Unlocking Ecommerce Excellence: Insights & Innovations with Tim Bucciarelli

Brent Peterson (00:03.606) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Tim Bucciarelli from Iron Plane. Tim, go ahead, tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life. Tim Bucciarelli (00:14.758) Sure, Brent, pleased to be here. Thanks for having me. So at Ironplane, I'm what's called Director of Engagement, and that's kind of a made up department because it comprises marketing, sales, client success, and partnerships. So I came up with engagement just because all of those involve a level of engagement with each of those parties. And... You know, I like wearing a lot of hats, so this is the perfect situation for me. I'm a former Magento merchant, and that's how I came to be at Iron Plane about four years ago now. Brent Peterson (00:51.446) Awesome. And passions? Anything exciting? I know you're in Boston, so are you running the marathon in April? Tim Bucciarelli (01:00.532) No, no, I'm not running the marathon. I enjoy watching the marathon. I enjoy knowing relatives who run marathons, but no. Passions for me, technology, I'd say first and foremost. And I would say also writing is a passion of mine. Brent Peterson (01:18.57) That's awesome. Good. So, Tim, before we get into content, I just wanted to, I know that you volunteered to participate in the free joke project. So all I would like to do is just tell you a joke. And all you have to do is say, should this joke be free? Or do you think at some point we should charge for it? And actually, I have a really good one for you today. So here we go. I got mugged by six dwarves last night. Not happy. Tim Bucciarelli (01:39.858) I'm Tim Bucciarelli (01:50.537) That doesn't need a paywall. I think that can be open source. Brent Peterson (01:55.071) It's sort of a thinking one. Most of my jokes, I try to make people think about them, but I know that normally I also have to explain them. But anyways, good. All right. Well, moving forward. So I'm interested, you were a merchant before. Tell us the differences you see from the agency side now that you're sitting on the other side of the table. Tim Bucciarelli (02:17.914) Um, so huge differences. Um, just the difference being, you know, as a merchant, you're watching, um, the outflow of money. And as an agency, you're watching the inflow of money. So totally different sides of the same coin. Um, merchants are much more concerned about selling their product first and foremost. And technology, while not an afterthought, and it can be critical to the success of the business, it is not their primary concern. So really what it needs to do is operate seamlessly in the background. As an ad agency, it's, it's much more kind of front and center for us. So our day to day is this technology. So it's much more, um, uh, important. to kind of, I guess, dial in all the details of the technology for our clients. I would say for me, it's been a really great experience coming into an agency and bringing my client perspective because it helps us, I think as an agency, serve our clients better. Yeah, and my history also, I think, specifically informs Tim Bucciarelli (03:32.394) kind of my perspective within the agency related to the platforms that we service. Brent Peterson (03:37.634) Do you find that you can better set expectations with clients, you having been a client at some point? Tim Bucciarelli (03:45.986) Yeah, I think well it's really about prioritizing open communication earlier. So not leaving anything to doubt, not leaving anything to misunderstanding, and not leaving anything till the last minute. Because no client wants surprises, especially when you're dealing with technology which they may not be so familiar with, including the complexity of what you're doing for them, the time that it takes. for the work to be done and how expensive it can be, honestly. So the sooner you can communicate all of those factors to your client, I think the better. Brent Peterson (04:26.946) Do you think that in that communication path with the client now, is there ever too much communication that a client, like you, let's just say you were the merchant, did you ever just get annoyed by the fact, oh, they're telling me too many times or they're giving me too many updates or whatever? from the agency side. Tim Bucciarelli (04:51.594) Yeah, it depends a little bit on who you're talking to at the client. If you're talking to people who understand the technology, who understand the complexity, who understand the need for the details to be very well defined, then I think you can share a lot more information. If you're dealing with a CEO who is non-technical, then you need to share way less information. And that's, I would say that there's a little bit of an art to that because it's still the same information that needs to be communicated, but it needs to be distilled in a way that makes it very understandable and The impact of what you're saying will be the same. It just has to be delivered differently. Brent Peterson (05:37.918) Yeah, I'm leading down a path here because