Adobe Summit 2024: Commerce Recap & Key Takeaways

Adobe Summit 2024 was an action packed event, with so much news, great content and entertainment, but as with any event, it’s the people and interactions that make it special ??

Here are my key takeaways and announcements from the event, mostly all in relation to Adobe Commerce ??

1?? 'Adobe Commerce Storefront' has arrived ??

New tools to build storefront experiences are here. This is the biggest development on the frontend since Adobe’s acquisition of Magento.?

Commerce Dropins allow creating micro, serverless frontend components that can be included in any framework ??

?? https://experienceleague.adobe.com/developer/commerce/storefront

In addition, for Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) customers, Edge Delivery Services, or EDS (because who doesn’t need another acronym in their life) and Document Based Authoring (managing site structure and content via MS/Google Docs) can be used to deliver entire storefront experiences (utilising Dropins for Commerce components) ??

?? https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-cloud-service/content/edge-delivery/authoring

If you’d have told me a week ago that Adobe Commerce sites in 2024 could be orchestrated using docs and spreadsheets, I certainly wouldn’t have believed you ??

2?? Adobe’s future for Commerce is combined services ??

It’s clear to see Adobe’s goal is to combine all their Adobe Experience Cloud services together, along with their impressive AI tools, to offer the complete package to enterprise customers, allowing control over commerce, content, analytics, customer journeys, personalisation, external integrations and more.

All the new announcements at Summit, including the new storefront tools rollout, take them another step closer to fully realising this.

?? https://business.adobe.com/

3?? AI toys have now become tools to scale growth ???

Adobe seems to be focusing on utilising AI to speed up and scale content and asset generation and is building real-world tools to realise this.?

Examples include the new reference image features of Firefly that allow the creation of unique images from either the style or structure of a provided source image ??

?? https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2024/03/26/new-structure-reference-capabilities-adobe-firefly-bring-new-level-creative-control-ideation

In addition, GenStudio allows marketers to plan, create and manage generative AI content across apps ??

?? https://business.adobe.com/products/genstudio.html

4?? New B2B capabilities are coming ??

B2B 1.5.0 is coming this summer (the current planned ETA is June) and we got a hands-on look during the event. New features include parent/child company account management, negotiable quote drafts and duplication, plus a quote template system to allow the creation of pre-approved quotes based on specified conditions.

It’s great to see Adobe investing in this area as B2B is one of the key reasons we see merchants opting for Adobe Commerce over Magento Open Source when using Hyv?.

?? https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/commerce-admin/b2b/release-notes

5?? Folks love Hyv? ??

I appreciate that I may be a bit biased on this one ?? However, I was fortunate to meet many of our partner agencies and tech providers, plus many prospective ones too, during the week, and it’s great to hear so many people are enjoying working with our solution, and the impact it’s having for their merchants ??

I also noticed a trend of agencies planning on offering both Hyv? and sites built using Commerce Dropins/Edge Deliver Services, depending on the size and best fit for the merchant and their use case ??

?? https://www.hyva.io/

We’re fortunate to work with so many fantastic partners ?? Shoutout to everyone I connected with: Atwix basecom Bemeir Binary Anvil Inc. GENE GoMage Lemundo Merkle Platform.sh PHOENIX MEDIA GmbH PHPro ShipperHQ Stripe SwiftOtter TechDivision GmbH Terrific Minds The Pixel Vaimo Wasserman Digital and more!

6?? The Adobe Commerce team is 'good people' ??

While Adobe is focusing its product offerings towards their enterprise customers, the Commerce team are still very supportive of everyone in the wider Magento ecosystem, which we’ve seen firsthand at Hyv? with the support we’ve received building out Hyv? Enterprise, plus the upcoming integration of Adobe Payment Services for Hyv? Checkout.

A shoutout to everyone I had the pleasure of speaking to at Summit: Ed Kennedy John Romney Igor Miniailo Harrison Loveall, ETA CPP Parul Sinha Shaun McCran and more ??

And while we didn’t get a chance to meet in person, a big ‘thanks’ to Stephen R. , who helped provide me with guidance and a better understanding of the architecture of Commerce Dropins and Edge Delivery Services ??

7?? The scale of Summit is off the charts ??

I was lucky enough to attend Magento Imagine multiple times, and that was a big conference, but catering to 11,000 attendees is another level! ???

The sheer size of the keynote theatre and the food hall drove this home already, as did seeing all the Adobe ads up and down the Las Vegas Strip, but the Summit Bash after-party, which was more like a mini festival, was mind-blowing ??

Within the space of a few hours I tried F1 sim racing ??? played pool ?? and arcade games ?? went axe throwing ?? saw people fly above on an indoor zip line and watched NBA basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal ?? aka DJ Diesel ?? deliver a DJ set, all within the surreal setting of Area15 ??

It's certainly not your average Wednesday night! ??

?? https://area15.com

8?? The future of commerce is bright ??

My overall takeaway is that the eCommerce space is still thriving and between Adobe Commerce , Magento Open Source and complimentary solutions like ours at Hyv? , there are plenty of solid options for merchants from SMBs up to and including global enterprises ??

The Commerce Rockstar session was also great at highlighting the amount of innovation in the space. See the Twitter thread below for details ??

?? https://x.com/johnhughes1984/status/1773403414720057526

While there is a need for the ecosystem to join together to promote Magento against its competitors in the mid-market, the future of the platform is safe and secure ???

For more on this see my recap of the roadmap session.

?? https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/adobe-summit-commerce-2024-roadmap-session-recap-takeaways-hughes-fb0nf

?? That’s a wrap

I’m off for a week's holiday to recharge the batteries ?? but I’m inspired to get back and keep pushing the boundaries with Hyv? once I return ??

To borrow a word from Shaq - until next time "Adobe's" ??