On the Side By Side approach, both Drupal and Magento serve pages on the site. Integrating Drupal and Magento enables clients to leverage best of both platforms. Each part leverages the strength of its respective platform (Drupal for content, Magento for ecommerce).
Usually Drupal serves the homepage and some marketing pages and Magento handles the cart and the checkout. The part of an eCommerce website that users interact with is called “the glass”. The website will be implemented on top of a Drupal & Magento “split glass” solution, where Drupal is responsible for the content pages (including catalog) and Magento is responsible for the transactional pages, customer and commerce features.
Pros and cons
Pros:
– Allows content-heavy sites to use Drupal with added transactional capabilities from Magento
Cons:
– To share same user session, both systems must share same user database – requires single sign on (SSO) integration.
– Need to maintain two themes, the customer experience needs to be fluid between the platforms. Additional effort to leverage Magento marketing capabilities such as promotions, vouchers, wishlist, reward points, subscriptions, customer segments and customer groups.
– System integrator and Nestlé eCommerce Manager need to have expertise in both platforms
– Need to log in separate admin panels (Magento and Drupal) to manage the site (ie. content, products, configurations)
– Need to set up and maintain infrastructure for both platforms
– Bigger security impact
