means unhappy customers and less revenue.

    2. Powerful Performance: Did you know that conversion rates on eCommerce sites are a key performance indicator? It’s no secret that a fast eCommerce site with a great user experience (UX) makes shoppers happy and happy shoppers are more likely to convert. There are many things that can slow down an eCommerce website such as customer personalized suggestions, ratings, reviews, videos, large digital assets, which are all meant to create an awesome user experience but can hurt your eCommerce platform speed if not implemented correctly. The way to fix these issues is by having an eCommerce solution that is blazingly fast – sub-second storefront page load performance to help you sell more, faster. Add to that performance with advanced data replication between data centers, and you will have many happy customers. An eCommerce platform with the best performing cloud native offering is the way to go!

    3. Superior Backup and Restore Capabilities: eCommerce website backups and restores are like the insurance of online business. To ensure your online store is fully protected, your eCommerce platform and database should provide the ability to quickly archive and restore persistent data from and to different storage locations and devices. And in a Cloud Native deployment, have the ability to generate database logs on Kubernetes managed persistent storage, allowing it to survive restart and enable fast recovery.   

Sweat the small stuff. Details are crucial to the success of your data and commerce future. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and work backward to reverse engineer how your commerce and data strategies are working. Think human first, and then focus on how your software is supporting your business goals. Consider scalability, backups, cloud native solutions, and how selling more faster can grow your business. 

One way to energize your eCommerce solution is by having the HCL OneDB database as part of your eCommerce platform. HCL OneDB is a cloud native enterprise database that can help accelerate your digital transformation across your organization. OneDB offers the versatility, reliability, and ease-of-use needed to address today’s data management and application development challenges.  

Want details on how to achieve more transaction success with eCommerce? Visit the OneDB and the Commerce webpages for more information.   

 

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COVID-19 and Changing Business/Customer Interaction

15. Mai 2020 Posted by Tom Parette

COVID-19 will have long term if not permanent impact on how society will interact with all aspects of our lives including how we work, shop, dine and manage our finances. Companies must react and put the right measures in place to respond to this event and potentially future events as well as accommodate changes in consumer behavior which have already taken place.  In some respects, society is fortunate this happened in 2020 and not in 2000 because technology is in place to perform many activities that we could not do 20 years ago.  Our ability to work from home using video conference technology, home delivery of food with DoorDash and Uber Eats, banking on-line including such functions as the ability to deposit checks with just the click of a phone, shopping on-line often with next-day delivery, having virtual doctor visits and the migration of many retailers to digital storefronts make this much less impactful as it otherwise could have  been.  Even with all the progress we have made, there are many businesses which have still not fully moved to a digital interaction with their customers and many of them are significantly impacted by the events taking place.  These high-touch areas of our economy must evolve their business models to provide equal to if not better levels of service through a digital interaction model compared to their current high-touch engagement models.  This will not only be a necessity against future impacts but will simply become part of doing business with a society which will forever change the way they do business.

As I have spent the majority of my career in banking technology, one obvious area of improvement is how we pay for things.  As children we were all told cash is dirty.   Guess what, that not only has been imprinted in our minds, but come to find out it’s true.  This will continue to drive society away from cash.  Even with the reduction of using cash, we don’t want to be forced to touch payment keypads if we pay with cards.  Society must move to completely contactless payment methods.  Most of us carry around a very secure payment device in our pockets in the form of a smart phone and business should be using that as the payment platform of choice.

Car shopping is much more high touch than it should be.  Tesla has proven that car shopping and ordering can be a completely digital experience.  Car dealers are currently significantly impacted on the sales side of their dealerships and should evolve to a digital dealership.  The service side of the business could also improve with smarter cars that can diagnose many of the problems before they ever are taken in for service.

The real estate industry seems like a difficult one to move to digital but with Virtual Reality technology readily available, there is no reason those first showings at that initial list of potential houses could not be done “virtually” using VR technology with a virtual walk through to narrow down to a list of homes that are truly worth an in-person visit.  This also enables potential customers relocating from a different city to do the majority of their home shopping before they even visit their new destination.     

 

HCL Software has the products and services to help move your business to a digital interaction model providing the digital storefront for your customers to engage with your business across the platform of their choice.  HCL Commerce provides an omni-channel platform providing personalized storefront capabilities for both business to consumer and business to business interactions.  HCL Digital Experience helps businesses create engaging digital experiences across multiple device types by integrating rich applications and content to deliver these new engagement models.    

 

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March Update: What’s New in HCL Digital Experience

10. März 2020 Posted by Brian Chaput

We are committed to rolling out new features for HCL’s Digital Experience (HCL DX) platform in a cycle of continuous delivery. This means that every month and quarter there will be product updates that address requests from customers, technology optimizations, and general improvements that help you deliver incremental value in your digital experiences. We are making huge investments in our platform, and we are making sure your investments are protected. This March, take a look at the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – here are some of the latest updates we’re planning on rolling out this month (or sooner!).

 

Hot DAM! HCL DX now includes digital asset management  

Eliminate the headache of duplication and searching across separate repositories for digital assets with the new HCL Digital Asset Management (HCL DAM) — a lightweight digital media library — available for no additional charge for HCL DX customers.  Upload, find, tag, optimize, and publish your assets efficiently, all within HCL Digital Experience, and assure proper rendering/optimization automatically across all digital touchpoints.   Take the experiences you provide to the next level by delivering video at production scale with packaged integration with Kaltura, a market leading video platform, for video transcoding and streaming.             

                       

Be nimble, be quick  

More open and accessible APIs provide developers the ability to reuse services in any application, on any touchpoint, using any front end they choose. This provides greater agility in blending complex content, data, and systems — dramatically improving the ability to deliver modern digital experiences faster and more reliably.  

 

OpenShift? Check!  Amazon EKS? Check!   

Now, you can run HCL Digital experience in any native Kubernetes environment, offering ultimate flexibility; choose the platform and deployment that makes the best sense for your business — whether that’s on-prem or in the cloud. We offer support for all market-leading cloud solutions (such as OpenShift and Amazon EKS), so you can install updates anywhere, in minutes, using Docker and Kubernetes. This gives your organization the ability to run HCL DX as a combination of the best technologies to deliver unique, customizable experiences with significantly fewer resources.   

 

Maintenance–free? Yes, please!  

Cloud deployment removes the need to maintain software or infrastructure, with benefits in gaining scalabilty and reliability.  Automated provisioning, auto-scaling, and self-healing via Kubernetes support dramatically reduces total cost of ownership (TCO). 

We are excited to be on the move with our continuous delivery, giving you a steady flow of new benefits and helping you be as successful as possible with using HCL Digital Solutions. As always, give us your feedback and input by attending one of our HCL DX Connects, or by sending us an email. And, of course, follow us on Twitter.  

  

 

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