This is a highlight from a recent Linked In discussion on why would an organisation choose hybris over ATG. My original comments plus some further thoughts…….
In a nutshell (some of this is covered in the Analysts reports but most of it you have to gain from experience of implementing and working with the technologies) the key advantages of hybris over ATG are:
- PIM powered commerce: The PIM is at the heart of hybris and makes the technology more capable and more easily integrated in a multi channel environment. Notably multi site, multi language and multi currency sites (s) are virtually out of the box on hybris.
- Speed of development: hybris is a lighter weight technology stack and can be developed on at pace compared to ATG. Key areas are speed of development environment set up, data modelling, CMS set up and configuration, page template development. Need I go on?
- Java standards compliancy: Java by the book means you can train (and make useful) a good java developer much faster on hybris than ATG. Time to effectiveness on ATG impacts access to quality people, speed of skilling up and cost of resources generally across the board, all the things that hamper ATG projects.
- Partner strategy: the hybris partner strategy considering the size of organisation is far more advanced. This is demonstrated by the strength and depth of the partner network. Hybris is a heavily focused, partner centric software company. The services team remit at hybris is focused on partner enablement and partner support not project implementation. When was the last time you would have said that about PS at ATG , if ever?
- Development resource marketplace: The hybris resource market is still very much owned by specialist hybris implementers. With ATG you have a huge contract market developed over the last 10-12 years where the skilled resources follow the highest fee payer, so generally the latest and greatest ATG project. Go to any, and I mean any existing ATG customer and let them tell you this isn’t true.
- Flexibility in business with partners and customers. This is legendary, as any partner will testify to; I don’t think any more needs be said on this matter.
- Access to product development and product strategy: As a partner Portaltech Reply gets very close access to both product development and product strategy teams when required. In my experience with ATG that happened once a year.
- Who can tell me what happened to BEA after the Oracle acquisition? How many of those great people (and the software) are actually left after that acquisition? Successful businesses are built and managed by successful people. During an acquisition many of these good people are lost and the business leaders move on. I fear this will be the case with ATG (and its already happening) and that impacts customers, projects and partnerships.
- The Frankenstein syndrome: Whilst the ATG solution is a strong complete stack in terms of marketing presentation / positioning the reality (ask any ATG implementer after a couple of beers) is something different. The search solution and call centre was acquired after the Primus acquisition. ATG took years to get integrate this properly and to the best of my knowledge search just never really worked well in a large catalogue / high traffic environment. For confirmation, go to the ATG customer list, identify the customers with large catalogues and ask, how many of those customers run ATG search and not a third party search technology.
- Demonstrations: If you are running an evaluation right now think carefully about what you want to see at the demonstration stage. Pre-canned demos are ATG’s speciality. Take a look under the hood, ask for demonstrations of specific scenarios. Ask for access to the CMS to make changes to CSS / key template regions. Ask for a demo of a base installation to then configure multi sites / multi currency etc. With hybris this stuff is basic, even a sales guy (me) can demo this. And I promise (I’ve been witness to this) not even an ATG Architect will go near this stuff in a demo, unless of course they are wokring for hybris……..
One might argue that I am presenting a one sided argument, and of course that’s fair comment! ATG has a strong feature set, particularly around merchandising and their call centre / knowledge centre. The solution demos very well and the Analysts rate ATG highly. Rightly so, they are market leaders in many respects. At the end of the day customers need to make their own minds up, evaluate each technology on its merits at the time but critically, to ask the right questions and uncover the key strengths and weaknesses of the respective platforms.