Everything You Need to Know About Magento 2.2

Magento 2.2 is a major release that greatly improves the functionality of the three major versions of Magento, Magento Open Source, Magento Commerce, and Magento Cloud Edition. The major improvement to Magento Commerce is the new release of their B2B functionality that will significantly enhance the ability to create high-quality B2B eCommerce experiences with Magento. You can read the full release notes for Open Source, Commerce Edition, and Cloud Edition on the Magento Dev Docs site.

Magento 2.2 Open Source

• Bundled extensions. Magento now includes the first third-party extension that is bundled into Magento Commerce – Magento Social. This extension creates an integration between your Magento store and your business Facebook account. You can create a Facebook page with products from your catalog. When shoppers click a product on the Facebook page, they are redirected to the corresponding product page in your Magento store.
• Significant enhancements in platform security and developer experience.Magento improved security in many different places so that security is even better than before. None of these issues had been exposed in the past but were simply improved so that they are no longer a potential vulnerability. Security improvements include the removal of unserializing calls and protection of this functionality to increase resilience against dangerous code execution attacks. They have also improved security for cross-site scripting attacks.
• Upgraded technology stack. Magento is quickly upgrading the technology stack. They have dropped support for PHP 5.6, and Varnish 3. Magento now supports PHP 7.1 Varnish 5, and MySQL 5.7. All third-party libraries have been upgraded to the latest stable version.
• Pipeline deployment, a new deployment process, enables build and deployment stages to minimize production system downtime for site updates. Resource-intensive processes can run on the build server. Pipeline deployment supports easy management of configuration between environments, too. You can learn more about pipeline deployment here.
• Performance gains from improvements in indexing, cart, and cache operations. This is a huge improvement to performance! Users can go on the Magento website while indexers are running with no visible impact on their experience. Additionally, long-running indexers operate in batches to better manage memory and run times. Cart improvements enable a buyer to create a cart with more than 300 line items, and merchants can process a cart with at least 300 line items, which is great for B2B eCommerce. Varnish Cache has also been improved greatly in 2.2.
• Fixed Issues. Magento fixed a large list of issues effecting Catalog, Search, Payment, Import / Export, and much much more. They will continue to improve and fix known issues as they arise.

Magento 2.2 Commerce Edition

• Everything in Open Source in addition to:
• B2B Commerce functionality. Magento Commerce now comes with a built-in B2B module that helps merchants sell to companies rather than just consumers. When a company goes to a Magento Commerce store they can now create and maintain their own accounts without adding an extension to Magento. Each company comes with teams of buyers with various roles and levels of permission. They have a B2B Quick Start guide for an overview of the B2B features which are the following:
  • Company Accounts
  • Shared catalogs so you can offer a unique catalog and pricing to specific customers
  • Quick order
  • Requisition lists for companies who want to create lists and order them in the future
  • Ability to request a quote on an item
  • Payment on account via a credit limit functionality
  • Better integration capabilities for integrating with ERP systems
• Integrated Signifyd fraud protection. Signifyd, a leading fraud protection services now come prebuilt into Magento. You can easily integrate with Signifyd now, rather than having to install a third party module which can be riskier. You can learn more about the integration on the Magento Dev Docs Signifyd fraud protection page.
• Additional improvements and fixes for security and known issues to Commerce Edition. All of the fixes from Open Source in addition to fixes that apply to Commerce Edition specific functionality.

Magento 2.2 Commerce Cloud Edition

• Staging and Production environments in the UI. Magento has a web interface you can use so that you don’t have to directly access staging and production via SSH. With the interface you can now:
  • Add and manage user access to the environments
  • Sync code between Staging and Pro to Integration environments
  • Add and manage environment variables
  • Configure environment settings
  • Access the environments by SSH and URL. These links and commands are provided through the Access Links.
  • View builds logs and deployment history
• 30-day free trials available You can now get access to two difference Subscriptions and plans for 30 days free trial to see if you like Magento Cloud Edition. This is a great new feature that was never available before!
• Magento Commerce Starter. Magento now offers a starter plan for a lower fee of $2,000 a month to allow SMB companies and even larger enterprises get on the Magento Commerce platform without a huge barrier to entry.
• Improvements to the Magento Commerce (Cloud) deployment process. Magento has improved the Magento application environment variables, Composer, and Changes in Deployment with the new 2.2 release.

Conclusion

Magento is making some major strides towards improving the newer 2.0 version. The release of the B2B functionality is a major improvement to the many B2B eCommerce businesses on Magento. Many companies are providing both B2B and b2C on Magento, so this will help them greatly.
Magento is making strides on all fronts, Open Source, Commerce Edition, and Cloud Edition, and their release of the free trial and lower monthly prices for Starter Edition show their commitment to growing the user base among SMB companies. Magento 2.2 is much faster than ever before, and I think you will start to see newer Magento sites really have the speed that makes them incredibly competitive websites.