Due to the unpredictable nature of these events, we cannot confirm opening hours at this point.

We aim to be open between 10am and 4pm every day – should we be unavailable and you have an emergency request – please use the facility in http://theclientarea.info

Consulting, technical support, use and hosting services for the performance of e-commerce transactions; Software as a Service (SaaS) featuring computer software to allow users to perform electronic business transactions in the field of ecommerce.

Attendees of Magento Imagine will be familiar with the above branding and concept, but official release isn’t quite due so information is being kept quiet for now, so we can only speculate as to its purpose.

From an outsider of the Magento Imagine conference, I’ve probably taken the entirely wrong view of this or at least I certainly hope I’m wrong.

Magento SAAS was inevitable

If it is what we think is it, it was only a matter of time before Varien began to offer turnkey Magento solutions. But it does beg the question, what is to happen to the “paid-up” Magento hosting and Magento development partners (read members, you have to buy your way in).

Setting the foundations in place

The Magento partner program was launched quite a while ago in its early form, offering a single grade of registration for a nominal yearly fee. Since then, Varien’s revenue scheme has grown and changed shape slightly; from the community based, free, open-source product with optional chargeable support; to an enterprise application with enterprise level support.

Now, Varien offers three core products, Magento Community Edition, Magento Professional and Magento Enterprise. To facilitate quick, rapid and convincing deployment of these chargeable flavours – distributors were recruited, these firms are known as Magento partners.

Agencies ready, Hosting providers ready …

So, with a league of willing developers and hosting providers in tow, Varien are positioned correctly to set the flip the e-commerce market up-side down. This is where Magento Go comes in. With all the afore-mentioned groundwork that Varien have put in – it would seem bizarre if their new turnkey operation was provided solely in-house.

So, it looks like Varien might just set in place a strategic standardisation of quality and delivery, governing their partners on best-practice; in return, handing over the initial and future development of any Magento Go store to a Magento solution partner.

I can’t quite figure out how the hosting partners might be involved in this though. If you remember, around 1 year ago, Varien ran a webinar on Magento performance, specifically tied with Zend Server. There were some white papers released after this, but it was never really reinforced or actively promoted. Perhaps Zend and Varien have teamed together to provide a standalone environment, with a recommended infrastructure and user interface. This could then be effectively handed over to a Magento hosting partner to provide a distributed service with centralised billing and management.

Worst case scenario

The unified structure above would mean Varien not only monopolising the Magento development and hosting workspace, but potentially dictating full control.

BUT and its a big one

There are some potential pitfalls for agencies for those that don’t buy in, but no more than that of other real-world businesses. Take the car industry for example, you have the option of taking your BMW to the dealership for a service, or your local independent garage. Hopefully, competition will stay active enough for everyone to thrive from Magento and specifically, Magento Go. Which leads me on to say that …

Scaremongering aside – Magento Go has A LOT of benefits

This is potentially a developers dream. Imagine a standardised platform providing infinite levels of integration, with existing, well developed links with common service providers (SagePay, SecureTrading, ParcelForce, UPS etc.) and a library of web services to integrate with your client’s in-house services.

With a large proportion of Magento stores hosted in a central location, monitoring, reporting and debugging information could easily be fed straight back to Varien’s core development team. Giving them valuable automated feedback as to where improvements can be made. This could ensure a stable, secure and highly optimised Magento core that will benefit everyone.

It could remove the reliance on 3rd party extensions, moving all functionality to the core, safe and secure.

But its not just developers who will benefit, the end-user, your clients, could reap massive rewards. A centralised database of every Magento stores’ products could offer uniformity of data – resulting in quick, painless product population with a wealth of accurate, rich attributes at your fingertips.

The future then provides potential of distributors dealing direct with Varien, giving the end user access to cheaper supplies or drop shipping services.

Magento Go, a real game changer

This platform has infinite potential for good and an equally large potential for bad, the only comment I can close on, is …

With great power, comes great responsibility

Read more about Magento Go http://www.magentocommerce.com/getready.html
Watch a video about Magento Go http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CyIJpEeoF0

We are now back open for 2011 and currently working through a back-load of emails and requests that came in during the Christmas period, so if you are waiting on a reply, it shouldn’t be too long now!

http://www.magentocommerce.com/download/noregister

Whilst its not breaking news – its the beginning of results starting to affect our day to day running and blog-worthy!

From the Google blog:

“

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

”

Whilst we know 1.4 will bring a much improved e-commerce platform, our only concern lies in template compatibility. Those that suffered the upgrade from 1.1 to 1.2 or 1.2 to 1.3 will have been forced to change a small portion of their template to suit the newer methods devised. The major point upgrades were never designed to facilitate an end user easily upgrading their store with 1-click methods.

So, for those of us that have built highly complex template derivatives, will the option to upgrade still remain viable?

