Deploying an Angular on Store on HCL Commerce

Deliver a sub-second Angular website on HCL Commerce with Layer0

Angular is a frontend framework created by Google. It is a popular solution for large enterprise websites that plan to scale their site quickly. All in all, Angular offers great runtime performance and is fit to be the backbone for complex, revenue-generating websites with heavy traffic, such as eCommerce and Travel websites.

Angular comes with a bunch of built-in capabilities, including:

• Code generation: Angular generates code that's highly optimized for JavaScript virtual machines, providing the benefits of hand-written code. HTML templates combined with JavaScript open the door for optimizations that are simply not possible in other frameworks, for example React.
• Code splitting: Angular apps load quickly, delivering automatic code-splitting. This way, users load code required to render the view they request.
• Real DOM: Angular uses real DOM, making the framework best suited for websites that do not change frequently. However, the framework is not the best choice for large websites, or those that make frequent updates, such as most eCommerce sites.

HCL Commerce, previously known as IBM WebSphere, is built specifically for enterprise level B2B eCommerce. The platform offers great scalability, flexible catalogue management, deployments and personalization on multi/macro sites. HCL Commerce is a cloud-based, API-first platform which includes REST and SDKs APIs. It also offers two proprietary frontends: 1. React Reference Storefront and 2. Java JSP Storefront. The Reference Storefront is a new, closed-source proprietary frontend meant to keep you locked into the platform.

HCL Commerce supports both headless and monolithic/traditional architectures. HCL's Standard Architecture is designed to separate individual frontend storefronts from the backend servers, leading to increased scalability, flexibility, security and improves the ease of development and deploys. This Standard Architecture uses traditional Java JSP server-side rendering (SSR), while the second architecture, React Store Architecture, does not. React Store Architecture is based on a Single Page Application (SPA) model, which is a client-centric headless Store which makes API calls, but it currently doesn't support SSR. Moreoever, neither architectures support PWA or AMP out of he box, which significantly hinders website performance.

Layer0 lets you deliver your Angular storefront on SAP Commerce Cloud at sub-second speeds in a matter of hours. The average website on Layer0 see median speeds of 320ms loads, as measured by Largest Contentful Paint (an important metric in Google's Core Web Vitals). Layer0, however, is much more than merely a website accelerator. It is a Jamstack platform for eCommerce. Layer0 makes websites faster for users and simpler for frontend developers. The platform was built specifically for large-scale, database-driven websites such as eCommerce and Travel and includes the following benefits: 

• Jamstack for eCommerce via pre and just-in-time rendering
• Zero latency networking via prefetching of data from your product catalog APIs
• An edge that can be configured natively in your Angular app (CDN-as-JavaScript)
• Edge rules that can be run locally, in pre-prod and production environments  
• Automated, full-stack preview URLs from GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket with every new branch and push
• Performant split tests at the edge and A/B tests that do not slow down the site, canary deploys, and personalization
• Serverless JavaScript that is much easier and more reliable than AWS Lambda
  

With Layer0, your Angular SAP Commerce Cloud store will run in sub-second speeds and your developers will be empowered to control edge caching and reduce rework using the various developer productivity tools that come with the platform. 

Check out J.Jill, a sub-second HCL Commerce storefront on Layer0. The retailer delivers 390ms average page loads across its site

If you're currently using Angular, use the this guide to deploy your Angular app on Layer0 in minutes.