Ecommerce

eBay Agrees to Acquire Magento

Magento: "The past several years have been an amazing journey for Magento, as we've grown from a new open source platform into an eCommerce leader. Along the way, we've built not only a platform, but a company and a worldwide community. Together, we've identified opportunities, taken risks, innovated, struggled, succeeded, and changed the face of eCommerce. Today marks a milestone on this journey as we announce the most exciting news in our company's history.

Magento has reached an agreement to be acquired by eBay Inc. We believe this move will open incredible opportunities for the entire Magento ecosystem."

Bitrix Unveils Multi-Platform Virtual Appliance for Social Collaboration and E-Commerce

Bitrix, Inc., a technology trendsetter in business communications solutions, introduces Bitrix® Virtual Appliance 2.0 – the world’s first dedicated ready-to-use solution designed to run social collaboration and e-commerce applications in the most popular virtual environments including VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Parallels Virtuozzo and Amazon EC2. As a result, SMBs can achieve cost savings up to 50% on deployment and management of applications and reach a new level of business continuity and agility.

Telerik Unveils Powerful Sitefinity 4.0 Content Management Solution

Recent Mallsoft acquisition lays foundation for advanced Sitefinity e-commerce functionality

WALTHAM, MA, JANUARY 17, 2011 –Telerik, an end-to-end provider of software application lifecycle and content management solutions today announced the launch of Sitefinity 4.0, the newest edition of its powerful, scalable Content Management System (CMS). The platform’s redesigned product architecture delivers an array of enhancements, like advanced workflow control for better business process management and improved ease-of-use, generating considerable productivity gains of up to 70 percent. Underscoring its commitment to meeting the needs of customers developing commercial websites, Telerik also announced its recent acquisition of Mallsoft, leading developers of e-commerce shopping cart technologies. The acquisition lays the groundwork for the integration of advanced e-commerce functionalityand a robust system for handling online stores within the Sitefinity platform.

“This is the culmination of many years of real-world experience, extensive time and resources invested in product R&D, and in gathering customer feedback. Additionally, with new frameworks supporting Mallsoft’s e-commerce technologies, users have the ability to fully manage all aspects of their online business, from corporate websites to intranets to online stores. Sitefinity 4.0 has matured into one of the market’s most powerful, comprehensive, and highest quality content management solutions being shipped today,” said Martin Kirov, executive vice president of Sitefinity atTelerik. “By minimizing complexities while providing robust tools and innovative features addressing every aspect of the site building and management experience, Sitefinity 4.0 enables users to quickly, easily, and efficiently optimize their web presence.”

Finalists in Packt's 2010 Open Source Awards announced

Packt Publishing recently announced the finalists in each of the categories for their 2010 Open Awards. While award categories for content management systems are still included, this year Packt is also adding additional flavors of open source projects to be judged. The new award categories include awards for most promising open source project, e-commerce applications, graphics software, and JavaScript libraries.

The Voting for the winners in each of the categories ends on November 5, 2010.  This "public vote" will then be combined with votes by a panel of judges in each category to be announced on November 15, 2010.

Drupal's Ubercart forks into Drupal Commerce

A few years ago, I had developed an online store for a buddy of mine using osCommerce. I had hoped to use Joomla! or Drupal for the site but at the time wasn't satisfied with the shopping cart extensions or modules that were available for either CMS. Shortly after developing that site a new eCommerce module for Drupal became available called Ubercart. I've never had taken on the task of building another online store (it was a lot of work) but I've always kept my eye on Ubercart just to stay informed.

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5

osCommerce LogoosCommerce announced that their osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 will be made available on March 11th.  They've also retooled the schedule for additional releases of this well known shopping cart.

osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 was scheduled for release by the end of February and has been postponed to ensure the quality of the release. It will now be released on Wednesday the 11th of March. This release also brings in a new roadmap and release strategy for the v3.x series.

What should I do with osCommerce?

Not long ago, I expressed doubts whether osCommerce has a future.  While osCommerce is widely used by thousands of sites, and incidentally the only shopping cart I've ever put into production, its development cycle has been painfully slow for many of its open source contributors and users.  As I've said before, when the 3.0 version of osCommerce is released I find it unlikely that the new osCommerce will have many of the Web 2.0 features that the new breed of
shopping carts currently have now.  I have personal doubts that osCommerce's future is as bright as its past has been.