Magento Evolutions & Architectural Insights - Ray Bogman
Smash the Bug: Episode 28
Your host: Joseph Maxwell, Founder and CEO of SwiftOtter, Inc.
Special Guest: Ray Bogman, Adobe Commerce Senior Business Solutions Architect at Adobe, Inc.
Show Notes
Who is Ray Bogman? Ray is a 6-time Adobe Commerce (Magento) certified developer who now works for Adobe, Inc. and finds himself completing a pretty vast array of tasks on a daily basis. To over-simplify his job, he supports Magento (Adobe) Commerce clients and helps a number of massive businesses around the world to maximize their experience on the platform. His newest project is to migrate a few big merchants over to the new Adobe Commerce Cloud, which will be interesting for us all to witness! With his insider knowledge at Adobe, he’s able to provide us with a few helpful insights on where Magento (Adobe) Commerce might be headed and why he’s excited about its future.
From a business standpoint, Ray is excited about the “future roadmap” of Magento commerce. He seems to think that from a TCO (total cost of ownership) standpoint, improvements are definitely being made, and from a day-to-day perspective, focusing on development of microservices, the “agility” of Magento is going to dramatically increase in the near future. Joseph takes a minute to break down the value of microservices with Ray and asks him if he thinks their value outweighs the concern that many developers have over the potential lack of customization present. Ray thinks that it’s a matter of perspective and making sure to think about each individual situation on its own. In contrast, Joseph thinks that the community has struggled with the overwhelming customization capabilities of Adobe Commerce and that in some sense, greater simplicity and fewer options can be better in some cases. With more “out of the box” opportunities, Ray suggests that the TCO (total cost of ownership) will go down for merchants in the long run.
Ray insists that his greatest challenges with clients tend to stem back to violations of Magento best practices. For instance, the decision to “just build another website” to create desired functionality can seem like a good idea at the time, but it actually causes more problems later on. The solution partner agency is excited about getting to sell a new website build or feel like they are making the merchant happy, giving them exactly what they want, but they are actually causing that merchant’s website to be built like a house of cards instead of having a rock solid foundation. It’s difficult for agencies to understand that they are legitimately putting the merchant first, even if they are saying “no” to the merchant, when they commit to doing what is best instead of what is explicitly requested. Ray jokingly mentions how Magento, in the earlier days, felt much like legos. Pretty much anything could be done, and it was shocking how much customization was at our fingertips, but as websites underwent more and more customization, they lost their quality, security and longevity.
So what about PWA? Ray believes that, while PWA is gaining some significant popularity, it’s going to be a while before enough developers understand it well enough to capitalize on its capabilities. The good news is that, as Ray said, “it feels like Magento 1”. Developers have something new and wonderful to discover, unpack and master. While PWA will continue to be adopted pretty slowly for a while, as more industry leaders get excited about the options that it offers and see how mature React is already, it will begin to gain steam and become more standardized.
(Theme music courtesy of TrendingAudio)
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