Internet commerce is booming worldwide and online stores are launching at an incredible pace. Among the leading software systems powering e-commerce around the world is Magento, which we have grown particularly fond of. Magento is one of the most mature open-source systems for managing Internet commerce sites.

Enormous growth opportunity

The origins of Magento start in 2006, as a fork of the then-popular osCommerce. Later it was decided to rewrite the code and use a special Varien library, combined with the well-known Zend framework. This approach drew a number of developers to the project, since the Zend library is known for imposing rather strict limitations on the structure of the end product. This helped to point Magento in the right strategic direction from the get-go.

Now, Magento has one of the largest and most active communities, on both the developer and user side. So we can say with confidence that the platform’s popularity is no mere flash in the pan.

Comparison of osCommerce and Magento popularity over time (source: Google Trends):

After Magento was purchased by eBay in a deal valued at approximately USD $22 million, the platform took on a more “finished” appearance. eBay continues to improve and refine the software. Both the community and new features are actively supported. Currently there are two editions of Magento: Enterprise (paid) and Community (free). Click here for a more detailed comparison of the paid and free versions.

The future of e-commerce

Right now the community has geared up to push the final version of Magento 2.0 over the finish line. Almost the entire logic has been redesigned in this version. eBay is also planning to combine all of its most popular products – PayPal, eBay and Magento – into a single cloud (“x.Commerce”) for providing e-commerce services.

As we see it, Magento 2.0 is just the first step to a world in which absolutely anyone can create stores and sell products just as easily as they can via eBay.

A release of version 2 was made available for testing purposes in December 2014. The first bona fide release of the new version is planned for March 2015. The new version of Magento is set to become even more popular, and even more quickly, than the current one has.

What keeps you with Magento, at the end of the day?

Simple. Magento means reliability, functionality and innovation!