Your Guide to Commerce in the Cloud
How to Evaluate Cloud Commerce Solutions to Build Seamless, Personalized Shopping Experiences
“Without a doubt, cloud adoption is increasing dramatically.”
Cloud is the new normal.
Retailers of all sizes are rapidly deploying cloud-based technology to transform their commerce solutions, close the innovation gap, and keep up with rising consumer expectations.
Today, the question for retailers has shifted from “should we adopt the cloud?” to “what type of cloud is best for our business?” While straightforward on the surface, the marketplace is full of technology providers who refer to their solution as cloud-based.
However, with many types of solutions available, and some vendors offering immature SaaS offerings that cannot scale for growth, the cloud commerce landscape can be difficult to navigate.
For retailers of all sizes, choosing the right cloud model is essential to effectively deliver personalized, intelligent, and engaging digital shopping experiences. In this guide, we’ll discuss the key business drivers for deploying cloud-based solutions and highlight why only a multi-tenant cloud platform for innovation provides retailers with a scalable, trusted infrastructure that is always on, always secure, and always fast — while delivering a steady stream of improvements necessary to stay competitive and grow.
Key business drivers for deploying cloud solutions.
Brands look to ecommerce teams to create, orchestrate, and deliver digital experiences across web, mobile, social, and even in-store. These experiences must exceed consumer expectations and crush sales targets. To drive their organizations forward, retail CIOs and ecommerce leaders need solutions that satisfy key business drivers:
Growth
Branded Innovation
Time to Value
Site Speed
Unified Shopping Experiences
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All clouds are not created equal
Choosing the right cloud architecture can be complex and confusing. Brands need to understand how to evaluate the merits and drawbacks of many different types of cloud solutions to ensure they invest in a model that can support business objectives and goals for growth and innovation.
Single-Tenant Licensed Cloud
Managed Service Provider (MSP)
Homegrown/DIY Cloud
Multi-Tenant Cloud Platform
Here are key differences between types of cloud solutions.

Commerce Cloud is a mult-tenant cloud platform for innovation.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a multi-tenant cloud platform for innovation, comprised of a set of capabilities that help brands drive core business needs such as growth, branded innovation, time to value, speed, and a unified shopping experience.

Trusted Platform
Imagine how much your business could grow on a platform that is always on, always secure, and always fast. The Commerce Cloud infrastructure is built with a grid computing architecture, designed by retail experts, and comprised of best-in-class network, storage, security, and management components. The platform provides scalable database and memory allocation, caching, computing power, network bandwidth, and load-balancing uniquely designed for the scalability and performance requirements of an ecommerce business.
Commerce Cloud automatically scales and provides resources for retailers to grow based on shopper demand, not platform limitations or volume fluctuations. Gone are the days of having to estimate peak traffic and worrying about exceeding it. Brands are empowered to build pages that load with lightning speed, sites that withstand surges in traffic, and checkout experiences that are safe and secure with every transaction.
Maintaining a trusted platform also comes down to protecting the security and privacy of customer and cardholder data. Commerce Cloud complies with the most challenging industry and regulatory standards and applies security best practices at all levels of the organization — including people, technology, and operations. With trust as priority number one, Commerce Cloud is continuously implementing robust security controls to ensure that commerce operations remain reliable, compliant, and secure.
+99.99%
UPTIME
Commerce Cloud continues to deliver proven reliability since 2005 as it expands in size, variety, and geography.
Scalability

A Leader in Security and Compliance
Brands can protect their business, and increase peace of mind by taking advantage of the Commerce
Cloud leadership in secure commerce operations. Commerce Cloud satisfies the security and compliance requirements of the world’s most complex retail organizations, and all customers take advantage of these robust security controls:
Industry and regulatory compliance across PCI-DSS, SOC2, ISO 27001, CSA STAR, TRUSTe.
Certified Privacy, and participation in the Safe Harbor framework.
46 points of delivery in Salesforce data centers or with top-tier co-locations all with redundant power, network, HVAC systems, and 24x7 physical security.
Security protection and intrusion detection fortifies access with a redundant firewall and a security team continuously monitors for unauthorized access or faults that could lead to downtime. Logs are monitored and reviewed on a regular basis and an embedded CDN thwarts attacks like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).
Comprehensive monitoring across all sites makes it easier to determine anomalies in advance and quickly intervene.
A dedicated technical operations team provides 24/7 coverage, ensures security of the platform, and performs frequent tests including periodic vulnerability scans and penetration tests.
“Our old system used to fold over all the time, and we’d have to go to a development house. When our UK site was down, we’d lose £10,000 a day. There’s such a joy of having the platform stable with Salesforce Commerce Cloud.”
Enabler of Innovation
Deeply invested in the success and growth of each brand, Commerce Cloud sits at the intersection of innovation and customer success. At the foundation is the multi-tenant cloud platform for innovation; enabling a continuous delivery of new features and enhancements six to ten times a year. This model means all retailers operate a shared application infrastructure and can take advantage of new features and benefits as soon as they become available.
Access to leading capabilities like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile design best practices, Apple Pay, reporting tools, and more.
Non-disruptive releases on a shared infrastructure on the same version of code with no impact to uptime service or current implementations.
A storefront reference architecture that serves as an out-of-the-box blueprint for building “pixel perfect” sites and unique shopper experiences.
Custom Brand Experiences
LINK Technology Partner Programs
“Organizations reported a 20% lift in attributable revenue with their deployment of predictive intelligence and recommendations through Einstein.”
AI-Powered Commerce Built In

