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SAP Composable Storefront continues to evolve, delivering key improvements and new features to enhance your digital commerce experience. This blog post covers the latest updates and what's coming next, providing insights into how these improvements will benefit your business, both now and in the future.
SAP Composable Storefront Upcoming Updates and Enhancements
SAP Composable Storefront, also known as Project Spartacus, is a JavaScript-based storefront specifically designed for SAP Commerce Cloud. It operates in a headless commerce environment, interacting with the backend solely through APIs. This setup allows for greater flexibility and scalability, enabling businesses to quickly adapt to changing market demands. Built on the Angular framework, its modular architecture supports easy customization and rapid deployment.
Recent updates have introduced several significant features to enhance the functionality and user experience of SAP Composable Storefront. Updates in 2024 included improvements to server-side rendering (SSR) error handling, support for multidimensional products, and a CAPTCHA plugin. Enhancements related to integration with other SAP products have also been implemented. These updates follow a predictable cadence that introduces new features while maintaining backward compatibility, minimizing disruptions for businesses and allowing them to leverage the latest advancements in the platform.
Optimize B2B Purchasing: New PunchOut Functionality
Looking ahead, key updates are planned for the Composable Storefront. Planned for June 2025 is the introduction of B2B PunchOut support. This feature integrates commerce platforms with buyers' procurement systems, streamlining the purchasing process. When buyers initiate purchases from their procurement catalog, they are redirected to the merchant's storefront to shop as usual. Upon checkout, the order returns to the buyers’ procurement system for approval and processing. This integration reduces manual intervention, minimizes errors, and enhances the efficiency of B2B transactions.
Improved Performance: Optimizing for Core Web Vitals
Performance optimization is another critical focus for SAP Composable Storefront for 2025. Core Web Vitals, metrics that measure user experience and SEO performance, are being proactively addressed. Enhancements such as lazy loading of images, pre-connecting to media servers, and specifying responsive image dimensions are being implemented to improve load times and reduce layout shifts. Additionally, the extensibility of media components is being enhanced for more customized and optimized media loading strategies. These improvements aim to ensure that every interaction on the storefront is intuitive and fluid, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates.
Enhanced Security: Upcoming OAuth Changes in SAP Commerce Cloud
Security is paramount in digital commerce, and upcoming OAuth changes in SAP Commerce Cloud reflect this priority. In September, SAP Commerce Cloud will transition to modern Spring libraries for OAuth capabilities, moving away from deprecated libraries. This change will enhance security compliance and introduce new authentication flows. Businesses using the resource owner password flow or the implicit flow will need to migrate to the authorization code flow. This transition will require careful planning and review of existing login flows to ensure compatibility with the new standards.
Understanding Our Policies: Staying Current with Updates
Maintaining compatibility with the latest versions of Angular and Node.js is critical for SAP Composable Storefront. The policy is to support the latest version of Node.js that Angular supports, ensuring the storefront benefits from the latest security updates and performance improvements. For example, the February 2025 release uses Angular 19, which supports Node 20 and 22, but only Node 22 is officially supported. This policy requires businesses to upgrade to the latest version of Node.js to maintain security and performance. Older versions of Node.js are phased out by the end of the year, providing businesses with a clear timeline for their upgrade plans.
Feature toggles are essential for managing new feature introductions in the Composable Storefront. They enable controlled feature rollouts, ensuring backward compatibility and allowing businesses to adapt. The policy dictates that feature toggles remain off for six months, on for the next six months, and are removed after 12 months. This strategy provides businesses ample time to test and adjust to new features before they become mandatory. Additionally, some features can be hidden using CMS components, offering businesses further control over the activation of new features.
SAP Composable Storefront Recent Updates and Enhancements
Enhanced Payment Integration: Introducing the Open Payment Framework
The Open Payment Framework (OPF), introduced in December, represents a significant advancement in payment processing for digital commerce. By integrating with multiple third-party payment service providers, OPF simplifies the setup and management of payment options. This no-code, low-code approach reduces costs and allows businesses to tailor their payment solutions to meet specific needs and international market requirements. The phased rollout of OPF, starting with selected customers and expanding to broader access, ensures a smooth transition and adoption. OPF integration into Composable Storefront supports various payment patterns, including gateway-hosted pages, iframes, and hosted fields, providing secure and flexible payment options. Features like digital wallet quick buy buttons and on-site messaging enhance user experience, making the checkout process faster and more convenient.
