Icecat 2025 – Service Roadmap

In 2025, Icecat is set to elevate the platform by introducing a range of new features and enhancements. Our roadmap for the year outlines key initiatives aimed at optimizing performance, improving user experience, and expanding our offerings to meet the growing needs of our users and partners.

Icecat Portal

Icecat Brand Cloud

Development	Value	ETA
GPSR Contact Information – Organization Entity Integration	Regulatory Compliance: Enables Icecat Brand Cloud to meet GPSR requirements by providing clear information about product manufacturers and representatives. Data Management: Adds an organization entity to the system, allowing the creation of a structured relationship between brands and organizations for efficient data collection and management. Channel Partner Support: Facilitates seamless export of manufacturer and representative information to channel partners through various export files. Operational Efficiency: Simplifies internal workflows, enabling the Icecat team to easily manage and maintain accurate regulatory contact information. Market Trust: Supports transparency and compliance, strengthening trust with both partners and regulatory bodies.	Q1
Exclusive Content Distribution for Targeted Partner Engagement	Customizable Content: Enables assignment of users to external taxonomies for customized content distribution. Targeted Delivery: Distribute exclusive content only to users assigned to specific taxonomies, ensuring targeted delivery. Partner Personalization: Provides brands with the ability to tailor content to each partner, enhancing uniqueness and relevance. Product Promotion: Promotes products more effectively by offering personalized experiences based on taxonomy assignments. Initial Asset Coverage: Initially covers description blocks (including bullet points) and product stories, with future potential for additional asset types.	Q1
Simplified Distributor Feed Management for Improved Product Coverage	Increased Product Coverage: Aims to significantly increase the number of products with valid identifiers by leveraging distributor feeds. Feed Simplification: Reviews and simplifies the current distributor feed management, reducing maintenance resource consumption. GTIN Import Optimization: Revises GTIN import logic to help secure more Confirmed GTINs, improving data accuracy and product identification. New Distributor Feeds: Converts more feeds into new distributor feeds, expanding the variety of available product data. Improved Mapping Functionality: Enhances product and brand mapping functionalities to be more reliable and user-friendly, boosting editor efficiency. Better Product Coverage: Results in improved product coverage by enabling more accurate and streamlined content management.	Q2-Q3
Automated Asset Attachment System for Product Accuracy	Automated Asset Assignment: Creates a system to automatically attach assets (e.g., Features, Multimedia Objects, Relations) to products based on specific matching criteria, improving product data accuracy. Specs Hub Integration: Prioritizes connecting product component specs to the assembled product, enhancing product detail consistency. Dynamic MMO Attachment: Enables the dynamic attachment of Multimedia Objects (MMOs) to a large number of products, streamlining asset distribution. PERL Functionality Replacement: Replaces existing PERL functionalities with more efficient and modern Relations and Feature Logo functionalities, improving system performance. Increased Editor Efficiency: Reduces the time editors spend manually connecting assets, allowing them to focus on other valuable tasks.	Q2-Q4
Transparent User Management and Streamlined SLA Coverage	Improved User Transparency: Makes user management more transparent by clearly defining user roles, permissions, and contract agreements through organization-based logic. Centralized Permission Management: Enables central management of user permissions, including user subscription levels (Open/Full), brand assignments, product description agreements, and contract EOL. Enhanced SLA Coverage: Removes bottlenecks between Managers and Editors, ensuring quicker and more efficient coverage of partner SLAs. User Dashboard Creation: Develops a user dashboard that provides real-time insights into user activities, subscription levels, and other key metrics to support better management and decision-making. Efficient Organization Logic: Connects users to organizations and streamlines management of user roles, allowing for more seamless collaboration and resource allocation.	Q4
Taxonomy Optimization for Enhanced Team Efficiency and Process Improvement	Streamlined Taxonomy Management: Optimizes processes for the taxonomy team, ensuring the taxonomy remains up-to-date and accurately organized. Resource Efficiency: Frees up resources for the taxonomy team to focus on additional enhancements and improvements, reducing manual work and bottlenecks. Improved Editorial Impact: Facilitates better collaboration between the taxonomy and editorial teams, improving editorial efficiency and production processes. Process Automation: Introduces automation where possible, reducing repetitive tasks and ensuring faster updates to the taxonomy. Enhanced Production Quality: Organizes the Icecat taxonomy in a way that positively impacts the production process, improving content accuracy and consistency across the platform.	Q1-Q4

Icecat Security

Development	Value	ETA
Security, Stability, and Observability Enhancement for Icecat System	Improved Security: Enhances Icecat’s security by implementing measures to prevent vulnerabilities and reduce risks. Increased Stability: Focuses on boosting system stability, preventing service downtime and ensuring continuous availability. Proactive Issue Detection: Upgrades health monitoring capabilities, enabling instant detection of any system issues or irregularities. System Protection: Strengthens protection against vulnerabilities, minimizing potential threats to the Icecat platform. Enhanced Observability: Improves system visibility, providing real-time insights into the health and performance of the system.	Q1-Q4
Single Sign-On (SSO) Integration for Seamless User Management	Seamless Integration: Creates a Single Sign-On (SSO) service, enabling easy integration between different Icecat platforms for a unified user experience. Enhanced User Management: Upgrades user management to align with industry standards, improving efficiency and security in handling user accounts. Simplified Access: Provides users with one set of credentials to access multiple platforms, reducing friction and improving usability. Scalable Solution: Ensures a scalable solution that can grow with future platform integrations and user management requirements. Industry Standard Compliance: Ensures that user management practices follow best practices and industry standards, strengthening data protection and user security.	Q2

