Open source ecommerce - Magento releases 1.0

Magento, a new open source ecommerce platform is a promising new entrant that should be evaluated against OFBiz and osCommerce. The Magento project is lead by Verian Technologies, a consulting firm that worked with osCommerce and then decided they could do better by taking their experience and creating a new ecommerce platform.

Magento is entering a crowded space of offerings that promise a better ecommerce Web storefront. Magento is betting that even though the ecommerce storefront is a relatively mature space, that it is still an underserved market. They may be correct as there does seem to be a good amount of interest for their production release. The biggest differentiator for Magento from most of its storefront competition is that it is an open source solution offered under the Open Software License (OSL 3.0). There are only a few other well known open source web storefronts, OFBiz and osCommerce being the most well known. OFBiz is more of a framework, and offers capabilities beyond the ecommerce storefront. osCommerce is more focused on ecommerce functionality. Magento’s heritage is osCommerce, so it has an ecommerce storefront and merchandizing focus as well.

Magento is in large part a fresh-start to osCommerce. Magento is composed of a team that knows ecommerce very well, and they have created a solid set of ecommerce capability. Magento’s goal is to be less complex than osCommerce, as osCommerce has grown into a somewhat complex collection of offerings. Of course Magento is much more immature at this point, with far fewer adjunct projects than osCommerce. Magento also offers professional support for customers and a partnership program for integrators. osCommerce has a community sponsorship program, but it is nominal at around $140 (give or take some currency conversion), while the Magento programs start at double this price and go into the thousands. Magento will feel more like a company that has an open source offering as opposed to osCommerce which is more of a pure-play open source community. Magento is also likely to keep the code base under their control, while contributors to the osCommerce platform are from a several corporations including PayPal and Amazon.

Magento offers similar technology as osCommerce as they are both written in PHP. But architecturally Magento is more of a collection of services than osCommerce. In this way, even though Magento is written in PHP and OFBiz is Java, Magento is architecturally more like OFBiz than osCommerce. Magento and OFBiz share a similar architectural approach of being constructed from a collection of underlying services. From an Optaros perspective, we like to assemble solutions using SOA techniques. This allows for evolutionary implementation which reduces risk, and allows best-of-breed components to be integrated. More assembly means more choice, less assembly means more of a packed-type implementation. In this way, osCommerce is more of a package-type implementation, and OFBiz allows a bit more assemble. We are in discussions with Magento as to what is the best way for their platform to be implemented. They can be deployed as a package for sure, but their core architecture also allows for assembly as well as they have an underlying services model. Stay tuned for updates on these discussions.

Disclosure – we have been in conversations with Magento’s leadership and are currently evaluating their 1.0 release. Most promising is that Magento’s team is embracing an assembly approach rather than focused on a traditional platform lock-in mentality.