We live in a world where our devices are updated and upgraded regularly. New updates mean new features, improved usability, and better security. The same goes for your business platforms. So, why should you be keeping up with your commerce upgrades? The following information will focus specifically on SAP Commerce, but the key points can be applied to any platform.
There are three key areas to focus on related to keeping up with your commerce solution
- Supportability
You first need to take a step back and look at what is still currently supported today and go back to the middle of 2019 at version 1905, which is the oldest version still supported version of SAP Commerce. If you’re running any version that is older than that, then you’re technically running a version that’s not supported by SAP mainstream support. Then, going up to 2021, version 2105 will continue to be supported until August 2023.
When it comes to maintaining a supported version of SAP Commerce, SAP releases a semi-major update typically on a bi-annual basis. Support for those releases run anywhere from two to three years once a version is released. This is why it is important that, at a minimum, you should be looking at adding a platform upgrade to your release schedule once a year. Ideally, you would want to run the same release schedule SAP currently does for the platform. This would guarantee that you are on a supported version of the platform and is typically less labor-intensive and easier to go through the upgrade process.
- Security
We’ve all seen the news report of platforms being compromised. One of the easiest ways to guard your systems and your customer’s data is to keep up with the security patches. SAP releases what is called “dot releases,” which can contain bug fixes or security patches. At its core, SAP Commerce is built from a suite of products tailored by SAP to form their Commerce solution. As those products receive security updates or patches, SAP makes sure to include those in up-and-coming dot releases so that SAP Commerce can maintain its security. These dot releases don’t usually contain new features, so the time to implement is typically much faster. SAP does provide notifications and security bulletins on their website so that you are aware when updates are available. However, we do recommend having someone on your team checking for these releases on a scheduled basis to make sure that you’re always keeping up and you don’t happen to miss a security release.
- Migrating to the Cloud
The final key reason why it’s important to keep up with your platform upgrades is specific to SAP Commerce. If you are one of the customers still running SAP commerce either on-premise, in a data center, or in one cloud hypervisors, then this is important for you. When the time comes for you to migrate to SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP’s public cloud-hosted solution for commerce, the version you’re running matters. If you’re not on a version supported by SAP Commerce cloud or even supported by SAP, you’ll have to upgrade before moving to the cloud. If you are currently not running at least version 1905, then an upgrade will be part of the project for you to move to the cloud. If this is you, you will have to upgrade your Commerce solution as a part of the project for you to migrate to the cloud; you will need to make sure you deploy the upgraded sap Commerce version through to production. You might be asking, why? SAP is still required to migrate the database and media for your solution from on-prem to the cloud. In order for sap to be able to do this on-prem version has to be the same as what’s being deployed in the cloud; if it’s not, then they won’t be able to go through the process of migrating all of your data from your on Prem database through the cloud database.
To wrap up, keeping up with your commerce upgrades is vital to ensuring that your solution is supported, secure, and ready to move to the cloud when you’re ready to move to the cloud. If you’d love to hear more about Commerce Solutions upgrades or best practices, please contact us across any of our social media accounts and drop us an email at sales@cx100.com.
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