Truly exciting news for the whole Magento community have arrived this week: after so many years of development (Magento 2 was first announced back in 2010), finally Magento 2 is available for download.
Atwix team have been playing with Magento 2 a lot this year and just recently we’ve also became one of the first Magento 2 Trained Partners in the world. To us it is clear that this release starts a new era for all the companies that are working with or using Magento.
For Merchants on Magento 1, it is now a big question of what to do with their current store. Good news is that the first version will still be supported for a few years. However, there is not going to be any extensive development or improvement of the platform. Therefore, the only way to go is looking closer at Magento 2 and preparing and planning to upgrade in the future.
New Merchants, that are planning to build their website on Magento, would naturally consider which version to use. And the opinion here is clear, while Magento 2 is still very fresh, it won’t be a very wise move to base the business on an older version of the platform. We expect that majority of Merchants would wait for the next minor M2 release before bulding their store, so the platform will be a bit more polished and that bit of time would also let the extensions vendors to release their M2 compatible products.
For the Extension Developers, Magento 2 is a big pain and big opportunity at the same time. Magento 1 extensions are not going to work with Magento 2, and getting that extensions ported over is not going to be a simple task. While extensions for the version 1 will still sell for a while, it is clear that with time the demand for those will fade and companies that would be quick enough in offering Magento 2 extensions would find their customers.
For the Solution Partners, it is clear that having a Magento 2 competence is a must starting from today, and frankly speaking I’m surprised that only about 1/3 of Solution Partners completed the Magento 2 training program. Sooner or later each Partner would need to develop the knowledge of Magento 2, and obviously it is much better to start sooner.
All in all, one thing that we can tell for sure is that Magento 2 release changes the game for all of us and those, that will be agile enough in adapting to this new era, will succeed. And I am glad that Atwix is stepping into this new era being Magento 2 Trained Partner :).
And what are your thoughts on Magento 2? Please feel free to share them in comments.