Magento Imagine 2016

Merchants, technology partners, solution partners, and members of the Magento team attended Imagine 2016 from April 5-8 2016 at the Wynn Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. The Shero team arrived from New York on Sunday morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. We were ready to embrace the Magento Community, see old friends and partners, and make […]

By Caitlin Mekita

Merchants, technology partners, solution partners, and members of the Magento team attended Imagine 2016 from April 5-8 2016 at the Wynn Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

The Shero team arrived from New York on Sunday morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. We were ready to embrace the Magento Community, see old friends and partners, and make some new ones. A couple of us had been to Imagine before, some of us had no idea what to expect.

As the convention whizzed by, the spirit of the community in 2016 revealed itself. Through the keynote speeches, interactions with our partners, breakout sessions, and some late-night conversations, we discovered that the voice of the community is a powerful tool for collaboration, innovation, and trailblazing.

Our greatest takeaway may have been from the larger-than-life keynote speaker Magic Johnson. His message was simple. Know your customers and don’t only deliver – overdeliver.

Over the course of the conference, team Shero, powered by excitement and large amounts of caffeine, stopped at nothing to connect and contribute. We racked up some impressive statistics for steps taken, (lack of) hours slept, and the large & diverse part of the community we were able to connect with.

Magento Imagine Infographic 2016

The Big Announcements

Enterprise Cloud EditionEnterprise Cloud Edition

Magento announced its platform-as-a-service offering that bundles Magento Enterprise with a Magento-optimized and scalable hosting solution. The cloud edition will work with Magento Enterprise 2.0.5 and onward.

Magento Marketplace LaunchMagento Marketplace Launch

After much anticipation, Magento launched the new Marketplace, where extension developers can sell their solutions with Magento’s explicit approval. All extensions for sale in the Marketplace have been scanned for quality, compatibility, and plagiarism. For merchants, this means that there is less risk involved with investing in extensions. For SI’s, it means quicker implementation and reduced time for resolving code conflicts and dealing with shoddy extensions.

Magento 2 extensions in the new Marketplace are expected to cost more than they had traditionally, but as mentioned, these prices come with reduced risk and a certain level of quality assurance for the merchant and the Magento partner.

What’s next up for Magento 2.1?What’s next up for Magento 2.1?

  • Staging and Preview allows merchants to schedule future content updates and view past content changes.
  • Elastic Search flexible, scalable search that includes autocomplete, synonyms, CMS block search, and customizable search result manipulation.

Beyond Magento 2.1, Magento’s roadmap includes continued improvements, many of which will be based on feedback from the community. We’re particularly excited for the B2B suite, expected to be released later this year. As Magento 2 continues to navigate through its infancy, the contribution of merchants, developers, and solution specialists will be paramount.

Customer Success Manager