Seamless Angular Modernization: Unlocking the Power of Angular 19
The latest version of Angular, Angular 19, introduces utilities and configurations that streamline development and improve user experience. SAP Composable Storefront's latest release includes a significant advancement in streamlining the Angular upgrade process. Simply updating the Angular version is insufficient to fully harness its potential; true optimization requires architectural modernization. Our automated migration process goes beyond a simple version bump, refactoring the application's structure and configuration to align with modern Angular best practices. This involves leveraging features like the new Angular CLI configuration format and the modern application builder, resulting in a cleaner, more efficient codebase. This automated transformation significantly reduces migration time – from days to minutes – minimizing downtime and allowing development teams to focus on innovation rather than remediation. Think of it as a complete engine overhaul for the storefront, ensuring peak performance and future-proofing the investment.
The benefits are clear: improved build performance, enhanced compatibility with future Angular releases, and a significantly reduced risk of errors associated with manual code changes. For existing customers, this means a smoother, faster storefront with enhanced performance and stability. For prospective customers considering a transition from legacy systems, this automated modernization significantly lowers the barrier to entry, enabling a quick and efficient migration to a modern, robust, and future-ready commerce solution powered by the latest Angular capabilities.
Bootstrap library dependency removal: Providing Proactive Security Compliance
The recent updates to Composable Storefronts include several critical changes aimed at enhancing security, accessibility, and flexibility for businesses. One significant update is the removal of Bootstrap as a library dependency due to security vulnerabilities in its JavaScript components. Although Bootstrap was mainly used for styling, its removal aligns with internal standards to mitigate security risks. Instead, the necessary Bootstrap stylings have been directly integrated into the Composable Storefront repository. This change provides businesses with greater flexibility and control over their use of Bootstrap, allowing for easier customization or opting out as needed. This adjustment ensures that applications remain secure and adaptable to future changes.
Accessibility Enhancements: Expanding WCAG 2.1 Compliance
Accessibility remains a key focus in modern web development. The recent updates to Composable Storefronts reflect a strong commitment to this principle, achieving a 96% compliance rate with WCAG 2.1 requirements. This includes enhanced support for keyboard navigation and compatibility with screen readers, ensuring effective interaction for all users, including those with disabilities. Businesses must enable feature toggles and review custom components to maintain this high level of accessibility, thereby expanding their potential customer base and improving overall usability and user experience.
Internationalization: Out-of-the-Box Multilingual Support
Localization and translation are also essential for businesses in a global market. The February release of Composable Storefronts includes out-of-the-box support for multiple languages, consistent with the standard languages supported by Commerce Cloud. This feature allows businesses to offer a localized experience for international customers, enhancing engagement and satisfaction. The integration of translation capabilities enables easy adaptation of storefronts to different regions, fostering stronger connections with a global audience and driving growth in new markets.
Accelerator UI De-release: Planning Your Migration Strategy
Accelerator UI, a set of extensions and add-ons initially released with Hybris commerce, is being phased out of SAP Commerce Cloud. Delivered via Java Server Pages (JSPs), it provided a foundational shopping experience for many early adopters, identifiable by extensions beginning with "yacc*" or ending with "*addons". These components were deprecated in May 2022 (release 2205), marking the start of a planned de-release process. While initially scheduled for no earlier than the second half of 2025, this timeline has been revised.
The de-release will occur in stages. While existing storefront deployments will continue to function, the ability to create new builds incorporating Accelerator UI components will be restricted. The final patch release containing Accelerator UI is anticipated in August 2027. The first release without Accelerator UI support is expected in September 2027. New builds will likely be blocked after Q3 2028. To ensure continued use of Accelerator UI beyond this point, businesses will need to adopt the existing code as a fully "customer-owned" JSP-based project. Comprehensive guidance on this migration process will be provided closer to the 2027 timeframe. For more information on the official deprecation and de-release, please refer to the official deprecation and de-release announcement. You can also find answers to frequently asked questions in this FAQ document.
Customers are strongly encouraged to make a decision regarding their migration strategy—either to headless commerce or to the customer-owned Accelerator model—by the end of 2024 to allow sufficient planning time.
The Future of SAP Composable Storefront: Continuous Innovation and Growth
In summary, SAP Composable Storefront is committed to delivering a consistently evolving platform that empowers businesses to thrive in the dynamic digital commerce landscape. From enhancing the customer experience with performance optimizations and streamlined payment integrations to proactively addressing security vulnerabilities and simplifying upgrades through automated modernization, our focus remains on providing the tools and features businesses need to succeed. The ongoing development of SAP Composable Storefront ensures our customers remain at the forefront of innovation, providing them with a competitive edge and a platform built for future growth.
