Magento 2 – the emergence of the new Magento M2 platform – has been the question that all of our clients are asking about for 2016. Everyone wants to know what it is and when, or if, to transition to this platform. We answer your questions below.

Magento 1.* EE will be officially supported until end of 2018. It is a mature, stable platform with a large library of off-the-shelf extensions and a large community of helpful information. Magento 2.*, offers developers new tools for testing and writing better code with the following enhancements:

Benefits of Magento 2

• Improved admin interface
• Better APIs (integration with 3rd party tools)
• Streamlined checkout experience
• Performance and scalability gains
• Modern frontend and backend framework
• Comprehensive documentation
• Internal automated testing framework

The uptake of M2 has been much faster than most expected. Many solutions partners are starting to use Magento 2 for new builds, although there are still very few sites that have been launched on it. Less popular has been the idea of moving M1 sites to M2 – there are still barriers to the process and the benefit vs cost to implement has not yet tipped the balance.

Most merchants are less interested in the initial benefits and more concerned about not being left behind on a legacy platform. While this is a valid concern, Magento has confirmed that they will be supporting M1 until Q4 2018 and that means there is no need to rush the decision on M2. Each merchant should have conversations with their solutions partners to assess the costs and benefits for their individual circumstances.

One of the most positive things we’ve seen since the initial release of M2 has been the pace with which 3rd party extension vendors have ported their extensions. Most, if not all, of the well know and reputable vendors we use now support Magento 2 and have also taken the opportunity to improve the functionality and usability of their extensions via the modern M2 codebase. Magento Marketplace is a good place to see if required extensions are are available for Magento 2. For example, Magestore recently did a brief blog post on the new marketplace and their extensions being featured on it.

Magento have developed a ‘Magento 2 Data Migration Tool’ to help efficiently port all product, customer, and order data, store configurations, promotions etc. to Magento 2. Skywire were one of the first Magento Partners to sign-up for the  “Fundamentals of Magento 2.0 Development” course as part of our education on the Magento 2.0 Platform.

Get in touch with us if you’d like to learn more about M2 for your specific website.