I see that a lot of project managers just love to throw the list of JIRA tickets into a report and say, here's all the stuff that we finished where you as the CEO have a hard time understanding what all these tickets even mean. And then there gets to be the amount of information, you're just like, I don't care what happened. Like there has to be some distillation of that report into something that somebody can understand, right? Tim Bucciarelli (06:07.95) Yeah, and it's really for us, it's one of two things will happen. Either we get into a routine where we'll, um, uh, kind of condense things once a month, once a quarter to the management team or the CEO or whoever it might be. Uh, and that's a much shorter conversation. Um, and maybe the day to day is more detailed. Similarly, if our day to day is really with a CEO, then It's a little bit trickier to be honest because we don't have kind of that partner of technology understanding, but it still works. We just have to more consistently communicate. So it's not once a month, it's not once a quarter. It's more consistently summarizing where we are. not expecting, hey, didn't you notice that in that Jira ticket? Why are you asking me? You know, it's in the Jira ticket, you know, didn't you read that? That does not go anywhere. It's not helpful. So I guess what I'm saying is we really try to cater to each client depending on how they best receive information. Brent Peterson (07:16.83) Yeah, that's good. And I would imagine then you as the at one time a merchant can understand the pain in getting a list of detailed tickets that you can't really attach to a feature or the thing you really wanted to go live. You see 30 tickets and like, does one of these have anything to do with what I want? I don't know. Tim Bucciarelli (07:39.738) Yeah. For me, it was really a learning process as a, as a client, as a merchant. Um, so I, I did my best to learn the technology as best I could ask as many questions as I could of an iron plane was my agency when I was, when I was a merchant. So they, they did what's called a Magento rescue for us. So we were in a very bad situation with our Magento website. And we did an RFP to get someone to help us out. So Ironplane, that's where my relationship with Ironplane started. But as a client, I did my best because there is some responsibility on the client side as well. You know, it's not just a one-way conversation with an agency sharing information to the client. It has to be a client who is capable of receiving that information. They're paying for it. So if they're not capable of receiving the information, understanding, processing that information and making the most of it, then that's not the fault of the agency necessarily. So the client has to play a role, an active role, in that receiving of that information and understanding it effectively. And so that's what I tried to do as a client. Brent Peterson (08:58.998) Yeah, that's really good advice and feedback. So Ironplane has traditionally always been a Magento agency. And more recently, because of many different factors that we may get into, you've started diversifying. What made you choose the different platforms that you've now chosen to kind of split off of, or not split, but just to be more nimble, let's say? Tim Bucciarelli (09:26.926) Yeah, well, a number of reasons. I'll tell you kind of the foundational reason. And that is we kind of came up with Magento One. And Magento One was very attractive to what I'll call SMB, the small to mid-sized businesses. And it was attractive because it was open source, which meant free. And when you talk about a free e-commerce platform, a small or mid-sized merchant gets very excited because there's no subscription fee. At least with Magenta One, you could actually manage it reasonably well with one full stack developer, contractor, in-house person. It was not so heavy that it required a full team of five to 10 developers in all these different categories of skills. So what we found is that over time, when they migrated, those merchants migrated to Magento 2, they started to struggle because now the costs of maintaining that platform were much more than what they had anticipated. Their business hadn't grown quite as quickly. And so they felt very stuck and unhappy and they needed someone to help them. and they come to us because we know Magento very well, we quickly realize that they are on a platform that is way more than what they need. And so at that time we had options of Shopify and BigCommerce as two good SaaS platforms that you could transition a merchant from Magento over to. We... weren't going to embrace two at one time. Shopify seemed very well supported in the market. And Big Commerce seemed a little bit less supported in the market. So we chose Big Commerce. But also, we chose Big Commerce because philosophically, we aligned with their approach a little bit more than Shopify's approach. Tim Bucciarelli (11:30.53) No, no, nothing bad to say about Shopify because it helps so many merchants succeed online. But generally speaking, you work within