Recently SAP launched hybris-as-a-service (YaaS.io) as an open beta. I looked at it thoroughly and ran some experiments.
YaaS is a cloud-based solution for e-commerce based on the ideas of service-oriented architecture. According to the idea, the functional components of your e-shop are available as independent services with their own data. It allows you to have more flexibility and scalability within the platform you’re using.
Despite the similarity in their names, hybris and YaaS are completely different products. SAP hybris is rich in features and highly extensible, all components are clear and well-tested, and you can find thousands of websites powered by SAP hybris online.
What is YaaS?
- A set of ready-to-use out-of-the-box RESTful APIs that look like add-ons or plugins in your shop. Source code is not available, and extensibility is limited. Using these services, your storefront and control panels operate with e-commerce data such as products, orders, customers, etc. Access rights depend on users.
- Control panels for out-of-the-box add-ons, non-configurable and non-extensible.
- A lightweight “demo” plain HTML storefront template where these APIs are used. Source code is available. The storefront is based on the AngularJS framework, so there is a lot of JavaScript.
- Message queue system to enable communication between services.
- Marketplace for APIs from SAP and third-party service suppliers. It has not been opened yet.
- A set of tools for creating your own APIs and control panels. Starter kit.
- Pivotal.io/Cloud Foundry integration for APIs.
YaaS is in open beta as of today, so there are no such things as a CMS for your storefront, promotions for e-commerce, order management, or customer service functionality.
The existing APIs from SAP or other companies are difficult to extend in terms of functionality. The only way to extend these APIs is to proxy them. You can wrap other services in your own code to perform some actions before and/or after their native code. But there is no way to inject your functionality inside, as you can see in the Spring IoC paradigm. Some modules have their own “plugin system” as well as additional/dynamic data fields capability, which they call mixins, but it looks like a workaround rather than a normal approach.
Due to its lack of functionality, YaaS is not ready yet for large e-commerce solutions, but it is fine for light and simple e-commerce solutions, especially for early adopters and innovators.
Basically, YaaS looks very promising. Now it is a good solution to quickly build functionally simple, scalable e-shops hosted in the cloud. I hope SAP will add all the necessary things to the platform soon and YaaS will become a good tool for large businesses.