ORBA as a sponsor of the Meet Magento 2021 conference!

Meet Magento is an international conference that takes place in over 40 countries. It brings together professionals and people interested in the Magento e-commerce platform. This year’s conference program was divided into two discussion panels: technical and business.

It created a space to exchange insights and experiences from the entire area of e-commerce: from technological solutions to changes in business processes. The topic of responding to COVID difficulties in the e-commerce market was also covered.

Meet Magento | Our participation

During the ‘business’ day, our CEO, Roman Baluta took part in a discussion about “Marketplace – a marketing trend or a real opportunity? How to approach it and not burn yourself?”

On the other hand, our Program Manager, Cezary Brzozowski, was engaged in the panel discussion about “Pre-implementation analysis – it is a threat to investors and a defense to contractors. How is it in reality?”.

We are happy to share our Magento implementations experience with the community. We are also proud to participate in setting the direction in which the standards of conducting such projects evolve.

This event is not only a conference. Above all, Meet Magento is a chance to present new opportunities provided by enterprise-class e-commerce technologies. It is also a chance for software houses to meet and learn about the needs of the business environment. From our perspective, this is the key possibility offered by the Meet Magento conference.

The agenda of this year’s edition met these expectations – here you can see the topics that were covered during the event: AGENDA.

ORBA | Silver sponsor

All the above elements were important to us when we decided to become involved in this conference. As ORBA, we are happy to share our experience in Magento implementations. We are also proud that we can participate in setting the direction in which the standards of conducting such projects evolve.

Meet Magento 2021 passed in a great atmosphere, and we are already looking forward to meeting you next year!

What we learned at Magento Live 2019

1. B2B Order approval process

B2B sales are a complex beast. They are usually done with more than one decision maker & until now there was no way to handle this in Magento. With the new Order approval process (currently in advanced development) you will be able to create an order, which needs to be verified by the manager before placing the Purchase Order. Adobe focused on making it highly customizable. You have bulk approval options; It will also have API and the rules can be set up from the admin panel. Can’t wait for this feature.

2. Other changes in B2B

Magento did not give any hard promises on when they plan to deliver these features, but the stories in development look as follows:

*Adding quote filtering in My Quotes

*Searching the order history in My Orders

*Exporting the requisition lists to .csv files

*Quick adding items to requisition lists

*Creating the requisition lists from the cart

*Login as Customer to frontend (so-called “ghost-mode”)

*Different shipping methods per company

*Granular ACL for all B2B modules

Last but not least – new Venia PWA B2B theme! Can’t wait to see these features in action!

3. PWA Venia

Progressive Web Apps are the next best thing. We should know – we already implemented 4 projects with this approach. Now Magento is doing “half” of the work for us with a new PWA theme called Venia. It was presented at this year’s Magento Imagine, but they keep adding new features.

In 2019 they added Google Analytics tracking, authoring of catalog and increased the API coverage. For 2020 they plan:

*Content optimization for mobile devices with a preview

*B2B Venia theme

*Full AEM integration (more details below)

*B2B Data Import/Export (including shared catalog)

*100% GraphQL API coverage

4. Manage content better

You all heard of Page Builder. Adobe is now pushing a page-builder on steroids – Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). This tool not only allows you to manage content in the omnichannel environment, but also, it provides you with an AI capable of adapting the experience of every person visiting your store. You can now get so much more from your marketing team. The system was also production-tested with the Venia theme. Get ready for personalization!

5. Better reporting

In 2019 Adobe has already done a lot with Business Intelligence. In 2020, you can expect further development in this field with Role-Specific Dashboards, Adobe Analytics integration & New B2B Reports.

6. Security updates

Starting with the next M2.3.X quarterly release, Magento will offer streamlined “security-only” updates based on the prior quarter’s comprehensive update. This means that instead of having to update the entire system you will be able to only update the Security update, which will keep your store safe. The process gives you more time to install the Quality update.

7. Updated Support Policy

Starting with Magento 2.3, end of support date for a minor release will be based on the General Availability date of the next minor release. The Quality updates will be rolled out via incremental quarterly releases for +12 months. The Security ones, will follow a +18 months roll-out process. This gives you more time to adapt your store. This also means that you can accommodate the releases in the yearly budget better. Please refer to the Magento Imagine summary for more information on this.