the Shopify world that they've created for you. And BigCommerce allows you to, you know, it's still the BigCommerce world, but it's a much smaller and you can bring in different pieces and make it a little bit more of your own world. And we'd like that philosophy. Brent Peterson (11:57.99) interested in when you say philosophically, what was the points in which big commerce seemed like a better fit philosophically? Tim Bucciarelli (12:11.466) Well, as I just described, like Shopify, you kind of go in, I'll just give one example at that time. Shopify, you go in to Shopify and you're either financially incentivized to use their payment processing, for example. And that's where Shopify makes a lot of their money. Big commerce, you could bring in whatever payment processor you wanted. That's just one example. We liked more freedom rather than less freedom. It's not to say that one is necessarily better across the board for all merchants, but it's just something that we preferred. Yeah, and you know, BigCommerce and Shopify are very different than Magento for an agency. I don't know if you've found this, but for me, Magento and Adobe Commerce require a lot of ongoing. care and maintenance. And those are long-term relationships, partnerships with our clients. With BigCommerce and Shopify, it can be, it's not always, but it can be a one and done project. I need you to migrate me from Magento over to BigCommerce. OK, done. We migrated you. Now what? Well, BigCommerce is pretty intuitive to use. And unless you need to make some substantial change, whether it's design or functionality or build an app, you know, Plugins generally work pretty well unless you need some special configuration. So as far as an agency ongoing work goes, it's way less than what Magento and Adobe Commerce offer. Brent Peterson (13:49.406) Yeah, so having said that then, the cost for the merchant theoretically would be less than the cost to run a Magento store unless you add complexity. Tim Bucciarelli (14:03.562) Well, you have to add everything into the mix. So those are subscription-based programs. And Shopify, the subscription is adjusted based on your revenue. Big commerce, the subscription cost is based on the number of transactions. And at least with Magento open source, there is no such subscription, but there's hosting. And there's support. Brent Peterson (14:25.324) Yeah, I mean, I'll just. Tim Bucciarelli (14:33.646) So in theory, if you were to take a pretty bare bones Magento site, you have hosting, you have some minimal support, you have no subscription fee, you can have whatever payment processor you want, you'd have to do the total cost of ownership. But generally, we have found that the platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify tend to be less expensive over a five or six year period than Magento. Brent Peterson (15:03.638) Yeah, I think one thing that people forget, especially with all the plugins, is that the more plugins you add, they also have to get a little piece and a taste, as they would say in the Sopranos world. So everybody's getting a little piece of the pie. And if you get too over, if you start doing too many of them, your cost is oftentimes much more than it would be to run a Magento open source. Tim Bucciarelli (15:33.574) Yeah, absolutely. We were just working with a client, and we're looking at a list of apps to consider. That's like $300 a month for an app. That's the equivalent to what they'd be paying for the subscription to BigCommerce. So you're doubling your subscription by adding one app. But again, it's really... Brent Peterson (15:33.634) store. Tim Bucciarelli (16:01.118) So case by case, and it just, it's really important for a business to understand the importance of this total cost of ownership calculation, I think. Brent Peterson (16:12.142) Do you think because now Magento 2, let's call it mature, I mean, it's been around, it'll be 10 years. Next year, I think it'll be officially around. Do you think that it's now sort of stabilized? I've seen much less downtime in projects. And I've also seen, and I commented on this Twitter and Twitter last week, that the fact that hardware has caught up with the code base, the sites are, and if you're using something like Hufa, The sites are blazingly fast. Like a lot of the complaints that people had in the past no longer happen because A, your server you can get now has 96 gigs of memory and whatever terabytes of drive space. And then, you know, there is now a new theme that helps to provide a really robust performance experience for the client. Tim Bucciarelli (17:08.814) Yeah, it's what you just said is kind of the minority opinion, at least if you pay attention to the voices online. But I think you're right on. And I think a lot of what has happened over the past year, two years, I mean, I don't want to toot their horn too much. because I think it has to do with a lot of what Adobe and the community have done with the platform. But I think Huva came in at really the right time where people were still struggling. And Huva offered a different way to do