Five years ago, Zaelab was born as a company with our first customer – Bonobos. For those who have not yet experienced the best men’s pants on the market, Bonobos is definitely a store to check out. Their CTO at the time was struggling to respond to a catastrophic crash they had experienced during the peak period of cyber-Monday that year. The Bonobos digital channel was running on Magento Enterprise Edition, and the early Zaealab team was tasked with identifying and solving the technical issues to prevent any future occurrence.
For the next year, we partnered with Bonobos as we all desperately worked to get their Magento solution into the cloud, and optimized to scale for their rapidly expanding business.
In order to scale at the pace of demand, we were required to make one dramatic change after the next — building custom caching mechanisms, rebuilding extensions that were pulled in from the community, and optimizing core pieces of the Magento codebase. In the quest to solve the technology problems that were impacting the growth of the business and “keep the lights on”, Bonobos was spending their time and energy on fixing technology – instead of focusing on the innovation that made their brand unique and exciting. When faced with that reality, some were quick to point to the future release – Magento 2 – which was going to solve all of these performance issues. However, more recent indications hint at even larger potential issues with Magento 2.0, as described in this detailed analysis from the founders and former architect of the platform.
After this experience, Zaelab shifted focus. We wanted to work with a more robust, scalable, and agile solution — one that allowed B2B and B2C customers to focus on innovation and their core business. This is what our customers were asking for, and what our core mission is based on – simplifying digital commerce, and shifting the focus from technology limitations, to business innovation.
So, we began to move away from Magento, and begin looking closely at a new platform and partnership with an emerging platform out of Germany called Hybris. This was long before they would be acquired by SAP and named the leading e-commerce platform by Gartner and Forrester. And the results have been tremendous – both for our team, and our clients. What was limiting during our early experience with the new platform was often the cost – which could exclude smaller businesses with less investment capability or budget.
I hear from clients and businesses who have heard great things about SAP Hybris, and most understand their spot as the industry leader. But what many do not know – and what we want to help our clients understand – is that the economics of the solution now make it feasible for an SMB to own, implement, and successfully run their digital channel on the SAP Hybris platform. That is big – and something we’re expecting to open many doors for growing businesses that are in need of scalability.
Today, Zaelab is announcing a way for Magento Merchants to consider an implementation or upgrade to Magento 2, an accelerated and cost-effective solution for migration to SAP Hybris. We invite you to contact us to learn more about the Magento to SAP Hybris conversion kit.
