Product Recommendations
New storefront styling features are coming to Product Recommendations at the end of January to help drive higher customer engagement and click rates. Merchants can automatically style their recommendations based on custom product attributes. This allows them to easily apply visual treatments or badges, such as “Expedited Shipping,” or “Clearance” to their recommendations.

CPU Usaage Tracking Tool
This release also introduces the CPU Usage Tracking tool, which enables cloud customers to track virtual CPU (vCPU) usage over a defined period of time in an easy-to-use dashboard. This data can be used to monitor trends and optimize computing resources.

Mulesoft Connector for Adobe Commerce
Delivering innovative commerce experiences requires integrating with multiple enterprise systems including ERPs, PIMs, and pricing engines. Integrations, however, can be costly to build and maintain. The Mulesoft connector for Adobe Commerce provides a single scalable hub to manage all integrations with enterprise solutions instead of individual point-to-point integrations. This approach optimizes data exchange and workflows across systems while reducing the need to write code. For more information, refer to the connector documentation.

Mirakl Marketplace Platform
The Mirakl Marketplace Platform, when paired with Adobe Commerce, enables your clients to generate additional revenue streams from their Adobe Commerce investment using two integration assets. For more information, check out our blog post.

• The Mirakl Marketplace Seller Extension enables your clients to sell their Adobe Commerce catalog products on other marketplaces that are powered by Mirakl.
• The Mirakl Marketplace Operator Connector allows Adobe Commerce merchants to become marketplace operators by allowing third-party sellers to list products on their Adobe Commerce storefront.

Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 is our next generation solution that delivers a compelling set of capabilities, including quicker access to innovative features, lower maintenance costs, faster performance, and a better developer experience with PHP 8.1. A majority of the Adobe Commerce installed base will be upgrading to 2.4.4 over the next year, so now is the time to start preparing for this release. Below are resources and information that can help.

2.4.4 Beta
Adobe Commerce 2.4.4-beta is available for partners who are subscribed to our Beta program. Four monthly beta releases have been posted since October to help you prepare for this important update. The top three partner and individual contributors to the beta will receive special mentions on our release notes, beta blog posts, and other communications. For more information about 2.4.4 beta program, check out our DevBlog. Version 2.4.4 is slated for GA in March 2022.

2.4 Upgrade Guide and Workshop
In collaboration with LiveArea, we published the 2.4 Upgrade Guide that provides you with the best practices, steps and tooling to use when upgrading to the latest version. In addition, we will be hosting an Upgrade Workshop with LiveArea on January 25 to walk through the 2.4 upgrade process. Register here today for information on guiding your clients through this upgrade!

Upgrade Compatibility Tool
Several enhancements have been made to the Upgrade Compatibility tool. Thanks to community contributions, we made quality and PHPStorm plugin improvements, increasing the overall efficacy of the tool. It is also now compatible with PHP 8.1, which is the PHP version used in Adobe Commerce 2022 patch releases. We are also excited to introduce new HTML reporting capabilities that will present the results analysis in a more visually consumable manner.

Removal of vendor-bundled extensions
With our 2.4.4 release in March 2022, Adobe Commerce will remove all vendor-bundled extensions. All extensions removed will remain available in the Magento Marketplace for updates and support. 

Support for Elasticsearch and Open Search
To accommodate new versions and licensing changes, our Q1 2022 releases (2.4.4, 2.4.3-p2, 2.3.7-p3) will include support for Elasticsearch 7.16 and OpenSearch 1.2. With 2.4.4, Adobe Commerce hosted in the cloud will move to OpenSearch as the default search engine, which will require customers who upgrade to 2.4.4 or later versions to use OpenSearch in the place of Elasticsearch. Adobe Commerce merchants hosting on-premises have the option to use either solution.

Best regards,
The Team at Adobe