a much lighter weight development. process, I guess. I'm not technical, so I apologize if I'm bungling the terminology here, but it certainly made it easier and faster for development. And it ended up giving clients sites that were also much more performant. So I think in some way that alone revitalized the community. to demonstrate what actually can be done with this latest and greatest technology. The challenge still for many merchants, and I'll still say this is primarily for the kind of small to mid-size merchant who is on Magento and need Magento still. They don't wanna go to Adobe Commerce because that again has its own subscription fee and it's costly to maintain. And they hear all the great news about Huba and they hear all the great news about how the newer versions of Magento, but they have to then consider the cost of the upgrade. They have to then consider the cost of the theme migration. They have to consider all of their existing modules and what are the costs going to be related there. So it's not a slam dunk for companies who are on Magento today and are looking at that migration and adding up what it's gonna cost them. Again, what's the return on that investment? It might be a great return. Tim Bucciarelli (19:19.61) much faster site, much more efficient to dev time. But it's kind of hard to see that when you're looking at the dollar signs add up. Now for new sites or B2B businesses, it's a no brainer. You know, jump on Huba, build that site with that theme and yeah, you'll be in a good place from the get go. Brent Peterson (19:44.798) Now, before we get into talking about the different versions of Magento, I do want to just ask about shopware, which is now very active in the United States and has that same sort of feeling, at least from the European standpoint of community and how they're running their product. Have you had a chance to look at that? And actually, I think yesterday on the 29th of January, they released a mid-market report that was talking about how mid-market merchants are often overlooked. Like maybe they're bigger, too big for Shopify, but Adobe Commerce now has completely ignored them. Is there a space for another open source platform in the United States? Tim Bucciarelli (20:26.758) Oh, sure. Absolutely. And you know, I think that, you know, if, is there space, how many e-commerce platforms are out there today? And I'm not just talking about the magic quadrant. I mean, there are so many. Yeah, it's, it's so of course there's plenty of room. Someone's going to decide that it's the perfect platform for them. Brent Peterson (20:42.358) Yeah, there's gotta be 50 or 100, yeah. Tim Bucciarelli (20:53.602) What's interesting to me is that I think when you have the likes of a shopware or a commerce tools, or to some extent, a keyboard or a spiker in different ways, but this is all competition. And Adobe can either ignore it and focus on their core products, or they can pay attention to it and try to really maintain what has been a leadership role in e-commerce. And I think that Adobe recently has started to pay a lot more attention. And I think shopware is very innovative. And, um, I think, I mean, I don't, we don't work with it. Um, but I know that at least Ben Marks is a part of the, um, the team over there and he has a fantastic reputation, uh, within the Magento and Adobe community. And I think that. I think they're likely to become a solid player in the US. I don't, my perception is they're not there yet, but it's also bringing a great deal of competition into the market, which I think is always good. Brent Peterson (22:02.258) Yeah, I think that if we just talk about AI for a second, they were way ahead of the game in providing as core features AI. Well, let me just back up. Adobe Commerce slash Magento offered AI way back in 2018 with Adobe Sensei, and everybody seems to never, it's never caught on. I don't understand why. I mean, if you... Tim Bucciarelli (22:26.182) Well, that's because it was enterprise. It was enterprise. Brent Peterson (22:29.61) Yeah, they should have always made it available to everybody, but still even for Adobe Commerce clients, it's not front and center, you should be using Adobe Sensei and here's all the things that it should do. And I was at that very first Adobe Summit slash Magento Imagine when the teams came together and we got to sign up for the beta program for Adobe Sensei. And then it kind of just all fizzled out from there. But I think you're right. You hit it on the head. Adobe not. providing some of these features, even as a paid feature in the open source market gets them revenue and a client, right? Maybe that's a part they're missing out on. Tim Bucciarelli (23:09.438) Well, their work, from what I understand Adobe, I think a lot of what has gone on within Adobe, this is just my guess, is that they've been reconsidering how they wanna operate, how they want to drive the product for the commerce products forward. And so as far as I understand, they're moving to this core of Adobe Commerce cloud, which... Then you will have these apps that, similar