Adobe Buys Magento

May 21, 2018
Adobe Buys Magento

Well how about that!

We are excited about today’s announcement. We have believed in the power of Adobe + Magento for a long time. Back in 2013, we demonstrated our first integration between the Adobe Commerce Integration Framework (CIF) and Magento at the Inaugural AEM users group meeting and demoed the latest Adobe Commerce Cloud integration just a week ago.

It is great to see new faces coming into the AEM/Magento space. With the announcement, we are looking forward to a more active development ecosystem, and together building the next generation of commerce solutions.

Good for Adobe

For years, Adobe has actively been trying to fill in their commerce gap. There were rumors that they were interested in Hybris and Demandware. After what seemed a little like a soap opera and some unfair criticism from the analysis, they got it done. This is a significant initiative for Adobe. They will be investing to bring Magento into the Marketing Cloud while also capitalizing on the technical and community strengths of Magento.

Good for Magento

It has been a challenging year for Magento. The dust is just settling on the transition to Magento 2 which was aggravated by pressure on the low to mid-market sales from Shopify. The Adobe uplift comes at a great time. It will seat Magento on the short list of enterprise commerce systems. Magento has always had a considerable developer ecosystem and add-on component marketplace which Adobe will maintain. The integration path puts the platform in an attractive position.

Small, Medium & Enterprise

The addition of Magento to the Adobe Marketing Cloud is strategically significant. It solves Adobe’s commerce problem, but perhaps more interestingly it opens up an SMB market that has been elusive. Adobe has done well on SMB in the creative cloud but its offerings in the Marketing Cloud typically start at the small enterprise.

Large Enterprise – all are welcome

At a certain scale, it is not one size fits all – doubly true of commerce. As customers’ requirements become more complex, the solutions are less out of the box and customers will look to established enterprise platforms. Adobe addresses this with Adobe I/O and its extensible open platform strategy. Currently, Hybris has the largest installation base with the Marketing Cloud Ecosystem. Additionally, Elastic Path, Digital River, Commerce tools, and IBM all have significant footprints. These technology partners are focused on enterprise customers and are not going away or being abandoned.

Magento Community Edition, it is not going anywhere

One of the significant concerns of the Magento community is the future of Magento CE. CE will be fine, and the Adobe purchase will only help it grow. Magento’s biggest asset is its community and Adobe did not pay $1.7B to throw it away. Adobe is invested in supporting the CE community and knows a percentage will graduate into enterprise customers.

What’s next?

Who knows, but my guess is that Magento’s reach will increase in the Enterprise and it will have a well-defined API-first strategy. They will also overlay useful marketing cloud features. At the community level, things will remain the same. At the mid-market level, Magento will continue to lead on commerce and help Adobe Marketing Cloud make inroads.