Retailers take advantage of Einstein AI capabilities through the Commerce Cloud multi-tenant cloud platform for innovation. Commerce Cloud uses a shared view of order history, product catalog, and storefront activity to gather real-time behavioral data and understand customers’ needs. With only a few clicks to set up, Einstein automatically builds data models to more accurately predict and recommend the items shoppers are most likely to buy. Merchandisers are also empowered with Einstein intelligence to automate the manual tasks they encounter every day.
Unique to Commerce Cloud is our community of over 500 retailers operating more than 2,750 ecommerce sites and reaching over 440 million individual monthly shoppers. Commerce Cloud customers are part of a large, vibrant, and interconnected community that is a constant source of ideas, insights, and inspiration. The aggregated, anonymized pool of data from this base continuously makes Commerce Cloud Einstein smarter and powers native functionality such as:
Product Recommendations that eliminate guesswork with automated merchandising and provide data-driven product recommendations to all shoppers.
Commerce Insights that interpret how customers are buying products and provide merchandisers with powerful shopping basket metrics to develop meaningful marketing strategies around customer shopping habits.
Predictive Sort that connects customers to products by automatically personalizing search/category pages with tailored product sorting.
Search Dictionaries identifies popular search terms and automatically pairs missing terms with an appropriate synonym list to guarantee relevant, robust search results.
With Product Recommendations by Commerce Cloud Einstein, Black Diamond saw a 9.6% increase in conversion rate, and a 15.5% increase in revenue per visitor.
“We were very happy with the results. Clearly, the defining metric of the test was the revenue lift.”
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Build for growth and innovation with Commerce Cloud
When evaluating cloud solutions, it’s not just about the technology. You want the right partner with the right technology model and business model to ensure success. With more than 15 years serving leading global retailers, Commerce Cloud is the world’s #1 enterprise cloud commerce platform with the trusted experience of deploying innovative, secure, scalable, intelligent, and extensible commerce solutions.
The Commerce Cloud business model is based on shared success. When retailers succeed, by growing revenue, orders, and other measures, Commerce Cloud succeeds. This creates economic alignment and an incredibly motivating incentive between Commerce Cloud and its customers – ensuring the growth and success of all customers.
To transform your commerce solution and close the innovation gap, only the Commerce Cloud provides retailers with the platform and tools necessary to stay competitive and grow.
Evaluate cloud-based solutions with this checklist
When evaluating a cloud-based solution, use this checklist to determine whether it provides the services, security, and innovation your business needs
One view of the customer throughout their shopping journey: Commerce Cloud gives you the power to deliver unified, intelligence-driven experiences across all channels, on any device. Watch how.
Seamless upgrades: Commerce Cloud features seamless, behind-the-scenes updates (up to ten times per year) so you’re always up-to-date.
Pre-built integrations: With Commerce Cloud, you have access to more than 200 certified add-ons via our LINK partner network
Predictive Intelligence: Commerce Cloud Einstein has has AI built into the platform at no additional cost to deliver personalized shopper experiences and automate merchant tasks
Technical support during implementation and beyond. Our cloud-based model means there’s no outdated hardware to fix, freeing your IT teams to focus on projects that move the needle.
International expansion capabilities: Quickly expand your business into new regions and markets. Learn how.
Time to value: Forrester shows how organizations can launch new sites 33% faster with Commerce Cloud. See more.
Scalability toward targeted growth paths: Grow without limits. Commerce Cloud can handle everything from a one-day traffic spike to the addition of multiple locations with ease.
Focused on your long-term success: Because of our business model, everything we invest in and do is aligned to our clients’ success.
Licensing, hosting, or expansion included in the total cost of ownership: Our pricing model includes everything you need to grow your business into a full-fledged omni-channel operation of any size.
- Operational and business assistance: Our Customer Success and Retail Practice teams are here to help — today, tomorrow, and beyond.
Start seeing results with Commerce Cloud.
