What's new with .NET?

The move of Optimizely’s Content Cloud Management Version 12 and B2C Commerce Version 14 from .NET 4 to ASP.NET Core allows developers to take advantage of new features and capabilities. Some of the first things you will notice with ASP.NET Core are: 

  • Significant improvement in performance across the board (up to 1,200% in certain areas)
  • Platform hosting and development of the platform is supported on different OS (Windows, Linux, and MacOS)
  • The overall development process is faster and easier
  • Release cycles are faster with community participation due to it being open source

The speed and performance that the new version brings will have a positive impact to customers visiting the website, the business users who manage the website, and programmatic search indices. From the customer’s perspective, they will get a faster, uninterrupted digital experience when visiting the website. On the business user's side, the new platform allows for tasks to be completed faster and more efficiently while managing the website. Another important effect is that the faster load time of the website will impact search engines rankings, allowing it to be found more often.

*These are preliminary results of internal testing based upon CMS 12, Commerce 14, and the Foundation implementation. We intend to publish our methodology so partners and customers can do their own performance testing validation.

4x

Better in Response Time

 

We're looking at numbers in the double digits! Which means, customer websites will load even faster!

5 - 10x

Faster in Site and Commerce Operation

 

The numbers have dropped significantly, allowing for an even faster user experiences for actions such as Register/Login, Search, and Add To Cart!

3x

More Server Request Handling

 

The number of requests have tripled and we're still seeing better performances! Supporting more traffic, more visitors, more users!

Why should you upgrade?

Since the first release of .NET in 2002, we have seen the emergence of several variations due to the different needs of development: .NET Framework, .NET Standard, .NET Core, Mono, and Xamarin. However, Microsoft’s vision of having a unified platform resulted in the introduction of ASP.NET Core (.NET 5), the next step forward. .NET 5 produces a single .NET runtime and framework, taking in the best capabilities of the other versions and expanding on them, allowing for a single code-base that both Microsoft and the community can collaborate and continuously improve on.

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Out with the old, in with the new. Microsoft will continue to focus on further developing and improving the new ASP.NET Core, which means more and better features will be added on a regular basis. To avoid the ever-growing gap and effort needed to upgrade to the latest version in the future, upgrading now to CMS 12 and Commerce 14 is encouraged. As future versions of ASP.NET Core are continously released, we have set our goal to add support for each version in both Optimizely CMS and Commerce as they are released. With that in mind, starting the migration from the older .NET 4.x-based CMS and Commerce to the new ASP.NET Core-based CMS and Commerce now will give you time to work out any issues you might encounter, as well as shorten the time and effort needed for proceeding version upgrades.

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What to consider when upgrading

Thinking of upgrading? Here are some suggested questions you should ask your team when considering upgrading:

Useful Resources

Our community members have been testing and implementing CMS 12 and Commerce 14 for a while. Here are some great insights they've provided during their journey.

Last updated: Sep 22, 2022