The Q1 2025 release of SAP Commerce Cloud sets a significant milestone, merging customer-centric features with robust backend enhancements to empower businesses in delivering secure, scalable, and intelligent commerce experiences.
At Langia, we understand the strategic importance of these updates for enterprises leveraging SAP Commerce Cloud. Whether you’re a transformation manager, a CIO, or a customer experience leader, the new features in this release aim to help your business increase agility, optimise costs, enhance security, and ultimately, deliver greater value to your customers.
Let’s dive into the key highlights and what they mean for your organisation.
Composable Storefront: Accessibility and Angular Compliance
The composable storefront continues to be a cornerstone of SAP’s vision for agile, modular digital commerce. With the Q1 2025 release, SAP introduces significant updates to Angular support, including full alignment with accessibility standards such as WCAG 2.1 and the upcoming 2025 EU Accessibility Act.
What’s new?
- Out-of-the-box compliance with more than 90% of WCAG 2.1 and EU Act standards.
- Enhanced SSR (Server-Side Rendering) Error Handling for improved debugging and user experience degradation.
- Reduced development effort thanks to improved accessibility-ready HTML structures and templates.
Business Impact
- Wider reach and inclusivity: Complying with global accessibility standards opens your storefront to users with disabilities, a move that is both ethically responsible and commercially sound.
- Enhanced user experience: Better performance and usability contribute directly to higher conversion rates.
- Lower maintenance cost: Built-in compliance and SSR handling mean fewer ad-hoc fixes and reduced support overheads.
If your business operates across diverse user bases or within regulated markets, these enhancements are a critical enabler of future readiness.
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Trust through Security
Security in digital commerce is non-negotiable. With the latest release, SAP introduces 2FA for account registration using email as the second factor, a move designed to tackle identity fraud and data breaches.
Why it matters
- Builds trust and loyalty: Customers are more likely to engage with a secure platform.
- Regulatory compliance: Especially relevant for GDPR and other global data protection frameworks.
- Reduces fraud and support costs: Fewer incidents translate to fewer support tickets and higher customer satisfaction.
From our experience at Langia, integrating such features is not just about ticking compliance boxes—it’s a brand-building move that demonstrates your commitment to safeguarding user data.
Hibernation: Efficiency Meets Sustainability
One of the more technical but game-changing features is the Hibernation functionality. Available via self-service in the SAP Cloud Portal or via API, it allows teams to shut down non-production environments without data loss or recovery risks.
Why it’s a win
- Cost optimisation: No need to run full environments around the clock.
- Agility: Trigger or schedule hibernations after peak periods like load testing.
- Compliance and security: Reduces exposure when environments are not in use.
Langia recommends that DevOps and architecture teams take advantage of this to manage resources more sustainably—both environmentally and financially.
AI-Based Commerce: Shopping Assistant and Product Image Designer
SAP continues its push into AI-driven commerce with powerful updates to its CX AI Toolkit, including:
- Conversational Shopping Assistant: Enhanced with better product data and pricing context, powered by natural language processing and advanced intent detection.
- Product Image Designer: Enables merchants to remove unwanted objects, isolate items, and refine AI-generated images—all without specialised design skills.
- Expanded translation support: Now available in 14 additional languages including Swedish, Polish, Korean and more.
Real-World Use Cases
- B2B Buyer Support: Intelligent conversations in the storefront help users find complex configurations—without human intervention.
- Visual Consistency: Maintain brand image while reducing dependency on design teams.
- Market expansion: Enter new territories faster with AI-assisted product translation.
These tools aren’t just smart—they’re strategic. By reducing manual overhead and scaling personalisation, they help brands meet modern customer expectations at scale.
B2B Price Calculation with Variant Configuration & Pricing
With this update, SAP brings even greater synergy between Commerce Cloud and SAP S/4HANA. B2B sellers can now leverage the Variant Configuration & Pricing (VCP) engine to run cart calculations independently of backend loads.
What’s in it for businesses?
- Accurate and consistent pricing: Across all channels and customer segments.
- Efficiency at scale: Complex product configurations no longer slow down the buying process.
- Centralised control: Maintain and model pricing rules once, use them everywhere.
In B2B contexts—where product pricing can vary by configuration, contract or region—this is a vital step forward in creating frictionless customer journeys.
Multi-Code Coupons: Seamless Omnichannel Promotions
SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing (OPPS) now supports multi-code coupon campaigns. Marketers and CRM managers can design, distribute and manage personalised coupons that work across various SAP CX solutions—including Emarsys and Commerce Cloud.
Key Benefits
- Cross-channel consistency: Customers receive the same offer experience whether via email, web or mobile.
- Enhanced loyalty: Reward returning customers with precision.
- Simplified management: Define centrally, deploy across touchpoints.
For brands looking to unify the promotional experience, this is a much-needed and effective solution.
Cloud Platform Enhancements and Technical Updates
Beyond feature updates, SAP is making foundational changes to enhance platform security and stability:
- Azure SDK Update: Deprecated SDKs have been replaced to address security vulnerabilities.
- Premium Disaster Recovery: New failover strategies include pre-provisioned IPs and improved Solr index backup workflows.
- Search Service (SaaS alternative to Solr): AI-powered, scalable search with support for parallel usage during migration. While optional, this is a future-proof move, especially with plans for semantic search capabilities.
SAP has also outlined technical scope updates for June and September 2025, including:
- Migration to JDK 21 and Spring Framework 6.2.
- Removal of legacy cockpit extensions.
- OAuth implementation change using the Spring Authorisation Server.
- Strengthening of encryption mechanisms like TAE and tamper-proof factor integration.
These changes are essential for anyone planning long-term scalability and should be included in your roadmap and testing cycles early.
What Should You Do Next?
If your business relies on SAP Commerce Cloud, the Q1 2025 release is more than a feature upgrade—it’s a blueprint for future-proofing your digital operations.
Here’s what Langia recommends:
- Assess Impact: Review which features are immediately relevant to your operations (e.g. hibernation for DevOps, 2FA for security, search service for discovery).
- Prepare for Framework Updates: Start planning for JDK 21 and Spring 6.2 transitions in your development and testing environments.
- Evaluate AI Capabilities: Consider piloting the Shopping Assistant and Product Image Designer for quicker time-to-value.
- Explore Migration Pathways: Particularly for search, security, and promotion modules.
If you need help evaluating, implementing or optimising any of these new capabilities, don’t hesitate to reach out to Langia. Our expert consultants are ready to guide you through every step of the transition—from readiness assessments to full-scale rollouts.
Final Thoughts
SAP Commerce Cloud’s Q1 2025 release is a clear signal of its commitment to agility, intelligence, and security. For enterprises, this is a crucial opportunity to modernise both frontend experience and backend stability.
Langia stands ready to help you translate these innovations into business results. Let’s embrace the future of commerce—together.
Need guidance on any of these updates? Contact us at Langia to explore how we can support your SAP Commerce Cloud transformation.
