X.Commerce Joins Cloud Computing Software, OpenStack
October 13, 2011
Ecommerce innovator eBay launched the first ever open commerce operating system yesterday. Joining eBay Inc., X.commerce is a completely open source platform where merchants and developers can get all the technologies necessary to launch an ecommerce solution. Coding is available for everything from shopping carts to payment services and inventory management. X.commerce hopes to provide the tools to encourage innovations among developers, which can then be distributed to hundreds of thousands currently in the Magento, eBay and PayPal merchant community…
Upon its launch, X.commerce also made the announcement that it has joined the OpenStack community and will utilize open source cloud computing to deliver its assets to the developer communities of eBay Inc. The choice to standardize on OpenStack allows X.commerce to offer its community of developers flexibility and opportunity to keep up with the ever-changing world of multi-channel commerce. The OpenStack community and X.commerce share similar values and a commitment to maintaining open technology and community. eBay Inc. and X.commerce feel this partnership will only add to the success of their users.
The beauty of X.commerce is it will allow smaller businesses to compete with larger business in terms of ecommerce. Smaller businesses can avoid buying expensive software in order to develop an online store that reaches the same level as larger corporations. Ecommerce software developers can visit the X.commerce site and gain easy access to sample code to get them started in creating solutions. eBay’s goal is to allow people to get the tools they need and give developers the chance to get large distribution to big and small merchants.
The line between online and offline retail is quickly becoming blurred with many shoppers turning to ecommerce solutions at some point in nearly every purchase they make. Even when consumers intend on completing their shopping offline, they may use ecommerce solutions to compare items and prices before heading out to brick-and-mortar retail stores. The importance of creating an online store for small businesses is increasing exponentially and X.commerce will be an extremely helpful tool for them.
Neal Sample, CTO at X.commerce, had this to say about the union:
“Our vision is to help developers, merchants and service providers create partnerships that enable them to develop complete and innovative commerce solutions. Joining the OpenStack community aligns with our open and community-driven values that will contribute to the success of our users. The free, open source cloud platform puts our developers and us in control by ensuring a flexible approach to cloud providers to be competitive in the market.”
OpenStack was named the fastest growing open source cloud project in 2010 and is supported by over 110 participating organizations, such as Dell, Microsoft, and Cisco. X.commerce will be the first major commerce platform to allow application developers to access the benefits of an OpenStack-powered operating cloud.