to the other SaaS platforms, will be cloud-based apps that you can plug into the core platform. And we'll see. Time will tell. Are you paying a subscription fee or are you not? So this is a very interesting time. And I also am curious to see how Adobe plays it. is this ever going to be kind of, or be maintained as its own, like Adobe commerce cloud is like a core product, or is it always going to be a kind of secondary element that their larger clients who are using all of their other tools plug in when they need it? I, you know, that's, that's really a question that's just, because I don't think it's a huge, I think it's 5% of their, of their, um, annual revenues right now, but, um, So anyway, I'm curious to see how that plays out. Yeah. Brent Peterson (24:40.126) Yeah, it's very small. My opinion is, yes, they do show up at all the conferences and they have a presentation that they give, which seems like it hasn't changed in two years now. And they tell us that they're involved in the community and they are committed to the community. And then, for example, last year was the first in-person Adobe Summit, there was hardly anything about commerce at the Adobe Summit. So they do talk, but I think what the community really needs is to see Tim Bucciarelli (25:04.743) Yeah. Brent Peterson (25:09.194) some things that are put into action by Adobe to help, and I'll say they need to repair some of that damage that has been caused or fracturing in the community that has been caused by however they are dealing with the community, which leads us into the next topic, which would be Adobe Commerce versus Magenta Open Source versus Mage OS, and you hate to say verse, but really they are all. Maybe there's an alignment between Adobe Open Source and Adobe Commerce, but certainly MageOS is a complete fork, which it really is a fork from the actual product, right? And everything about it. They want to do their own thing. Tim Bucciarelli (25:56.19) Yeah, so I have a couple of thoughts related to this. One is follow the money. What does Adobe Commerce, what does Adobe incentivize? If we think about agencies who are their partners, agencies like to be partners and they like to be gold partners. You know, the bronze, okay, fine, silver, yeah, that's good. Gold, platinum, whatever. The only way that Adobe incentivizes agencies to progress is if they are selling Adobe Commerce products. You don't get credit if you are bringing a merchant on to Magento open source. So what exactly is the incentive there? So that's kind of, I'll leave that question there. I think that... Adobe makes money on Adobe Commerce, Adobe Commerce Cloud. They don't make money on Magento open source, other than by way of taking the free services of the community and then adapting those into their paid platform, which is fantastic, great for them. I think that, and this may have changed in the past year or two. Um, I think the writing was on the wall and there was a lot of fear in the magenta community that Adobe was doing exactly what they have been doing. Moving more into that enterprise space, moving more to incentivize the paid programs and really giving short shrift to the magenta open source platform. Out of that concern, out of that fear was born, major S which is the fork. currently still just a mirror of the current Magenta open source code base. There's nothing. Tim Bucciarelli (27:48.07) As far as I understand, there's nothing substantially different that would make anyone want to go onto MageOS right now, as it is just a mirror. But I think that what MageOS is, is an insurance that if Adobe continues to do things that the community doesn't like, that maybe there would be a fracture. I'm not promoting that. I'm not encouraging that. And I think that there's a lot to be said for the two or all of the entities working together to make it as successful as possible. That's honestly my, my major hope, but I, I view major S as an insurance policy against. just kind of capitalist tendencies. No shame. They need to make money. Their board needs to be happy. So they got to do what they got to do. But the community also still wants their open source e-commerce platform. And it's built up over so many years with the blood, sweat, and tears of so many developers. Nobody wants it to go away. So I think that MageOS is a great program, and I hope it stays. And maybe it kind of all becomes one. Magento open source is let go, and it becomes MageOS. I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, too. Brent Peterson (29:20.894) I mean, that's a great way to look at it as an insurance policy. And it does give the merchants an extra, you know, a little bit more comfort that there's going to be a product for them in the long term. I think that right now, Magento Association has to be the bridge, because I don't think Adobe wants to talk to Majo S and they don't see they see it as a threat rather than an ally. Tim Bucciarelli (29:34.43) That's right. That's a great point. Brent Peterson (29:51.382) where the Magento open source product is still part of what Adobe does. The idea