Performance & Scalability are in our DNA

When I was asked to write a blog about performance and scalability, my initial reaction was, “Me?” Of all the members of the HCL Commerce Product Management team, I feel like the least likely to add much value to a discussion on these “technical” topics. Then, I remembered a quote I read, “Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.” Assignment accepted, and I knew exactly who to tap as a source…Brian Gillespie, Commerce industry veteran and our very own Product Management Leader. Here’s our conversation lightly edited and condensed:

So, tell me how this idea for a blog came about.

Today more than ever, the digital commerce channel is critical to total revenue for B2B, B2C and B2B2C organizations. With shopper and buyer traffic and order volumes increasing, page load times and a streamlined checkout process must exceed shopper and buyer expectations. Did you know that a page load delay of just one second reduces customer satisfaction by 16%? And a similar one second delay during the checkout process reduces conversions by 7%? Many of our clients have annual digital revenue of $1+ billion, so that 7% adds up quickly.

Furthermore, organizations of all types must be able to adapt to the variability in traffic and order volumes, especially the upper ends of those variables, like during flash sales and holidays.

Can you tie this back to HCL Commerce?

Performance and scalability constitute the DNA of HCL Commerce. We have clients now on v9 who have reported a 30% reduction in page load time. At least in part, this is a result of HCL Commerce’s shift from a monolithic architecture to one comprised of business services, containers, and Kubernetes.

With v9, we also introduced HCL Cache to serve content “on the edge,” or closer to the shoppers and buyers.

Another way HCL Commerce v9 has gotten faster.

Exactly. And not only during times of “typical” order volumes. Many of our clients experience sudden spikes – 5,000, 10,000, even 100,000 orders an hour – with little or no warning, and with HCL Commerce, not only can they scale up, but with a cloud native architecture, they can also scale out horizontally within seconds.

Anything else we should know about performance and scalability?

The digital channel has become critical for anyone making online purchases. B2B Sales teams rely on it to transact with Buyers, who they are no longer visiting as often, and Shoppers are using it more to search and educate themselves on products, even as brick-and-mortar stores in some areas are welcoming them back.

HCL Commerce has always been designed and known for its unparalleled performance and scalability, and as more of our clients adopt v9, we continue to prove ourselves.

You’ll probably think twice before asking me to write a blog again, huh?

[Laughs] Noted.

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