Atwix MageNews – 2019 in Review

Welcome to the 12th edition of #MageNews!

It has been a year since we decided to share news, experience, and Magento community achievements through this monthly digest with you 🎉. Thank you very much for supporting us in 2019 and from our side we are doing our best to pay you back with interesting, important and valuable information further in 2020 🚀

Now, let’s move on and review what 2019 brought us 🙌

Content

  1. [Not To Miss] Magento Releases
  2. [Not To Miss] Magento Association
  3. [Not To Miss] Adobe Life
  4. [Not To Miss] Digital Commerce Leadership
  5. [Not To Miss] PageBuilder Alive
  6. [Not To Miss] Merchant Docs and Glossary
  7. [Security] Magento Bug Bounty Program
  8. [Security] PCI Software Security Framework
  9. [Magento U] MagentoU Updates
  10. [Open Source] Headless Magento
  11. [Architecture] Next-Gen Magento Architecture
  12. [Architecture] AWS Integrations
  13. [Architecture] Build And Deploy
  14. Upcoming Events. Don’t Miss!
  15. Want more?

Not to Miss

Magento Releases

2019 was a year when we said goodbye to Magento 2.1.x and 2.2.x and welcomed the 2.3.1, 2.3.2 and 2.3.3 versions.

Additionally, Magento started a practice of releasing security-only patches (and 2.3.2-p2 was the first-ever released). These were aimed at addressing the high time-to-deploy of the regular releases that also contain quality improvements. Besides this initiative, recent releases contain a much higher number of security improvements (more than 70 in each of the latest two releases).

Magento 2.3+ minor version EoL policy got changed and now it’s aligned with minor releases:

This year we are waiting for a new minor version 2.4 and patch versions for the 2.3 mainline.

Get to know what each Magento version had brought to you in details below:
– Atwix MageNews – Nov 2019 (Magento 2.3.3, Latest and Greatest)
– Atwix MageNews – Oct 2019 (Security-Only Patches)
– Atwix MageNews – Jul 2019 (Magento 2.3.2 Available)
– Atwix MageNews – Jun 2019 (New Magento2 EoS Policy)
– Atwix MageNews – May 2019 (Magento 2.1 and 2.2 EOL)
– Atwix MageNews – Apr 2019 (Magento 2.3.1)

Magento Association

In 2019 we saw the first updates from Magento Association which we can sum up this way:
– launch of its Inaugural Board of Directors
– opening of a free membership program for community members
– work on acquiring partners and initial funds. Here is a list of announced partners so far: PayPal, Nexcess, Adyen, Webscale.

In 2020 we are going to see more announcements of partners, launching an association management platform and hopefully the first projects where the community can take part.

It’s still a good time to join the Association, find the link below.

More Info:
– Atwix MageNews – Nov 2019 (Magento Association Partners)
– Atwix MageNews – Oct 2019 (Update from the Magento Association)
– Atwix MageNews – Jun 2019 (Magento Association Membership)
– Atwix MageNews – Mar 2019 (Magento Association is on the scene!)
– [Magento Association] Join the Magento Association

Adobe Life

It’s been more than a year and a half since Adobe acquired Magento and Magento became a part of Adobe. Since that time Adobe has announced the Adobe Commerce Cloud (essentially, Magento Commerce hosted on Adobe cloud environment) as a part of Adobe Experience Cloud which makes it possible to leverage the rest of Experience Cloud services like Adobe Analytics.

Then they kicked off integrations with Adobe Stock (image stock service) and AI Product Recommendations based on Adobe Sensei. We believe that there are more integrations to come (at least with Adobe I/O service in the scope of improving Message Queue architecture).

Something has been changed on the branding side as well. Magento Imagine is now a part of the Adobe Summit (and it is going to happen earlier, at the end of March 2020) and Magento Live is likely to completely merge with Adobe Summit EMEA). Perhaps the same changes await the Magento Imagine next year. Magento Imagine Excellence awards are now part of the 2020 Adobe Experience Maker Awards.

