AEM Integration with IBM WebSphere Commerce (WCS)
Replacing legacy Fluid dependencies with a tightly integrated AEM and WCS commerce architecture.
Background
Our client, a leading shoe and apparel manufacturer, was operating a complex ecommerce ecosystem using Adobe Experience Manager 6.x, IBM WebSphere Commerce (WCS), Scene7, CloudFront, and a legacy system called Fluid for managing product recipes and swatches.
The objective was to completely remove Fluid from the architecture and replace all of its functionality with a scalable, integrated solution using AEM and WCS.
Task
The client needed a unified authoring and commerce workflow where all product recipes, swatches, and configurations could be created, reviewed, approved, and published using AEM — while WCS continued to manage ecommerce, users, and orders.
The system also needed to support approval workflows, CDN cache invalidation, and personalized product visibility for both logged-in and anonymous users.
Solution
- Removed Fluid from the architecture and migrated its functionality into AEM and WCS
- Built a custom admin dashboard in AEM using Coral UI for managing swatches and recipes
- Implemented multi-tab navigation, sorting, filtering, and multi-select capabilities for authors
- Enabled authors to create, list, sort, and manage swatches (patterns, materials, colors)
- Implemented approval workflows for swatches and recipes before activation
- Built recipe creation and management tied to products using unique identifiers
- Integrated workflows to push approved recipes to WCS automatically
- Implemented custom transport handlers to invalidate CloudFront cache on product updates
- Enabled activation, deactivation, and deletion of recipes via the admin interface
- Implemented personalized visibility of recipes for logged-in and anonymous users
Results
- Eliminated legacy Fluid dependency from the commerce architecture
- Unified product authoring, approval, and publishing workflows in AEM
- Improved operational efficiency and reduced manual interventions
- Enabled scalable management of dynamic product recipes and personalization
- Improved cache consistency and performance across global delivery