B2B eCommerce solutions provider Four51 recently announced the results of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting which revealed that modern developers who work with B2B eCommerce solutions increasingly favor cloud-hosted Platforms-as-a-Service (PaaS). This is largely due to their needs for modern APIs and integration capabilities, support for mobile, security requirements, as well as ability to customize and rapidly deploy eCommerce applications to the cloud.
The study, titled "Build Cloud B2B eCommerce Applications on Your Terms: PaaS Combines Speed & Agility with the Customization and Integration Businesses Need," explores the results of a March 2016 survey of 150 US-based software development and architecture professionals with recent experience developing B2B eCommerce solutions. It evaluates how B2B eCommerce systems fit into the broader digital landscape, what platform functionality developers and IT architectures require to deliver eCommerce capabilities within modern websites and apps, and perceptions of various approaches to B2B eCommerce delivery.
Here is an overview of the key findings:
Disappointment with legacy platforms continues to rise
While on-premises deployment constitutes the largest share of B2B eCommerce deployments today (28%), 64% of developers surveyed find their current eCommerce solution is not delivering the qualities they want in a B2B eCommerce platform. In fact, alarming deltas exist between the requirements developers have for a strong B2B eCommerce solution and performance in their current solution. The qualities with the largest differences between requirement and performance are: cost (56%); completeness of feature sets (55%); mobile capabilities (51%); cloud deployment capabilities and cloud readiness (50%); and breadth of integration options (43%).
Legacy platforms shift to cloud-based platforms, as trust in cloud-services increases
Respondents' frustration with customization and integration difficulties of their current platforms may be playing into the fact that comfort with cloud-services has risen sharply over the last two years (page 1). Trust of multi-tenancy is also rising, up from 71% two years ago to 88% today (page 1).
PaaS is the preferred cloud delivery model amongst developers
For development and architecture professionals, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) combines the speed and agility the business is yearning for with customization and integration. It's no wonder then that PaaS deployments are projected to see a steep rate of increase (14%) in their share of B2B eCommerce projects during the next two years, twice the rate of SaaS deployments. Meanwhile, on-premises projects are slated to see the biggest decrease, with their prevalence expected to decrease by 7% (page 3), likely due to the fact that greater than 60% of developers surveyed listed "cost of maintenance" and "applying upgrades or new versions" a major or moderate issue when developing in an on-premises environment (page 7)."
Developers have strong influence in purchase decisions
In order for these deployments to be successful, business stakeholders are forging stronger partnerships with development and architecture professionals to ensure that development and deployment capabilities and requirements are all met. In fact, 58% of developers surveyed say they are more involved in the eCommerce selection today than they were in the past. At customer organizations 41% of developers with increased involvement describe the extent to which their role in this decision process has changed as major (page 2).
Download a copy of the research study here: https://public.four51.com/forrester-four51-cloud-ecommerce-pr.
More Info: https://www.four51.com
