Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) merchants have had a love/hate relationship with upgrading the platform for years. However, now with the general availability of the 2.4.4 upgrade, that relationship will change. You can read more about the benefits of the latest Adobe Commerce solution by downloading our upgrade guide written in partnership with Adobe, or by watching the recorded webinar.  

Who should consider and implement the upgrade?

All merchants that are on Adobe Commerce, whether it’s a cloud-based or an on-premise database, should look to upgrade to the 2.4.4 version. This is even more important for merchants on the 2.3.x branch as the end of life for that branch is September 2022.

Who should implement the upgrade is a different question. Whether you work with a third-party partner, like our CXM Team here at Merkle, or have an internal team, make sure they are trained and certified professionals. While working with experienced professionals seems like a no-brainer, I can speak from personal experience that projects implemented by certified experts are far more successful than those that are not. Your ecommerce site is a major part of your business, don’t skimp and go with certified developers.

What is the upgrade?

Seems like an odd statement. What is an upgrade? I’d look at it from a different perspective. One of the biggest values of working with a world class partner like Adobe is that the ability to upgrade is part of your licensing agreement.

Why should your brand make the upgrade?

The short of it, staying up-to-date with upgrades follows best practices, but with the move to 2.4.4 there are added benefits. Some of those benefits are:

• PHP 8.1 support
• Third-party dependency upgrade
• Decoupling vendor bundled extensions (VBEs)
• Expanded GraphQL coverage
• And features only available to 2.4.x instances
  • Live Search from Adobe
  • Seller assisted shopping
  • Adobe Payment Services
  • B2B purchase approval workflows.

Take a look at this quick chart:

For more detailed explanations please watch the upgrade webinar.

Where do you apply the upgrade?

The obvious answer is on your production site. The real answer is to follow the proper software development life cycle (SDLC) methodology. Start in your local, or Docker, instance to apply the upgrade. Then you can push to staging and of course to production after that. The biggest part is making sure to TEST TEST TEST. Adobe Commerce is an Enterprise Software platform. Adobe deployments tend to be API-rich and have third-party extensions associated with them. Be sure your upgrade team not only tests the core code, but QAs every API connect and more importantly the third-party extensions they have implemented.

Adobe partners who develop extensions get beta access to releases before they are generally available. Their extensions are verified by Adobe prior to availability on the Adobe Marketplace. However, even these extensions should be tested against any customizations you may have implemented. Test for any customer third-party extensions that have not been vetted by Adobe.

When should you upgrade?

I’m a little biased but upgrade as soon as your development can plan and execute the upgrade. DO NOT WAIT until your current version approaches end of life. Being on an unsupported version has many drawbacks, the biggest possible issue is that you put your brand at risk for not being PCI-compliant.

The other big issue is that so many merchants wait until the last minute. It can slow the implementation if everyone is trying to upgrade at the same time, especially if you use a third party.

If you’re ready to get started with the Adobe Commerce upgrade, but don’t have the bandwidth or certified professionals on staff, please reach out! Merkle’s Solution team is equipped to help you implement and get the most out of Adobe Commerce.