AI Ecommerce Platform Architecture Musings
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
4d ago
At NVIDIA GTC 2024 (GPU Technology Conference) I watched a number of NVIDIA Omniverse and OpenUSD related sessions (my hobby interest, which I blog about elsewhere), but there were also some thought provoking sessions on AI. It raised the question, what would a new ecommerce platform look like if designed today, taking into account the recent advancements in AI? NVIDIA NIM I think gives a feel of what this might be like. What is NIM? In the GTC keynote, Jensen Huang covered a range of topics, including NIM. NIM is not a new AI technology. It represents standardization of deployment and managem ..read more
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The Rise of Clippy 2.0?
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
1y ago
With the integration of ChatGPT into Microsoft products, are we seeing the rise of Clippy 2.0 (the old Microsoft Office Assistant paper clip)? Will it go better this time? Clippy 1.0 Clippy was a virtual office assistant in Microsoft office from 1997. A “cute” animated character that would pop up and offer help. It was removed around 2007. Why? It was more annoying than helpful. I remember turning it off myself after a few uses. It would jump up on the screen with animations and sound effects – cute the first time, annoying the second. Okay, I did not really find it cute the first time. It w ..read more
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What does AI Chat hold in store for ecommerce?
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
1y ago
I was just watching a CNBC news item on the success of Dick’s Sporting Goods (DSG): Why Dick’s Sporting Goods Succeeded When Sports Authority Failed. One of the reasons given for their success was their ability during COVID to get in-store pickup live in 2 days, which helped them sell stock trapped in stores when customers could not go inside. They had a solid IT team, and they were able to pivot quickly. (Impressive!) (Pick up in store makes sense for a chain such as DSG. Rather than relying on delivery trucks and painful returns, customers could drive up to the store, get the product put in ..read more
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Measuring the Effectiveness of Developer Advocates
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
1y ago
How do you measure the success of a Developer Advocate, someone responsible for helping grow the maturity and understanding of a technical community using a product? It is something I have periodically explored both at Google and as Chief Architect back at Magento. What is the best way to educate a developer community? First, you need to be careful to measure the right metrics. For example, “there are two types of programming languages: ones people complain about and ones people don’t use.” Negative sentiment is not always the best metric to measure success. Similarly, a metric such as “number ..read more
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Headless E-commerce: Who needs it and who is better off without it? (My notes from call)
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
1y ago
BigCommerce just hosted a twitter space titled “Headless E-commerce: Who needs it and who is better off without it?”  Lots of smart people were on the call (and me!) and a number of interesting points based on various experiences were raised. It also drifted into “Composable Commerce”. I did not start taking notes from the start, but here is what stood out to me. It ended up more interesting and thought provoking than I expected! And sorry, I did not write down who made all of the statements or the exact wording. I was not planning to write a blog when I joined the call. But people on the ..read more
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Memorial Day Musings: How to move the ecommerce industry forwards?
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
1y ago
Karen Baker posted on LinkedIn about what ecommerce platforms need to succeed. Here are my Memorial Day musings for your entertainment. Support not Kill Let’s start with a controversial topic! One comment left on LinkedIn was the solution should support, not kill, existing products in the market. A fine principle. I disagree however. I think this is a business reality, not a technical consideration. It can also lead to stagnation. If one partner builds a shipping management solution, does that mean no other partner can? If a partner builds a bad staging solution, does that mean the platform ca ..read more
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What does a “decentralized web” mean anyway?
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
2y ago
I have been hearing for a while comments such as “web 3.0 is going to be a decentralized web”, and I must admit to not paying a lot of attention. After all, the web is already “decentralized”, right? People host web sites all around the world! Recently I have been digging a bit deeper, to turn buzzwords into real concepts I can put a finger on. So, here is my personal (current) take on web 3.0. It’s all about Cryptocurrencies, right? Well, maybe. A lot of people talk about web 3.0 from a cryptocurrency / blockchain / distributed ledger / non-fungible token perspective. You can put me in the sk ..read more
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Google Cloud for Ecommerce?
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
2y ago
Google Next, the Google Cloud conference, just finished up. (Videos of most sessions are available online.) It left me asking a question – is Google Cloud getting better for commerce? Yes! Well, what did you expect me to say? I work at Google! But more seriously, here are my reasons why. If you are running an open source ecommerce platform such as Magento, WooCommerce, Prestashop, Shopware, etc. then of course you can use Google servers, just like you can use the servers of any public cloud provider. Yes, Google has an increasing number of database options available, better operational support ..read more
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Performance Benchmarking meets Core Web Vitals
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
2y ago
Google has announced that Core Web Vitals (CWV), a set of 3 core metrics to measure page experience for users, is a ranking signal. (There are *many* ranking signals.) Why three? Well, you don’t want hundreds of metrics, but the experience of users on a site (as distinct from the quality of the content itself) is an important aspect, especially when multiple sites have similar content. So three metrics were selected: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – how long it takes for the “main” content of the page to be displayed Content Layout Shift (CLS) – how much the content shifts around on the page ..read more
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Gartner at Modern Commerce Day on Composable Commerce
Alan Kent's Blog
by alankent
3y ago
I attended some of the sessions this week at Modern Commerce Day (presented by CommerceTools). There were interesting sessions from companies such as how Lego has modernized their ecommerce site using serverless patterns, Express.com on migrating to a new architecture during COVID (online sales were their sole revenue stream due to physical stores being closed), but I wanted to focus on the session by Mike Lowndes (Sr Director Analyst at the Commerce Technologies and Experience Team at Gartner) talking about Composable Commerce. I found myself agreeing with pretty well everything he said. Fir ..read more
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