Akeneo Cloud Edition: Get Ready!

When we launched the first beta of Akeneo PIM at the end of 2013, we did so with the strong belief that product data would become a key asset in the deployment of a multichannel strategy, and that marketing teams needed a tool to enable them to regain control over data.

But not just any tool.

They needed a modern, open and simple tool that was:

• Simple to learn and use every day: Team productivity and data quality are closely tied to the usability of the tool manipulating your data.
• Simple to customize: Each catalog is unique. Regardless of the number of products, attributes and variations in a catalog, the PIM tool should adapt without requiring systematic development at every change or enrichment of the data model.
• Simple to connect: A PIM tool is a data hub. By itself, it is useless. It needs to be able to easily exchange data with systems surrounding it.

We worked on this concept of simplicity for the last 3 years. And with over 2 new installations of Akeneo PIM every hour worldwide, we believe that we are on the right track!

However, by interacting with our customers and partners, we realized we still could bring still more simplicity to additional areas:

• While our technical environment is actually quite standard (LAMP platform), it is still difficult for some of our customers and partners to completely overcome the challenges related to the underlying infrastructure: application server, database, cache, etc.
• Some of our users don’t customize Akeneo very much or at all. They wish they could easily update Akeneo without going through specific upgrade procedures.

To address these recurring requests, we are presenting today Akeneo Cloud Edition: A release offering the same features as Akeneo Enterprise Edition, but fully hosted and managed by our teams in a hyper-streamlined environment. This simplified environment will allow product teams to focus on what’s essential: Products.

This is not just a simple offering to host the Akeneo solution in the cloud. Akeneo Cloud Edition will enable customers to switch between two modes at any time:

• Serenity mode is designed for users who do not require advanced customization. They can use Akeneo with the same benefits as those offered by a SaaS solution (with transparent and automatic updates) while still benefiting from the contributions of our ecosystem (extensions in the Marketplace).
• Advanced mode enables the most demanding users to customize Akeneo with the same level of granularity and freedom as the on-site version of Akeneo Enterprise Edition, but without any of the challenges associated with a technical infrastructure.

This is the real innovation of Akeneo Cloud Edition: Being able to choose between the simplicity of a SaaS solution and the flexibility of a PaaS solution at any time!

And to help all of you benefit from Akeneo Cloud Edition in Serenity mode, we are currently working on a new web API that will support the addition of more connectors for any third-party technology. It will be available in all editions of Akeneo (Community, Enterprise and Cloud), version 1.7 and above.

And since we’re talking about the product roadmap, we are pleased to announce that Akeneo Cloud Edition Advanced mode is already in use by some of our customers, and will be available to all in March 2017. Serenity mode will be available in September 2017.

We sometimes hear that it is impossible to combine the scalability of an open source solution with the peace of mind provided by a SaaS solution. However, we strongly believe the two are compatible. We’re particularly excited about this new edition because Akeneo Cloud Edition is the first PIM offering the best of both worlds: The only Open SaaS PIM.

In the coming weeks, we will continue to publish a series of articles providing technical and functional details about this new edition. We may even have a few more surprises in store for you! Stay tuned…