From April 11th to 13th, members from around the world gathered for the annual Magento Imagine conference at the Wynn hotel in Las Vegas. Over 2500 people from over 45 countries gathered to exchange ideas, build relationships, and learn about new releases from Magento.
There were a number of pre-Imagine events that started on Sunday, April 10th. These included a 5 and 10k run at the Hoover Dam, and pre-Imagine parties with numerous early networking opportunities.
During the three-day event a number of announcements were made. Two of the more interesting announcements involved the launch of the new Magento Marketplace (formerly Magento Connect) and a new service from Magento known as Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition.
Magento Marketplace, the new Connect
The new Marketplace offers a less cluttered store with smarter search functionality that allows people to find extensions faster and easier. The Marketplace is now curated, with all submitted modules undergoing a technical, marketing, and business value review.
The review of modules will help ensure that they are coded according to best practices, that they do not contain plagiarism, and that they are securely coded. This will ensure quality extensions on the Marketplace.
Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition
Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering for Magento Enterprise 2.0 that runs on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud and seeks to provide merchants with the ability to rapidly innovate (develop), integrate and upgrade their Magento Enterprise website.
Mark Lavelle, CEO of Magento, describes Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition as a "post-Saas commerce platform" that is a first-of-its-kind in the market. The general feedback from Imagine attendees is that this product offering could be a game changer for eCommerce. It will be interesting see where Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition is one year from now, when the next Imagine conference is held April 3rd-5th, 2017.
Magento Community
Another defining component of the 2016 Imagine Conference was recognition of the Magento Community. This included not only the various developers, agencies, partners, and innovators that help keep the Magento platform a Trailblazer in eCommerce arena, but also the merchants that have selected Magento as their eCommerce platform.
The Magento Community is one of the most vibrant and active eCommerce communities available. They are delivering innovative solutions to merchants that make businesses more efficient and profitable. I will be interesting to see what next year's Imagine conference delivers.
