Everything You Need to Know about Magento 2.0
By Brian Wolfe (CIO) and Jen Kijek (Director of Strategic Alliances)
LYONSCG is excited to be a part of the launch of Magento 2.0, which was announced last week. As one of the first to qualify as a Trained Partner on the new platform, the LYONSCG team has completed extensive training and testing, and the firm is now qualified to work with new and existing clients on implementation of the latest version of Magento.
In anticipation of some of the questions retailers may have about Magento 2.0, Brian Wolfe (CIO) and Jen Kijek (Director of Strategic Alliances), sat down to address some of the main inquiries about the new platform.
What is Magento 2.0?
Magento 2.0 represents a significant re-architecture of the platform. Some of the major enhancements include:
- Updated architecture. Magento 2.0 includes a major upgrade of the underlying open source modules and libraries to make it easy to work with for developers and partners. There has been a big focus on making the code base more modular, which will make future upgrades easier, especially for merchants leveraging extensions from Magento Connect.
- Numerous performance and scalability improvements, including:
- Standalone databases for key subsystems like order management, product management and checkout—combined with support for MySQL Cluster—enable Magento to scale to handle rapid growth.
- Comprehensive backend improvements enable larger teams to make product updates and process orders at the same time without diminished performance.
- Magento 2.0 is engineered to support scalability on par with other leading enterprise eCommerce platforms in the market and support tier 1 online retailers.
- More extensive and efficient APIs, to relieve some of the bottlenecks that were encountered with Magento 1. Magento 2.0 offers new API’s for promotions and taxes in order to connect and operate at scale with third party solutions.
- An automated testing framework improves code quality and speeds up the QA process for a faster time to market.
- Client-side optimizations (such as minimizing and bundling JavaScript and JQuery, compressing images, and improving the use of browser caching for static content) increase page load times.
- Server-side improvements, such as integrating Apache Varnish caching, enable faster performance out-of-the-box with minimal tuning.
- Updated responsive storefront. Magento 2.0 ships with an updated responsive design reference theme with a new ‘best practices’ enabled checkout experience.
- Enhanced administration and efficient business user tools, including:
- An updated Admin user interface that is intuitive and easy for team members to learn. It allows users to more efficiently monitor business performance and manage daily tasks better than the Magento 1.x interface.
- The Administration Panel interface is designed to be touch-friendly, so you can manage your store while on-the-go.
- The ability to effortlessly customize and save different Admin panel views saves time when managing products, analyzing customer data, and processing orders.
- A product creation wizard and improved product data import capabilities that are 4x faster than before.
Is LYONSCG trained to support Magento 2.0?
Yes. In fact, LYONSCG is one of a handful of Magneto solutions partners that received their training certification on the first day of release. As a Magento Gold Solution partner, our sales and support personnel received early access to Magento 2.0 training, and we are ready to help you understand the changes with this upgrade and are fully equipped to serve the needs of our clients.
Are there Magento 2.0 extensions available?
Absolutely! Magento partners have been working on Magento 2.0 for quite some time, and there are more than 100 extensions available.
I’m currently a 1.x customer. What does this mean for me?
Magento will continue to support 1.14 for the next three years, so you have time to make some decisions. Magento is planning to offer free access to the Magento 2.0 code for all existing 1.0 customers, so you could consider an upgrade in the future.
As a current Magento 1.x customer, is upgrading to Magento 2.0 a replatform initiative?
The level of effort will depend on the amount of customizations on the current site and the availability of 3rd party extensions that are required. Magento has developed a set of data migration tools designed to ease the transition. LYONSCG can review your existing implementation and help determine the effort to upgrade to Magento 2.0.
How much is it?
Great question! Each case is going to be different depending on your current implementation of Magento, as well as the amount of integration and customization involved. In general, existing clients will have full access to Magento 1.x and Magento 2.0 licenses, without additional cost, provided you remain current on your license subscription. Upon renewal, existing clients will be required to enter into a new license contract with Magento. Contact us and we’ll be able to walk through requirements and upgrade options.
Have more questions about Magento 2.0? Contact us.
