Fall 2020 Release, the March of Cloud Native and the Evolution of Commerce

With the GA of HCL Commerce’s Fall 2020 release (watch the release video below) we have taken another massive step forward in the evolution of digital commerce. It has long been our belief that by investing in cloud native for our architecture, we will gradually displace the notion that multi-tenant SaaS is the de facto standard for customer experience platforms.

Each new innovation that we bring to market and is embraced and adopted by our customers, proves that cloud native delivers what they need to ensure they are creating innovative, engaging and differentiated customer experiences – whether B2B, B2C or B2B2C.

We are lucky to work so closely with our customers across these different business models because they help us understand the “Why” driving the groundswell of adoption of cloud native:

1. Portability – This is a simple concept but one that gets glossed over with multi-tenant SaaS solutions. The idea that the customer would want to move their software to any cloud – public, private, hybrid or any combination, isn’t even a consideration in the multi-tenant world. It’s one choice, take it or leave it. But with cloud native you have choice to deploy where you want, how you want and when you want. You have control of the decision based on capabilities offered by that cloud provider that makes the most sense for your business.
2. Custom Customer Experiences – Digital has quickly become critical to a business’ success. Hand in hand with that growth is the increased need to create unique customer user journeys that serve the needs of your buyers as well as differentiate your business from your competitors. You need to stand out and cloud native commerce gives you unlimited ability to set your brand apart.
3. Extensibility – While cloud native empowers business users to create unique and engaging customer experiences, it also makes it supremely easy to extend the platform and incorporate 3^rd party solutions. With this best of breed approach, you can combine your custom experiences with the best of your vendor partners to further extend and enhance how you engage with your customers.
4. Strong Isolation – Why should you be bound or limited by a pool of shared resources that may or may not be available to you when you need them? By breaking away from the “noisy neighbor” experience of multi-tenant SaaS, you remove any resource limitations and free yourself to sell more without fear of having to limit traffic or suffer slow experiences that upset your customers. Cloud native gives you the peace of mind that you will have the scalability you need, when you need it.
5. Data/Privacy – Your customers, your data. It’s a simple statement, but it perfectly captures a core differentiation of the cloud native approach. In a multi-tenant world, customer data is shared (anonymously) for the benefit of all…but why should your competitors be able to leverage your customer data to improve their customer experience? With cloud native, you keep your customer data so only you can benefit from the insights and understanding it provides to create differentiated experiences.
6. Competitive Advantage – Cloud native is all about giving you the choice to deploy new innovations when and as you need them. Rather than giving everyone the same new capabilities at the same time as with SaaS platforms, which result in nobody gaining a competitive advantage, cloud native offers an untouchable velocity and agility to apply exactly the innovations you need, when you need them so you can gain that critical competitive advantage to capture more market share.
7. Time to Market – When so much is changing so quickly from buyer behavior to new technologies and channels, the ability to get new innovations to market fast becomes critical. Cloud native empowers business users to create a new website, quickly test brand experiences, or try out the latest innovations from HCLSoftware, without requiring help from IT and all in a matter of minutes.

Whether your business is large or small, B2B or B2C (or B2B2C) if you are looking to grow fast, innovate and differentiate through great customer experiences, cloud native offers the speed, agility and scalability to take your business to the next level.

For more on the death of multi-tenancy, watch our Commerce & Cocktails video podcast and keep an eye out for our upcoming thought leadership piece with IDC Research.