There’s a lot of noise about Magento’s future. It has made existing merchants, developers and the agencies to rethink their next move. So we are here to help you out.
It is a concern for retailers when it comes to having the right e-commerce platform. The size of your business, reach, goals, and resources determine the digital commerce need of your business. More often, agencies, specifically those falling under small-to-mid-size businesses, would like to have open-source platforms to have total control of their stores. These agencies mostly rely on the features and capabilities that the software provides natively, as they cannot put everything on complex builds. Even features and functionality that fits the business demands and cover your needs are essential these days, irrelevant to the size of agencies. Pivoting this discussion for the organizations on lower ground, focusing on core-eCommerce functionality, Magento Open-source has been the first pick that attracts the merchants. We have seen cross-platform migrations of many merchants from Shopify and WordPress to Magento.
With some skeptical movements since Adobe acquired Magento, people find that Magento open-source will no longer be supported (A-lie)! With less focus on Open-source, Adobe Commerce is doing its best to serve its customers, and that's the business strategy they have been following, no doubt of that. With a growing sense of unease, this article drives the future of Magento Open source and how the Community (Mage-Os) is rebuilding the lost charm of Magento.
Table of Contents
Introduction
You can call it from where you have started your journey with Magento: Magento community or simply Magentoor Magento open-source. By day, it is one of the most well-known e-commerce platforms. The robust architecture, covering the customer journey and great potential to extend the custom builds and integrations, made the vast customer base of Magento. The acquisition took place in 2018, and the roots of doubts regarding the future of the platform were planted! By the nature of Adobe, merchants, consultants, and Magento specialists feared this as its open-source version would be abandoned. Focus shifted from serving all to prioritizing the big market giants with their Umbrella of products.
Helping with the finest eCommerce technologies for clients is what Magento aspires to do via the latest updates, version releases, extensions, and themes. Implementing new features and brushing the existing ones is what makes not only the merchants but the dev community fall for it. Post-acquisition, the platform got aloof from the other commercial products, but not to worry! Fortunately, the heart of Magento, its Community, swiftly has taken the right action to make it alive with the same efforts by signing up the Magento Association's open-request letter. In addition, Mage-OS is gearing up efforts to revive the same endurance and success with the ecosystem of Magento.
Yet to explore the things Mage-OS is making to the Magento open source package and its compatibility with all current Magento 2 extensions and integrations. Story aside, we will keep this post separate to see who Mage-OS is moving with the things that benefit us. Let's look at How Magento impacts e-commerce that leads various community-driven projects!
E-Commerce Impact
List of Statistics that shows the Magento part in driving e-commerce as listed:
- 6,67,276 websites are currently using Magento, from which 1,27,656 are live websites, according to Builtwith Website data.
- On the Magento Marketplace, there are over 3500 Magento modules available.
- Gartner's Magic Quadrant report designated Adobe's Magento platform a Leader.
- Downloaded over 2.5 million times and processed more than $155 billion in transactions a year.
- Brands like Nike, Ford, and Nestle hold Magento for their distinctive online stores
The figures above and facts show how deeply Magento impacts the e-commerce community. As we all say, Nothing is undying, and everything keeps changing based on trends. This happened exactly in 2019, with a reduced spike in Magento Usage. It's because the focus shifts to more prominent players switching to Adobe Commerce and not to the Freebies! So those who would have loved the Magento Community or open-source edition shifted to some other platforms.
Let's find the reason why?
Magento: An open-source tale
Magento Community (Magento open source) was once a platform for online businesses to utilize its scalability and flexibility for rapidly growing and expanding custom features on the solid core architecture. The other bright side of it caters to the large Community of developers globally that helps to improvise the platform. Magento 1 was born in 2008, and the Magento 2 transition happened in 2015! Been 16 years of Magento, and heaps of agencies and businesses have benefitted from its open-source edition.
Made up of a PHP framework with a Monolith nature, where the frontend and backend are connected, it has become the “go-to” e-commerce platform for those who lack expertise and don't want to manage multiple systems. Those agencies have favored the monolith setup to operate their e-commerce site.
Conversely, big tech giants focus more on composable services hosted in the cloud structure. It gained more value by requiring sound resources with additional solutions such as SAAS, PAAS, and off-Premise, but not for the open-source store owners!
Post Magento 2 launch, Adobe and the team of technical architects is breaking up the monolith PHP build structure. If it had been done, Adobe would have permanently altered the DNA of Magento.
The open-source Community embraces its customers and the sustainability of its online stores. When covid hits, the online stores were the only hope that the merchants were doing their business. All happened and survived under the monolith approach, and it's best for SMBs in many ways.
