Adobe Commerce (r)evolution: Key Takeaways from the Barcelona Partner Event
Last month, our Head of Operations, Victor Bauer, returned from Adobe’s exclusive partner event in Barcelona with a compelling message: Adobe Commerce is undergoing a fundamental transformation. From architecture to content management, product packaging to developer experience, Adobe is evolving into a modern, SaaS-first, composable commerce platform focused on orchestrating customer experiences, not just enabling transactions.
As a longstanding Adobe Commerce partner, we keep up-to-date on all the newest developments to ensure our clients have the best, most effective solutions for the eCommerce needs. Here’s a summary of what’s changing, and what it means for our clients and partners.
Experience at the Core of Strategy
A clear takeaway from the event was Adobe’s shift in philosophy. The focus is no longer on selling software as standalone tools, but rather on delivering seamless, interconnected experiences. Customers expect consistency, speed, and intelligence at every touchpoint, and Adobe is positioning its ecosystem to meet those expectations.
To support this, Adobe is moving from Customer Experience Management (CXM) to Customer Experience Orchestration (CXO). This marks a deeper integration across its product suite including Commerce, Content, Analytics, and Personalisation, and a deliberate effort to break down silos between them. For enterprise merchants, this means more streamlined solution bundles, flexible licensing, and a technology stack that is designed to scale with customer expectations.
From Monolith to Composable Cloud
Adobe Commerce’s architecture is evolving rapidly. What began as a monolithic platform is now becoming a fully SaaS, multi-tenant solution built on a composable model. Innovation cycles are accelerating, and the reliance on patches and manual upgrades is being phased out in favor of automatic, behind-the-scenes updates.
The key architectural developments include:
- Composable components: Independently deployable services that can be swapped, scaled, and customised without affecting the rest of the platform
- Cloud-native delivery: With edge delivery services powering the storefront, merchants benefit from faster load times, higher availability, and global scalability
- Continuous deployment: Updates are no longer tied to version releases. Features and fixes can now be rolled out seamlessly with minimal disruption
These changes result in higher agility for both business and technical teams, supporting faster time to market and reduced operational overhead.
Victor Bauer
Director of Operations, Monsoon Consulting
Introducing New Flavours of Adobe Commerce
Adobe is no longer a one-size-fits-all solution. Two new platform options were introduced in addition to the traditional Adobe Commerce to address the diverse needs of merchants:
- Adobe Commerce as a Cloud Service: A full-stack, fully managed SaaS platform designed for businesses looking to start fresh or migrate entirely. It includes edge-powered storefronts, native asset management, a visual content editor, and out-of-the-box merchandising tools.
- Adobe Commerce Optimizer: A top-of-funnel experience layer that overlays any existing commerce backend. It offers a lightning-fast frontend experience, A/B testing capabilities, and metrics visualisation without requiring backend changes. This is ideal for brands that are not ready to replatform but want to modernise the customer experience.
This dual offering provides flexibility. Brands can choose a full rebuild or gradually evolve with Optimizer depending on where they are in their digital maturity journey.
Game-Changing Enhancements
Several product and technical enhancements stood out during the event:
Visual Content Editing Without the Dev Bottleneck
Adobe’s team highlighted the new Adobe Experience Manager visual editor that brings drag-and-drop content management to commerce teams. Similar in spirit to popular headless CMS solutions, it empowers marketers to manage pages, blocks, and assets without waiting on developers. This means faster launches, more experimentation, and increased agility in campaign execution.
Extreme Catalog Scalability
Adobe Commerce now supports up to 250 million SKUs and 30,000 price rules. These capabilities unlock new use cases for large-scale B2B operators, marketplaces, and manufacturers. This is a significant upgrade that positions Adobe as a contender for data-heavy commerce environments.
Deployment and Dev Experience Overhaul
Deployment is now exclusively through GitHub, with GitLab no longer supported. Adobe has also introduced an App Builder framework that allows developers to build custom functions using any language, hosted as serverless functions. Combined with API Mesh, a low-code integration gateway, this dramatically reduces the complexity of integrating ERP, CRM, and other external systems.
Other enhancements include new SDKs, pre-built components for checkout and product pages, autoscaling infrastructure, and simplified scaffolding for project kickoffs.
What It Means for Our Clients
For existing Adobe Commerce clients, there is no forced migration. Adobe will continue to support current PaaS customers with patches and security updates. However, the benefits of the new SaaS model including faster performance, easier extensibility, and lower operational overhead make a compelling case for future upgrades.
For new clients, Adobe’s Cloud Service is the recommended path for greenfield builds or full replatforming. For those who want to enhance rather than replace their existing commerce infrastructure, Optimizer provides a low-risk way to improve performance and deliver modern experiences without disruption.
Looking Ahead
Adobe is planning general availability of both Adobe Commerce Cloud Service and Optimizer in June 2025 for the US, with Europe expected to follow in November. Full B2B functionality, including storefront and catalog enhancements, is projected for early 2026.
For teams like ours, these changes open up exciting new possibilities. Whether it is helping clients embrace composable commerce, reduce time to value, or scale globally, Adobe’s roadmap is full of opportunities and we are ready to build what’s next.
