Atwix MageNews — January 2021

Happy New Year, Magento community! For those of us working in eCommerce, last year felt more like a decade. B2B and B2C businesses as well as Adobe ecosystem partners faced quick and intense change. However, we (virtually) came together —  by innovating, learning, and growth. In this way, we collectively have reason to celebrate — we met the moment. While turning the page, let’s spend a bit of time recapping 2020 and predicting what is likely to occur in 2021.

Content

  1. [Business] 10 years’ growth in 3 months
  2. [Business] Trends in digital commerce, that will likely shape 2021
  3. [Magento] Magento Marketplace Updates
  4. [Magento] Deprecation of Split Database in Magento Commerce
  5. [PWA and Headless] Hyvä developments
  6. [Community] PHP 8 support community project
  7. [Community] Future of Magento Frontend Round Table
  8. [Community] Changes in EngCom Team
  9. [Community] Magento Association Board Changes
  10. Events

Business

10 Years’ Growth in 3 Months

We experienced an explosive growth of digital commerce in 2020. Saying that the past year was unusual, is definitely an understatement, however, now we see for certain, that eCommerce was one of those spheres that benefited most. Shoppers across the globe spent a record $270 billion online this Cyber Week (BFCM – a period from Thanksgiving up until Cyber Monday), growing an astonishing 36% YoY — outpacing even our most bullish projection.

Moving forward, New [Next] Normal is becoming just Normal and in this normal, only those having a digital-first mindset and strategy will thrive.

The ability to offer e-commerce, contactless payments, curbside pickup, and home delivery are all requirements for commerce in order to compete in the next normal. Salesforce research, according to zdnet.com, has shown that U.S. retailers offering creative pickup options experienced 29% growth in sales compared to 22% in retailers who had a traditional fulfillment option.

More info:

Some top 2021 trends in digital commerce and IT we may experience:

  • The digital-ready culture. Most customers expect a great digital experience, so providing it is crucial to the success of the business.
  • The democratization of innovation. SaaS solutions and ready-to-go technology are what small and medium enterprises need, as the time-to-market and time-to-value are critical in their context.
  • Omnichannel and personalization — the digital shopping experience is the default go-to for many customers, mostly due to safety reasons. What is still missing from this experience is personalization — the next big evolution of eCommerce. Things like personalized packaging, preselected size and color options based on your account are just the beginning — more to come.
  • Microservices. Organizations are turning to microservices to rapidly build new customer experiences. Companies deploying microservices to production will require some form of service mesh capabilities to scale.

More info:

Magento

Magento Marketplace Updates

Starting from December 7th, Magento Marketplace modules that don’t support Magento 2.3 or/and 2.4 are no longer available for purchase:

The important thing to know is that the module still might not support Magento 2.4 but remain available.

This change is a great step forward, ensuring merchants who purchase a module from Magento Marketplace get the newest version of the extension. Earlier, the Magento Marketplace served as a great storefront for vendors, however, they were not always putting in the effort to update the Marketplace versions and users had to go to the 3rd party websites in order to get the latest version. Now, if you want to use the Marketplace as a storefront — you should keep the module up-to-date.

Deprecation of Split Database in Magento Commerce

Since 2015, the Split Database functionality in Magento has been used to increase performance of the application, specifically to address the MySQL bottleneck. However, as Adobe is moving towards using microservices in Magento Commerce, the split database will be deprecated in Magento 2.4.2 and removed from Magento 2.5, in favor of the microservices approach.

It is worth mentioning that the split database was only available for the On-Premise Magento installations and with Adobe’s strong strategy towards promoting Magento Commerce Cloud, the move seems logical.

More info:

PWA and Headless

Hyvä developments

Lately, there were many talks about Hyvä theme. The main idea of it is to find the middle ground between complex Magento PWA Studio builds and the outdated standard Magento theming approach, based on Luma and to make the frontend development in Magento enjoyable.

https://twitter.com/alanstorm/status/1341025710471847938

But Hyvä is not limited to only frontend implementations. There is Admin functionality also available — Admin grids. With that Hyvä seems like a possible solution to also be used instead of UI components in the Magento Admin.

Hyvä theme is expected to be released by the end of January 2021. However, most likely, there will be a closed beta first. Let’s see what weeks ahead will bring us.

More info:

Community

PHP 8 Support Community Project

Currently, Magento 2.4.1, the latest version of Magento to date, supports PHP 7.4 natively. However, the support for the latest version of PHP 8 is to be added. The Community is still waiting for the project to start. There’s a radio silence in the corresponding Slack channel (#php8) from December 2020. So let’s see what January will show us.

More info:

Future of Magento Frontend Round Table

We are actively following the news in this direction and will share some updates in further blog posts or on social media.

More info:

Changes in EngCom Team

Max Yekaterinenko is leaving Magento and joining Oracle. Max was a part of the initial team bringing to life the Community Engineering Program and has greatly contributed to the Magento platform being the example of successful integration of community-led efforts. We wish Max great success with his new role and are really grateful for all the great things done for the Magento community.

Magento Association Board Changes

In January Magento Association Board of Directors undergone some major changes. In particular:

  • Treasurer Hilda Fontana has resigned her role and position on the board to focus on other projects and the role of treasurer will now be held by Danny Verkade. 
  • Vice-Chair Kuba Zwolinski, has stepped down from his officer role, and the role of vice-chair will now be held by Slava Kravchuk. 
  • Adobe, Magento Commerce Liaison Brittany Mosquera has stepped down from her role, and the position will now be held by Eric Erway.

We congratulate the new Magento Association Board of Directors and wish them continued success stewarding our community. We also thank those rolling off the Board for their service.

Events

Please share your key learnings from last year. What do you predict for eCommerce in 2021? Oh, and if you have not yet given some holiday cheer to your Magento friends — gift them with MageNews, the monthly community blog. Their presence will be a true gift for us!