The New Kid in Open Source Ecommerce

 

In February I wrote about the news of eBay quietly taking a 49% share of Magento after investing more than $22 million in the open source enterprise ecommerce platform provider in 2010. A few days ago, the two companies teamed up for another announcement, this time revealing that the fabled auction site had made a full acquisition of Magento. Indeed, this confirms my original suspicion that eBay was getting ready to steer the ship in a new direction in order to try and generate new stream of revenue.

The acquisition falls right in line with eBay’s recent creation and announcement of X.Commerce, a cloud based platform that will work to create a developer community framed to act as a resource to merchants and retailers by offering open source ecommerce functionality. In other words, they will be doing what Magento has been doing already, just under a new name.

Although the terms of the deal won’t be revealed until Q3 this year, both companies claim in an FAQ sheet that Magento’s managent team and 290 employees can rest assured they will retain their positions, and that the company will continue to support its existing business while transitioning its technology infrastructure into X.commerce.

Pair this latest development with the procurement of GSI, and eBay is poised to make a significant advancement in the open source ecommerce arena. In the end I applaud the transaction as a powerful means to further strengthen the argument that open source enterprise ecommerce platforms can parallel and even exceed proprietary offerings. This should be interesting to watch unfold.

—Jared—

Jared Matkin is a staff writer for HotWax Media with a background in PR, Branding and Marketing. He’s also a light-hearted and an opinionated character who will join other HotWax Media employees and advisers in periodically posting his thoughts on topics ranging from enterprise eCommerce to business and technology.


DATE: Jun 09, 2011
AUTHOR: HotWax Systems
Enterprise eCommerce, Enterprise eCommerce Platform