of MageOS then, do you see it as a substantial... Well, let's just put out this scenario because a lot of people have said this, that Adobe could then forget about... the open source, they would relieve the open source product up to Mage OS to develop new features. They would essentially stagnate the core. They would offer, you know, obviously they would offer bug and security patches, but everything else new features is going to happen in Mage OS, which I think this is what the plan is from the Mage OS side. And from the Adobe Commerce side, I think the plan is like you said earlier, everything is going to be a subscription. everything is going to be a SaaS. And they've even talked about splitting out a catalog. They'll have a catalog SaaS product that will be a plugin for Magento. And they'll start splitting not into a microservice, but into a, I think that they had originally called it isolated services where they can split the whole thing up. All of that would be made into a SaaS product. And now you suddenly get rid of the whole. Tim Bucciarelli (30:51.846) Right. Yep, yep. Tim Bucciarelli (31:00.794) and check out. Brent Peterson (31:12.834) PHP stack and you have all these little pieces you could put together similar to the commerce tools where you allow everything to run as a SAS. Tim Bucciarelli (31:25.278) Was it, sorry. Brent Peterson (31:25.527) So yeah, I just wanted to get your feedback on that, I guess. Sorry. Tim Bucciarelli (31:30.942) Um, I think that's likely. Um, What you know if I were to paint a picture that I would prefer I would prefer that um, Can't we all just get along, you know, like adobe the magenta association uh, majos, you know instead of considering each other as kind of Trinitarians or antagonists consider everyone trying to help businesses succeed online through this exceptional technology. And yes, there are different priorities. I understand that. And Adobe is, they just have a different set of priorities. It is not incompatible with the priorities. of the Magento Association, of the Magento community, and of Mage OS. It is not incompatible. And I think that those three organizations should, and I think must, come together and map out a plan, rather than letting it just kind of happen, you know, well, we don't really know how it's all going to play out. Well, like, if you got together and told everyone how is it going to play out, Everyone would be happy. They might complain a little bit here and there but at least people would be more secure in knowing what's going to happen and I mean honestly these days with kind of Everyone feeling a little bit on edge Economically at least that small degree of certainty would really help Brent Peterson (33:20.63) Yeah, what I've heard Adobe say behind the scenes is they don't want to commit to anything because they don't want it to be in print that they committed to something. And I feel like they should be at least saying, here's our plan, here's our perceived roadmap. It's not set in stone, but at least here's some ideas where we're going right now. And it could change in a year. Everything needs to change. You know, a year ago in November, nobody had heard of chat GPT. And suddenly it's... you know, it changed the world in a month or two, right? So I think Adobe knows that, but I think they're also very afraid of committing themselves to any one path because they wanna have that flexibility. The last thing I just wanted to, yeah, go ahead. Tim Bucciarelli (34:03.698) Well, I think that if they're concerned about revenues, I think they should recognize that any further delay along those lines will only encourage their competitors to continue eating their lunch. Because I don't think, I mean, I would be curious to see an objective analysis of Magento open source. and Adobe Commerce. Adobe Commerce has been growing because a lot of great salespeople at Adobe have convinced Magento open source clients to move up to Adobe Commerce. That's my opinion. But there are a larger number of Magento businesses who have gone to Shopify, who have gone to BigCommerce, and who will go to Shopware. And enterprise clients who are going to Salesforce, who are going to Oracle. You know, I mean, there are options out there. And the longer it takes Adobe to map out a plan and publish that plan and make it known, the more opportunity there is for that competition to continue doing what they're doing. Brent Peterson (35:18.862) Yeah, I mean, that's you hit it on the head right there. So I think you mentioned you're at the last, you were at Meet Magento New York this year, or the year before last year, I should say. Were you at the one previously as well? Would you last two years? So did you, right, and you heard, you heard as Ritesh, I think, who said, I think he gave the same speech, right? I mean, I hate to poke holes into at Adobe, but. Tim Bucciarelli (35:29.958) Yes, yes, with the Venn diagram, yes. Brent Peterson (35:45.55) they need to come up with something new that the community will listen to. Tim Bucciarelli (35:49.766) Yeah, rather than just placating. Brent