Icecat Open Catalog Interface (APIs)

Development	Value	ETA
API for User-Friendly Product Data Retrieval	Efficient Data Retrieval: Develops an API that allows for easy and user-friendly access to product data, streamlining the data retrieval process. Potential Index File Replacement: The API has the potential to replace all existing index files, centralizing data access and reducing dependency on legacy systems. Customizable Queries: Users can request specific product information through the API, offering flexibility and precision in data retrieval. Improved User Experience: Provides a more intuitive and efficient way for users to obtain product information, enhancing overall system usability. Future Scalability: Sets the foundation for future expansions, allowing the API to handle growing product data needs and more complex queries.	Q3-Q4
Taxonomy API for Seamless Partner Integration	API for Taxonomy Access: Develops a Taxonomy API to provide up-to-date taxonomy information to partners, offering a more efficient alternative to traditional taxonomy REFs files. Streamlined Partner Integration: Simplifies how partners access taxonomy data, enabling them to integrate it more easily into their systems. Real-Time Updates: Ensures partners always have access to the most current taxonomy data, improving accuracy and consistency. Efficient Data Sharing: Reduces the need for file-based data exchange, offering a more scalable and reliable method of sharing taxonomy information. Enhanced Partner Experience: Improves partner satisfaction by providing a flexible, developer-friendly API for taxonomy data access.	Q4
Rewriting MMO REST API for Improved Performance and Flexibility	Enhanced Performance: Rewrites the MMO REST API to improve data retrieval speed, reducing response times and enhancing system performance. Increased Flexibility: Provides a more flexible API structure, allowing easier customization and better scalability for future updates. Improved Maintenance: Simplifies the codebase, making it easier to maintain, debug, and enhance the API over time. Better Integration: Ensures smoother integration with other systems by following best practices and optimizing API endpoints. Future-Proofing: Prepares the MMO API for better compatibility with new technologies and features, ensuring long-term stability and growth.	Q3-Q4

Icecat Main Tech Stack and Security

Development	Value	ETA
Moving Perl handlers to PHP	Improved System Performance: Moving Perl handlers to PHP can contribute to improved system performance, resulting in faster response times for requests related to images, PDFs, XML, and the repository. Standardization of Technology Stack: Standardizing on PHP for handling various types of requests aligns with modern development practices, simplifying the technology stack and making it more consistent. Enhanced Developer Productivity: Developers can benefit from working with a single technology (PHP) for handling diverse requests, potentially increasing productivity, and reducing the learning curve associated with multiple languages. Easier Maintenance: Consolidating handlers in PHP can make maintenance tasks more straightforward, as developers can focus on a single language and set of tools, reducing the complexity of code maintenance. Scalability: PHP is known for its scalability, and moving handlers to PHP can contribute to better scalability of the system, allowing it to handle increased loads more efficiently.	Q1-Q4
React Version Upgrade for Enhanced Performance and Features	Latest React Features: Upgrades to the newest React version, providing access to the latest features, improvements, and optimizations. Improved Performance: Boosts application performance with optimizations introduced in the latest React version, leading to faster load times and smoother interactions. Bug Fixes and Security: Ensures the application benefits from bug fixes and security patches present in the latest React release, reducing potential vulnerabilities. Developer Productivity: Enhances developer productivity by providing access to improved APIs and tools for better coding experience and maintainability. Future-Proofing: Prepares the system for future upgrades by staying current with the latest React advancements, ensuring long-term compatibility and scalability.	Q1
Legacy Yii 1 Removal and Yii 2 Code Cleanup	Code Maintainability: Removing legacy Yii 1 code simplifies the codebase, making it easier and faster for developers to maintain and extend. Performance Optimization: Cleaning up unused Yii 2 code reduces overhead, leading to a more efficient and responsive application. Security Enhancement: Eliminating outdated frameworks minimizes security vulnerabilities, strengthening the platform’s overall stability. Development Efficiency: A cleaner, more modern codebase accelerates development cycles, allowing the team to focus on delivering new features and improvements. Technical Debt Reduction: Proactively addressing legacy and unused code prevents technical debt from accumulating, supporting long-term product health.	Q2
PHP Version Upgrade to Latest Stable Release	Performance Improvement: Upgrading to the latest PHP version enhances execution speed and optimizes resource usage, resulting in a faster and more efficient application. Security Enhancement: Staying up-to-date with PHP ensures the platform benefits from the latest security patches, reducing vulnerabilities. Compatibility: Ensures compatibility with modern libraries and frameworks, allowing for smoother integrations and future-proof development. Code Quality: Leveraging new language features and improvements supports cleaner, more maintainable, and efficient code. Long-term Support: Aligning with the latest PHP version guarantees extended support and updates, securing the application’s stability over time.	Q1 and Q4

If you have any questions about the Icecat Service Roadmap 2025, feel free to reach out to us. We’d be happy to provide more details and discuss how these upcoming developments will benefit you.