Evolution of Digital Commerce Systems:
We get asked a lot about the evolution of ecommerce, how it has unfolded and where we are currently, so heres brief a synopsis:
- Generation 1 – Monolithic system, Non-modular components, OnPrem, Capex,
- Generation 2 – Monolithic system, Modular components, OnPrem, Capex
- Generation 3 – Headless, Modular components, Private Cloud, Opex
- Generation 4 – Microservices, API First approach, Cloud Native (multi-tenant), Headless, Opex/Pay per use
The generations have always overlapped each other depending on the IT adoption rate of the country and the in-flight multi-year projects, but theres often a swift drop off of a previous generation once a new generation gains traction. As specialists in this space since the 1990’s, we’ve watched this unfold a few times – but the underlying architectural change which makes up the shift into Generation 4, is about to shake up the Digital Commerce Space like nothing we’ve yet seen.