Alexander Ringsdorff, CEO of Visions, reflects on his experience with Magento, providing case studies from the MyDeco and Jack Wolfskin projects he oversaw and provides real-world insight how the associated technical challenges - integration with backend systems, scalability and performance - can be overcome.

1. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Enterprise Magento
Integration
The Challenges, and Solutions, to
Enterprise Magento Integration
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2. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Agenda
• About Visions
• Why use Magento for Enterprise Projects?
• Enterprise and Community Editions
• Challenges: Customisation, Integration and
Scalability / Performance
• Case Studies: mydeco and Jack Wolfskin
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3. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
About Visions
• Magento Enterprise Partner
• Based in Hannover and Hamburg, Germany
• Projects in UK, Spain and Germany
• E-Commerce since 2004
• Exclusively focused on Magento since January 2008
• Co-operation with Varien on Developer Certification
and QA
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4. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
About Visions: Service Portfolio
• Large Magento Projects
• Strategic & Technical Consulting
• Custom Development & Integration
• Cluster Infrastructure: Design, Management
• Partners: Hellmann Logistics, COLT Telecom,
Globalcollect, Payone, Computop
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5. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
About Visions - Jack Wolfskin
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6. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
About Visions - mydeco
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7. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Why use Magento for
Enterprise-Class Projects?
• Don't just use Magento because it's cool!
• The good reasons:
– strategic
– technical
– features
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8. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Strategic Reasons
• Enterprise projects: large investments into a
platform for many years
• Key concerns: future-readiness, lock-in and
availability of staff
• Magento is Commercial Open Source
– No barriers to starting out: Community Edition
– World's fastest-growing e-commerce solution
– 750k+ downloads
• Already very large scale
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9. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Strategic Reasons II
• Many developers getting skilled at Magento
development
• ... finding and fixing bugs
• … incorporating trends into Magento extensions
• Simple example: Canonical URLs
• Closed source: few developers, few third-party
extensions,innovation slows as the software
matures
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10. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Strategic Reasons III
• Magento has a large ecosystem of users,
developers and Partners
• and is backed by Varien, who are comitted to
the platform
• New functionality coming at a fast rate
• Developer expertise is available on the
market
• No lock-in
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11. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Technical Reasons
• Magento is a young and legacy-free platform
• very well designed, follows best-practice software
design patterns throughout (such as MVC)
• based on Zend Framework
• API for Application Integration, will grow even
further
• Very flexible templating, good for collaboration
between developers and designers
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12. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Technical Reasons II
• Completely modular system (through
extensions)
– Create new features
– Build upon existing ones
– Modify business processes to suit your use
case
• Without breaking the update path*
(*if done according to Magento best-practices)
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13. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Features
• Multi-Store, Multi-Currency, Multi-
Language
• Pricing rules (by customer and by
shopping cart)
• Search-engine friendly
• Mobile Commerce support
• … and many well thought-out details
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14. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Extra Features in the Enterprise
Edition
• Content Staging, Merging and Rollback
• Advanced Access Control (Site and store
level)
• Logging of administrator actions
• PA-DSS enabled
• More promotions (Gift cards, Private
Sales)
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15. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Community and Enterprise
Community Enterprise
•Great features ouf the box
•Free Magento Connect extensions
•One-Click install
•No licence fees
•Extensions and data can easily be
migrated upwards to the enterprise
level
•Deployment processes, back-out
procedures
•Audit logs of admin panel
•Continuous Manufacturer Service &
Maintenance
•Enhanced Security
•Permissive Licence
•Integration with backend systems
•Scalability, Customisation
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16. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
What do you need to know
before you start?
• Key challenges always the same
– Performance
– Scalability
– Integration of backend systems and third-
party components
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17. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Performance & Scalability
Challenge
• Performance: How fast is it with a single
user?
• Scalability: Is it still fast with many users at
the same time?
• Magento can be tailored to fit many different
use cases
– Great strength!
• But not out-of-the-box optimised for a
particular setting; up to the integrator
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18. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Meeting the Scalability Challenge
• Scalability Solutions within Magento
– Caching framework in Magento
– Rewriting queries
– Tuning the Software Stack (Database &
Appserver)
• Getting Design of Infrastructure Right
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19. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Meeting the Scalability Challenge II
• Horizontal Scale-out is possible with Magento
– Don't buy a bigger server, just add more off-the-shelf
computing power
– Cheap, no limits in practical terms
• Visions Magnitude Extension
– Extension that facilitates scale-out with unlimited
compute nodes
– Solves the managability issues that can arise in large
clusters
– Available for our clients on top of the Enterprise
Edition
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20. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Meeting the Scalability Challenge III
• Case Study: Jack Wolfskin
• Deployed on Visions' Managed Cluster
Infrastructure
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21. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Integration Challenge
• ERP systems such as SAP, Navision etc.
• Product data and PIM (LAGO, providers
like FactFinder, Cnet Channel)
• Products, Prices, Orders and Customers
• Issues: data synchronisation,
failures/unreliability of external systems,
speed
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22. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Integration Challenge II
• Two approaches
– Core API: middleware links the systems
• polling at regular intervals
– Visions Magnamics Engine (Magento
extension)
• event-driven
• mydeco: Core API
• Jack Wolfskin: Magnamics
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23. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Extensibility Challenge
• Case Study: mydeco
• Multiple vendors
– create and manage their products in admin panel
– inventory levels
– fully self-service
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24. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Extensibility Challenge II
• Products purchased on the mydeco
basket site
• Tight integration of basket with main site
• Orders split by vendor
• E-Mail notification to vendors
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25. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Extensibility Challenge III
• mydeco solution: highly customised
magento through modules
• set of modules extend Core
– ACLs, Sales, Admin, Shipping modules
• no changes to Core files
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26. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Conclusion
• Use Magento for the right reasons
• Front End features, highly customizable, great
platform
• Build on existing features
• Many business models supported out-of-the-box
• Leverage existing IT investment by Multi-Store
technology: Enter new markets quickly and at low
cost
• Enterprise Edition

27. Alexander Ringsdorff – Visions new media GmbH
Contact
E-Mail: magento@visions.ag
Twitter: twitter.com/visions_alex
www.visions-new-media.com
Questions?