8. Azure Early Adopter

As you are aware, Magento Cloud will now allow you to choose between AWS and Microsoft Azure for your servers. What you might not know, is that in Q1 2020 you can expect additional support from Magento for the first 6 Early Adapters. This support is only for the first stores that choose Azure. What they offer is a highly collaborative engagement of their team. If you are interested in working with Azure – contact us at [email protected] (we are official Microsoft Azure partners with years of e-Commerce experience).

9. What’s next?

We can’t wait to hear what Magento has planned for 2021 at Magento Imagine / Adobe Summit. If you want to talk to them sooner, they are planning to attend quite a bit of conferences in 2020:

*EComm Expo UK – Sept 2020

*DMEXCO – Sept 2020

*WWVD – Jan 2020

*Netcom Italy – May 2020

And of course – see you there at Adobe Summit 2020 in May!

Magento Imagine 2019

What did we learn?

1.Progressive Web Apps

It is no surprise that Adobe would be pushing this hard, as we already heard about PWA Studio before the conference. This year they presented a road map of things to come. They include things like Docker support, UI components, and GraphQL development. What was most interesting was the presentation of the apps built with PWA Studio and the promise to connect the PWA front to Page Builder in the future.

2.Longer support policy

One thing which will make everyone happy is the elongated support policy for the new releases of Magento. Adobe has received a lot of feedback from the users, and they are listening. Starting from Magento 2.3, each new minor release will be supported until the date of the next major release. Furthermore, the large quality updates will be supported for even 12 months after the next release. For security updates, it will be 18 months. This means that if you have M2.3 and M2.4 shows up, you can still get updates for M2.3 for 12 to 18 months.

3.Magento Cloud with Microsoft Azure

Currently, Magento Cloud is hosted on Amazon Web Services. Soon you will also have an option to choose Microsoft Azure for your Magento Cloud implementation. Adobe is also working on horizontal auto-scaling features to bring added flexibility for cluster-based setups with improved performance guaranteed.

4. Magento connects to Amazon and Google Merchant Center

Amazon and Google Merchant Center. Inventory management, prices and working with multiple Amazon accounts will be available right from the admin panel.

As for Google – now you can manage the campaigns right from the admin panel as well. With almost everybody using at minimum one of the two platforms – this is a great step in the right direction for the convenience of Magento store managers. You can read more about this directly from the source here.

5. Magento is now part of Adobe Commerce Cloud

We are not surprised. With the acquisition of Magento by Adobe, we expected this to happen. Magento will become connected to all the tools available from Adobe, creating an all-you-need easy to use solution. This includes Business Intelligence tools, integration with Adobe Analytics and others. The end result is a Magento integrated solution with all the tools needed for data analysis, customer segmentation, personalization, easy to use content management and advertising in a single bundle known as the Adobee Experience Cloud. This will give you all you need to make it big. You can read more about all the details of the products and services that are part of the Experience Cloud here.

6. SMB and Mid-Market support

As Adobe embraces Magento as part of a larger scalable Experience Solution, one thing Magento and Adobe both cannot reiterate enough is the continued support and growth of the smaller guys. Magento and Adobe will continue to grow their engagement with the SMB and Mid-Market business owners. They know that without these sectors, the Magento community would not be where it is today. Thanks to the engagement received from the Magento community, in most part driven by innovations for the SMB and Mid-Market, we can expect a big push for continued engagement and bigger supporting forces behind community innovations. We cannot be happier about this.

7. Our takeaways

As Adobe embraces Magento as part of a larger scalable Experience Solution, one thing Magento and Adobe both cannot reiterate enough is the continued support and growth of the smaller guys. Magento and Adobe will continue to grow their engagement with the SMB and Mid-Market business owners. They know that without these sectors, the Magento community would not be where it is today. Thanks to the engagement received from the Magento community, in most part driven by innovations for the SMB and Mid-Market, we can expect a big push for continued engagement and bigger supporting forces behind community innovations. We cannot be happier about this.

All in all – the conference was amazing, a highly recommended experience to anyone who would like to understand the strengths of the community behind Magento and Adobe.

Nowhere else can you encounter fanboys all dressed in orange, with orange shoes and orange suits made to look like a Magento marketplace. Amazing opportunity to see more than a dozen celebrated Magento Masters awarded for their state-of-the-art innovations or numerous successful contributions to the Magento and Adobe ecosystems. Being part of a community of hundreds of Technology and Solution Partners who come together to share ideas and to try and figure out ways to work together (or outsmart each other with the next best thing!) keeps us coming back for more.

Here is to another successful year until we meet again at Adobe Summit 2020!