Highland Developer Attends Magento Conference
As half of the country was digging out from under a record snowfall a few weeks ago, the inaugural Imagine eCommerce conference was unfolding in beautiful, sunny, snowless Los Angeles. I had the good fortune of being one of the 650 attendees at this sold-out momentous conference. Highlights included a new release of the “Magento Community Edition” platform, the entirely new cloud-based “Magento Go” platform, and a food truck in the parking lot with three of my favorite words on it: “In-N-Out.”
Hot Topics at Imagine:
Application Program Interface (API)
- An API is a set of interfaces providing an increasingly rich set of services offered by web applications.
- They allow developers to communicate between independent platforms.
- They are used to enter a customer’s order from your eCommerce platform into your CRM platform.
- API’s allow an ERP system to look up data on customers in your B2B store
- Developers are able to create meaningful data to merchants and better experiences for buyers.
- They provide a simple and secure layer to perform high-level operations.
Magento “Go”
- Since its release, Magento’s range of APIs has grown steadily over the years, and with this latest release, it takes a giant leap forward.
- SaaS platforms like “Go” are some of the biggest beneficiaries of APIs as its core code is not readily accessible.
Magento’s Appeal to Merchants
- Its combination of scalability and ease with which customizations can be applied
- Small-scale merchants can tap into the extension marketplace for a colorful assortment of pre-written customizations.
- Multinational companies, like Samsung, utilize it for complex backend customizations.
- If a merchant launches a store on the “Go” platform and in six months has so much business he needs to scale up to “Enterprise,” they can rest easy knowing that their custom store will function exactly the same.
Magento’s Appeal to Developers
- It’s an easily scalable system.
- Developers don’t have to rewrite the customizations every time the client needs more bandwidth.
- Developers don’t have to explain to the client why it’s going to take as long to upgrade as it did to design the original site.
Lastly, I was surprised by the number of business owners present at Imagine in relation to developers. The fact that so many business minds help create, define, and lead Magento’s vision is an integral part to why it is the most successful eCommerce platform in the market. We as developers are indubitably creative and brilliant, but we’re also less business-minded than our business counterparts are. The fact that this platform engages both cross-spectrum users is what makes the Magento work exciting.
By Highland Developer, Brad Zasada