Generally speaking, we think that Adobe will proceed with deeper integration and merging Magento with its ecosystem. Maybe that will also affect the availability of some products that Adobe got after the acquisition which may overlap with their existing offerings (like Magento BI). This is expected as Magento is now a part of the Adobe ecosystem and not a separate product.

We also looking forward to testing the EAP of AI-powered Product Recommendations which is going to be available in Q1 2020.

More Info:
– Atwix MageNews – Nov 2019 (MagentoLive @ Summit EMEA)
– Atwix MageNews – Aug 2019 (Adobe Analytics in Magento)
– Atwix MageNews – Jun 2019 (Magento Imagine 2020 @ Adobe Summit)
– Atwix MageNews – Jun 2019 (Adobe Stock Integration)
– Atwix MageNews – Jun 2019 (Adobe Sensei + Magento)
– Atwix MageNews – Apr 2019 (Adobe Commerce Cloud. What Does It Mean?)

Digital Commerce Leadership

Magento was recognized as a Digital Commerce Leader in 2019 in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. This time Magento was able to improve position thanks to Adobe acquisition, coming integrations and feature roadmap.

Also, Digital Commerce 360 (formerly Internet Retailer) recognized Magento as a leader in Top 10 Leading Ecommerce Platforms report.

This means that external analysts agree that in 2019 Magento had a great vision and is keeping up with the market demand.

More Info:
– Atwix MageNews – Nov 2019 (MagentoLive @ Summit EMEA)

PageBuilder went live

Yes, you read that right. 2019 is a year when long-awaited PageBuilder project was finally released 🎉 It became generally available with Magento Commerce 2.3.1 and got additional bunch of security improvements with 2.3.2. PageBuilder is only available as a Magento Commerce bundled extension with no plans to make it available for Magento Open Source.

What we do plan to see is the compatibility of PageBuilder and PWA Studio which is coming in Q1 2020.

More Info:
– Atwix MageNews – Apr 2019 (Magento 2.3.1)

Merchant Docs and Glossary

Two new information resources joined Magento Docs family: Merchant Docs and Glossary. Merchant Docs were rebuilt and opened for the community contributions. The Glossary is there to help you figure out terms that are used in the Magento world.

More Info:
– Atwix MageNews – Jul 2019 (New Magento Merchant Docs)
– Atwix MageNews – Jul 2019 (Magento Glossary)

Security

Magento Bug Bounty Program

In 2019 Adobe moved the Magento bug bounty program to the HackerOne platform which improved the report review and reward process. This is important as Magento-based stores were a target of skimming attacks during 2019. Magento responded to that by creating new security-only versions to speed up patching process. Besides that, Magento’s focus on security remains strong with the recent releases (more than 70 in each of two last versions).

More Info:
– Atwix MageNews – Feb 2019 (Enhanced Magento Bug Bounty Program)

PCI Software Security Framework

PCI Software Security Framework (SSF) was released early in 2019. This is a new and modernized set of rules which replaces PA-DSS standard and eventually will incorporate the rest of the PCI standards. During 2019, PCI SSC:
– created learning resources about PCI SSF
– launched a new assessor qualification program to support PCI SSF

In 2020, PCI SSC is going to begin the validation process for application vendors. PA-DSS is going to be finally closed at the end of October 2022.

More Info:
– [PCI SSC] Understanding the PCI Software Security Framework: New Educational Resources
– [PCI SSC] New Software Security Framework Programs: Timeline & Key Milestones
– Atwix MageNews – Feb 2019 (Be prepared to a new PCI Software Security Framework)

Magento U

Magento U Updates

Magento U released two new certifications in 2019:
– Magento Certified Professional Cloud Developer
– Magento 2 Certified Order Management Developer
Almost all certifications were updated to match Magento 2.3 (except Magento Developer Plus exam).
In addition, Magento introduced a special label – Magento 2 Certified Full-Stack Developer for people who passed all essential professional developer exams.

I’d like to congratulate our colleague Serhiy Zhovnir, who is also a TOP-3 Magento contributor of 2019 with becoming a Full-Stack Certified Developer last year!