In such a way, the Community stood firm to re-lift the lost charm of Magento-open source and intended to use it for a long time. With Adobe's aid and the Community's efforts, We are sure Magento is going nowhere, and the Community is preventing the catastrophe.
Now see what things are coming along with this pivotal change in Magento open source.
Future of Magento
Chaos is going on, and even people are confused about saying the correct representation for the platform! From Magento to Magento Community to Magento Open Source, this platform evolves through each breakeven point and will get on track. Some communists want to bring the magic again, like Mage-Os, and because of their efforts, Adobe noticed the Community!
Adobe still cares about the open-source version and promises to pay attention by satisfying commitments to the open-source team named Magento Association. Adobe and Community discussed the concerns and came to a mutual ground for the sake of Magento. It feels like Adobe wants to take its place in our hearts by helping the Magento community.
Due to the Mage-OS efforts, Adobe noticed the Community. It still cares about the Open Source version and promises to pay more attention to it. There is a demand for an open strategy that is partly satisfied by a commitment to the long-term support of Magento Open Source, which, in turn, results in the Open Source Task Force by the Magento Association.
Furthermore, the Community and Adobe get together to discuss all the concerns, negotiate on the platform's future, and find common ground on essential aspects. It seems that Adobe wants to fix the relationship between the platform and its Community.
There are heaps of things happening in the future circling this platform. Let's take a sneak peek into it.
Mage-OS – The Future of Magento Open Source
The movement started with a single-digit number of people and turned into a bunch of like-minded people who wanted to shout out and support the Monolith open-source structure! The initial conversations were made via Adobe employees only, and more participants joined the conversational movement.
By then, Mage-OS aligned on what the Community needs from Adobe and what they can provide. With optimistic hope, Adobe will invest in Magento open-source and has made two commits. Yet, how much Adobe leans toward Magento open-source is unclear. But the Monolith is there to stay and slay! Mage-OS will use this tech architecture with essential things such as new release strategies, compact coding, Luma deprecation with powerful Hyvä, microservices on cloud infrastructure, solid ecosystem, and forks trackings. You can follow them on Discord and GitHub to get involved.
Magento Association
Magento Association is committed to community gatherings, instructions, and training with online communication. In 2018, Adobe wanted to create a brand as a bridge between Adobe's products and the Community! And the Magento Association came into existence.
The Magento community holds the image of creating successful events to bring people closer and share knowledge across the globe. The association is expanding its legacy with the visionary thoughts of a powerful, feature-rich, e-commerce-centric platform: Magento. Now, it has become an identity of the Magento open-source community and addresses various problems surrounding communication enhancement via educational events and gatherings!
Moreover, it lacks the attention of Merchants, and their engagement with the Community helps them understand the challenges and resolutions. Let's keep an eye on how it will become an integral part of Magento and Adobe Commerce products. Be a part of it now.
Hyvä
Hyvä themes, a new face of Magento2, has been the talk of the town for a couple of years for driving the best developer and performance experience. As Hyvä is gaining momentum, people restored their faith in Magento.
Based on TailwindCSS and AlpineJs, Hyvä has lesser third-party dependencies to keep the technology intact. Hence, it has the ability to build Magento stores faster with a super-fast browser experience for Shoppers. Having said this, it feels Hyvä is the Magento Future considering Developer-friendly, has better performance and has a more small learning curve. When individuals are not enthusiastic about PWAs, Hyvä can be the best fit.
PWAs
PWA, aka Progressive Web Application, is a whole new level of experience for the users. With state-of-art technologies, it provides an application-like experience to the users. If you have questions on "what and how," refer to this PWA guide for basic understanding.
Following PWA, Magento stores become more secure and responsive with faster speed and a tremendous cross-browser experience. Adobe is working on a more stable version of PWA studio to provide a stellar experience with their commerce product suits. Merchants are benefited from PWAs and going headless. On a contrary note, SMEs should hold to open-source and explore Hyvä if they like. Going with Headless commerce, PWAs, and having storefronts built of Vue-js needs excellent talent and effort.
Magento is alive
Everyone is keeping an eye on Magento open source and how it is rolling out. Some support, some have moved, and some are silently watching the glory this platform holds. Mage-OS, Magento Developers, and Magento Association are making their full-fledged efforts to make the sustainable steps of Magento via meets, Slack channels, Mage-chats, Meet Magento, and smaller native communities too! Magento is the only platform that holds city-level meet-ups on a yearly. It's amazing!
There's an entity that needs to bridge the Magento Open-source community and Adobe! Magento is always thriving in its Community worldwide; if it requires, they will stand united to support it! The process is started, and the success of Magento continues with added features and tech stacks along with Magento Marketplace.As a result, we have now the new identity of Magento Open Source, a platform that can actually help you scale!
