Long life Magento 1.X ?
Seems that end of life of Magento 1.X is postponed. At least that conclusion can be done from recent official and semi-official information from Magento.
Official blog post
30 May 2017 a new post “ONGOING MAGENTO 1 SUPPORT” appeared in Magento official blog. It is written by Magento SVP, Product and Technology Jason Woosley. Few quotes from the post:
#1
Magento 1 has been and will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future. We have no intention of denying access to our world-class software
#2
we are committing to a minimum 18-month notice before we make any changes to our support levels.
It sounds a bit vague, but definitely tells about Magento Inc. intention to extend life of Magento 1.X beyond Nov 2018.
That post ignites quite a hot discussion and Magento community and number of people asked Magento management for clarifications what exactly does it mean. Magento CEO Mark Lavelle was pretty fast to respond with the next tweet.
Mark Lavelle promises that Magento 1.X will be alive at least 18 months after Nov 18
So it seems that Magento 1.X merchants, especially those are on the Enterprise can now feel less pressure to move out from Magento 1.X. Probably Magento Inc. realised that not all Magento 1.X customers are quite ready to jump into Magento 2.X bandwagon yet, so decided to keep old good Magento 1.X alive longer than originally planned. It is understandable move, because the merchants who are on 1.X platform were getting nervous and competing platforms started to exploit their fear of being abandoned quite actively.
What should the merchants do
We think that it is a right move from Magento and helps the platform to keep more businesses within the ecosystem. While Magento 2.X is a definitely move forward, extending lifetime of 1.X helps to make the system more mature and stable, so the merchants face less issues migrating from Magento 1.X and will do they at the time when they feel the need in a new system rather than being pushed out from Magento 1.X forcefully.
Nevertheless, taking into account that all new features and most new extensions are now coming to Magento 2, we think that Magento 1.X merchants should consider their next eCommerce platform. They just have more time to make that important decision.
We’ll stay tuned and see how the situation with Magento 1.X end of life develops.