More Info:
– Atwix MageNews – Oct 2019 (Magento OMS Certification)
– Atwix MageNews – Jun 2019 (Magento 2 Certified Full-Stack Developer)
– Atwix MageNews – March 2019 (A new Color on the Magento U palette)

Open Source

Headless Magento

PWA is still trending. We expect to see much higher adoption of modern and PWA compatible frontend standards in the Magento ecosystem.

Magento PWA Studio and GraphQl projects had good progress in 2019. Thanks to community efforts, Magento now has an essential GraphQl coverage for CMS, Customer Account and Checkout pages. In 2020 we are waiting for GraphQl 2.0 which will include numerous performance improvements. Also, the PWA team worked on basic checkout possibilities and refactoring of the underlying application architecture.

We expect to see more functional gaps to be closed in PWA Studio in 2020 out-of-the-box.

Besides that, we have collected a couple of alternative Magento 2 frontends which can be considered during storefront migrations.

More Info:
– Atwix MageNews – Oct 2019 (State of PWA Studio)
– Atwix MageNews – Apr 2019 (Static Storefront for Magento on GatsbyJs)
– Atwix MageNews – Feb 2019 (Magento 2 PWA Dev Tools)
– [Github] troublediehard/magento-react-native – React Native mobile app for Magento 2.x

Architecture

Next-Gen Magento Architecture

Magento’s been working on a new scalable architecture for the current monolith application. In a nutshell, Magento is going to separate Magento Admin and Magento Storefront applications for a couple of reasons:
– make Magento storefront optimized for reading operations and get a higher performance
– make it possible to replace Magento Admin components with external services. For example replace the Magento catalog management with an external PIM
– allow separate deployments for Magento Admin and Storefront applications and run them on different server nodes
– change the way of communication between Storefront and Magento Admin from synchronous to asynchronous and event-driven one.

Magento Storefront Architecture for Catalog Component
Storefront Architecture for Catalog Component

Considering that a lot of points in the new architecture are being approved, we expect to see the final version in 2020.

More Info:
– [Youtube] Community Hangout – Storefront Application Talk
– [Github] Pre-requisites for split deployment (Monolith and Storefront App)
– Atwix MageNews – Jul 2019 (Storefront API)

AWS Integrations

Magento started a close partnership with AWS in 2019. Integration with the AWS services is on the Magento Message Queue roadmap which should help make it easier to deploy Magento on different cloud providers. One of the integrations is communication with AWS Event Bridge that was kicked off on Magento Live 2019 Amsterdam where AWS representatives attended a contribution day and shared the experience.

Also, Magento promoted and facilitated AWS-based projects on the latest Magento Innovation Lab.

We expect to see progress on the Magento Message Queue architecture roadmap in 2020 as well as AWS diving deeper into the Magento ecosystem (like becoming a partner of the Magento Association).
More Info:
– Atwix MageNews – Dec 2019 (Future Of Magento MQ)
– [Magento] Innovations Lab Teams Up With Amazon Web Services (AWS)
– Atwix MageNews – Nov 2019 (AWS Event Bridge)

Build And Deploy

In 2019 Magento started resolving the following well known bottlenecks:
– initialized an additional project for smart JS bundling which is called Baler. The project is in the alpha phase at this point (however, seems to be used by some projects in the production)
– optimized time to run static content deploy
– released ECE Tools (Magento Cloud Deployment Tools) compatibility with Magento Open Source and it’s going to be cloud-agnostic and fully decoupled from the Magento Commerce Cloud environment.

More Info:
– [Github] Magento ECE Tools
– [Youtube] Community Hangout – Cloud Community Ecosystem
– Atwix MageNews – Oct 2019 (Smart JS Bundler)
– [interger_net] How to bundle Magento 2 with Baler or M2 DevTools extension
– Atwix MageNews – Aug 2019 (Replacement for SCD)

Upcoming Events. Don’t Miss!

– Jan 12th – Jan 14th – NRF’s Retail’s Big Show 2020, NYC
– Jan 31st – Feb 2nd – MM20IN, Mumbai, India

Want more?

Make sure to be the first for our February MageNews digest – subscribe to our blog.

See you in a month!

Other digests you might have missed:
– Atwix MageNews – Dec 2019
– Atwix MageNews – Nov 2019