Improvements

* Implemented frontend templates for widgets
* Added field scope hints in system admin configuration
* Implemented #15031: paypal checkout allowed through PP logo while allow guest checkout is marked NO
* Simplified core email template store url generation (because all this logic is correctly implemented in the core url model). Completely disallowed to render SID in emails. Moved SID-related logic to cms template filter.
* Adjusted text labels and pre-selected is_active in CMS page edit page
* Added ability to set default value of page layouts, utilized it on CMS edit page (1 column by default)
* Implemented uniqHash() method in core helper. Reduced probability of possible md5(microtime()) collisions in places where it was used
* Implemented #17084: Product “Custom Layout Update” per store view
* Updated indexing management labels, made one of mass actions pre-selected
* Implemented a generic wrapper block for frontend. Purpose is similar to core/text_list, but it also renders a wrapper HTML-element. No need for generic wrapper template in modern theme. Utilized the new wrapper block in onepage checkout for checkout progress
* Implemented aggregation catalog rules and their customer groups and websites to new table for further using in simple getting applied catalog rules
* Made customer checkout and registration “email already exists” messages more informative
* Added Real Media and Windows Media extensions to CMS media browser
* added scrollbars to widgets insertion window
* Adjusted look & feel of wysiwyg and widgets

Changes

* Implemented asCanonicalArray() in simplexml element – same as asArray(), just ignores node attributes
* Changed widget.xml declaration, refactored widgets implementation (Misha promised to post examples – add cross-link there)
* Jammed Exception in customer loginPost action, replaced catch to Mage_Core_Exception
* Changed Db layout Updates to load by default store (0) if no data for current store
* Added “– Please Select –” label to the empty value of websites dropdown in admin area forms
* Added ability to support the directive for menu building (it was in adminhtml.xml, but wasn’t in use). Reviewed all adminhtml.xml:
– checked all existing directives, removed redundant or non-working
– specified sort order for catalog menu
– updated some text labels
* Updated frontend label of region_id attribute of customer address entity
* Prevented email send exceptions spoiling onepage checkout process, order invoicing and order re-sending email
* Provided event perfix and event object for customer address
* Added method addIsInStockFilterToCollection to CatalogInventory Stock Status Model
* Made Mage version getter based on version info getter
* Added new events:
– checkout_cart_save_after – provide entry point after all shopping cart items changes (add/remove/update item)
– wishlist_items_renewed – changes with wishlist items
* Adjusted CSS-classes for salesrules store fieldset
* added ability to override table class and value class for default adminhtml fieldset and fieldset element renderers
* improved cms widget chooser block (hidden element didn’t get all data fields of original element)
* removed redundant non-breakable space in grid column renderer in ‘edit_only’ mode
* Added Known Issue Notice of Firebug VS TinyMCE
* Moved methods getColumnCount, addColumnCountLayoutDepend, removeColumnCountLayoutDepend, getColumnCountLayoutDepend, getPageLayout from Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List to Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_Abstract class
* Added an ability to disable admin menu item rendering via configuration
* Added deprecation message to admin menu/acl config model
* Removed double quote recollect from multishipping checkout
* Adminhtml Manage Currency Rates: Moved services select to separated child block
* removed checkout progress layout in iphone theme, since it uses 1-column layout
* Added ability to return empty JSON object if data to serialize was empty and column names were already added
* Improved Mage_Adminhtml_Helper_Js::decodeInput() – clarified logic, made it ignoring non-numeric keys. Renamed it to decodeGridSerializedInput() (renamed in all places where it was used)
* Removed Mage::log debugging usage and fixed notices in log directory configuration
* Reorganized CMS and Customer menu and ACL in admin area
* Changed label of product visibility “Nowhere” to “Not Visible Individually”
* Updated license notice, tabs to spaces and CRLF to LF, LF before EOF
* Added created_at as a static attribute of customer entity
* Newsletter Module code refactored. Added method Mage_Newsletter_Model_Mysql4_Subscriber::addStoreFilter()
* Upgraded Zend Framework to v.1.9.3PL1 release
* Added javascript console object to prevent JS errors with using this object in browsers accept firefox
* Changed AdminNotification URL

http://www.magentocommerce.com/download/release_notes

The client area has now also changed! To fit in with our new theme, the client area now runs independent of Sonassi.com to allow other users to re-sell the client area in an (soon to be) skinnable environment.

So please make sure you update your bookmarks to the new url: http://www.theclientarea.info/

Welcome to the new and improved sonassi.com. To focus our attention better, our hosting and development have split into two separate websites. Over the coming weeks, we will be changing a lot about our services to make them more affordable, more streamlined and much faster! Our aim is to become the best Magento development and hosting company in the UK.

Manchester Design and development

So you can find the latest design and development information @ www.sonassi.com

Manchester Magento Hosting

You can can find the best performance Magento hosting @ www.sonassihosting.com

The new websites also facilitate the new client area @ www.theclientarea.info