Peterson (35:53.362) Yes, and I think that's what we... Honestly, I think they've been placating us since 2018. As us as the community, I should say. Tim Bucciarelli (35:59.27) Yeah. Which, and again, you know what, honestly, I can't really blame them. They wanna string along the community for as long as they can. There is benefit in maintaining that community for as long as they can, and they know it. And it's dollars. It is real dollars to them. So there is value there to them, but it's a financial value. It's not a philosophical or... Principled value I would say and anyone who believes otherwise Mmm, I don't know. I good on you, you know, I like that optimism Brent Peterson (36:30.817) Yeah. Brent Peterson (36:38.082) Or wait. Brent Peterson (36:41.246) Yeah, we've had six years of history, or five and a half years of history to show us what's going to happen. So anyways, so Tim, we have a few minutes left. What do you think is going to what what's the things we're going to see coming up now this next year 2024 in ecommerce? What what should we what should we be looking for? If I'm a merchant, what should I be looking for from an agency and even from a platform? Tim Bucciarelli (37:05.462) Uh, yeah, I think for, for me, 2023 was the year of, um, security, like, uh, and, um, like concern over security and malware and hacks. And like, I felt like that was going to get a lot more attention to 2023. I don't know that really did, but anyway, 2024 for me is all about ROI return on your investment. Everyone needs to make sure that what they're doing is going to bring concrete value to their business. So I like to think that's what's going to happen in 2024. I am interested... Tim Bucciarelli (37:45.294) There have been a lot of hacks in 2023 for large organizations that operate in the cloud. I am a little anxious about what might happen in the next year or two for large cloud-based platforms. So that's just a concern. I'm not predicting anything. I'm just saying I am anxious about that. But you can see how that... that could become very relevant for a platform like Magento Open Source, which is this on-prem self-hosted, not part of a much larger cloud operation. So I think that Shopify is going to make a very successful pitch in the enterprise space. I think big commerce is going to continue. growing bit by bit and I think they will start to make a larger place for themselves in the market and I think Magento open source will Consolidate and the agencies committed to it will double down as iron plane has to Really stay with it even amidst the Adobe going this way and then Shopify taking, you know, and BigCom is taking up that part of the market. Brent Peterson (39:17.402) My little bit of comment on the community space is I haven't seen a enthusiastic Shopify community. Maybe they do one conference, but there's not a enthusiastic groundswell of community. Maybe it's because it's more of a one and done thing. Or more it's more of a... Tim Bucciarelli (39:40.142) It is. It's yes. I think there is an enthusiastic community, but the community is a community of merchants that are enthusiastic about it. It's not a community of developers. It's not a community of agencies. I do think that from the people that I've talked to who are on Shopify, they're Brent Peterson (39:50.136) Hmm. Tim Bucciarelli (40:04.694) quite happy with it. I mean, and we don't, it's not a main business of ours. I mean, we will do it if we need to, and when appropriate, but, so I think it is a different community. Brent Peterson (40:06.751) Yeah. Brent Peterson (40:17.674) Yeah, I mean, that's the end result, right? That's what people want. If they're happy with their platform, they're not going to make a change at all. Right? And if they're upset or they're not happy with the way things are going, if for example, there's a platform without a commercially available front end that's relevant to the, this century, then they're going to choose something different. Um, and that is a plug at the Luma theme, by the way. Tim Bucciarelli (40:24.33) Yeah. Tim Bucciarelli (40:40.51) Yes. Yep. Brent Peterson (40:41.834) Tim, so as we close out, and thank you for this time, I gave everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug today? Tim, thank you for joining us. Tim Bucciarelli (40:50.39) I will plug Ironplane. So any merchants listening to this who are asking themselves the questions about what we've been discussing, which platform should I really be on, how do I calculate my total cost of ownership, you can find us at ironplane.com. We're relatively active on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn as well, Tim Buturelli. I'm always happy to have conversations about e-commerce. And you know, as director of engagement, I'm not billable. So you don't have to worry about that. Brent Peterson (41:21.686) That's awesome and I'll make sure I get all those into the show notes. Tim, it's been such a pleasure to speak to you today. Have a great weekend. Tim Bucciarelli (41:28.85) Likewise, Brent. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.