BLACK MAGIC CONSULTING Hi! WE ARE Modern Commerce Consulting EMAIL US! ANY QUESTIONS?
BLACK MAGIC CONSULTING - WHO WE ARE
We help enterprise retailers separate AI signal from noise
Our team brings 100+ combined years of hands-on experience building commerce platforms for AT&T, Burberry, Michael Kors, Restoration Hardware, and dozens of others. We’ve co-founded and exited companies, led enterprise architecture teams, and driven strategy for some of the biggest names in retail.
We’ve been through every hype cycle this industry has produced—and we’re deep in the current one, building MCP servers, agentic systems, and AI-integrated architectures.
Here’s what we know: 90% of what’s being sold as “AI transformation” is expensive noise. The other 10% can genuinely change your business. We help retailers tell the difference—and then actually implement what works.
What We Do:
AI Strategy — Grounded in business reality, not vendor pitches
Technical Architecture — Solutions that actually ship
Team Enablement — Your people can execute after we leave
No platform to sell. No vendor partnerships. Just straight answers and solutions that ship.
We understand how critical the eCommerce channel is for a business. Stability, performance, security, and quality are key. We’ve built solutions for companies doing 100s of millions and even billions of dollars through their website each year. We understand enterprise scale, premium quality, and pay close attention to detail.
Innovative Solutions
We can help you get the most out of your ATG Oracle Platform, with right-sized Cloud hosting, Auto-Scaling, Auto-Healing, and advanced DevOps.
We can also help you prepare for the evolution of your eCommerce platform, by helping you go Headless.
From there it’s just a matter of integrating with more modern commerce solutions, gradually or all at once. You need a roadmap for the future, and we can help get you there.
Free Consultations
Contact us and setup a free consultation! We are always happy to chat and give you great advice and recommendations. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Experienced Team
Each of our team members has decades of experience solving complex problems for large organizations including many Fortune 1000 retailers.
WHY CHOOSE US
Our team is the best of the best, with decades of hands on experience solving complex problems for the largest of companies.
Whether you need a little expert advice, or a complex solution designed, built, and managed, or anything in-between, Black Magic Consulting can help!
Individual Approach
Listening to our customers gives us the key to understanding our client’s pain points, needs, and future goals. Our personalized attention allows us to provide the right services or solutions. Every client is different, and every solution needs to be perfectly matched.
Classic & Modern Technologies
We have a strong history with the ATG Oracle Commerce platform, which has been the best enterprise eCommerce solution for 20 years. Today our focus is on modernizing commerce for our clients. Evolutionarily, such as moving Oracle Commerce onto AWS and setting up Auto-Scaling, and revolutionarily, such as migrating to a new platform or collection of microservices.
Enterprise Solutions
We understand the needs of large retailers: Uptimes better than 99.9%, HA, DR, Geo-load-balanced Active-Active environments, PCI Level 1 compliance, DevOps solutions that work with large distributed teams and micro-services architectures, the best performance, monitoring, alerting, and so much more…
Limited Time Offer!
Contact us today and get 100% free online consultation!
OUR SERVICES
DevOps
In today’s world of Headless, Serverless, Auto-Scaling, Auto-Healing, and Cloud based architectures, efficient, flexible, and automated DevOps systems are more critical than ever! DevOps is not just another name for system administration, it’s a thoughtful marriage of development needs, automation, infrastructure, and efficiency. ATG Oracle Commerce DevOps is our speciality. Reap the rewards!
Platform Migrations
Whether you are outgrowing Magento or looking to bring your antiquated eCommerce solution into the modern era, we can help! Let us help you find the right solution, plan and execute your migration. Re-platforming brings strong business advantages, and doesn’t have to be as expensive and risky as you may believe.
ATG Oracle Commerce Architecture
There are few people with more expertise architecting complex Oracle Commerce systems than Devon Hillard. With his over 22 years of experience working with ATG Oracle Commerce across dozens of the worlds largest eCommerce sites, Black Magic Consulting can bring peerless solutions to your problems.
Oracle Commerce Life Extension
Let us help you get the most out of your current eCommerce platform! Cloud, Auto-Scaling, Headless, and more can be achieved without moving off of Oracle Commerce.
Development
Our team can build your application, whether it’s Oracle Commerce, Magento, iOS/Android applications, WordPress, PHP, Ruby, Spring, and more.
SEO & Marketing
Our team, tools, and partners can provide detailed SEO analysis and recommendations as well as implement full SEO optimization projects with guaranteed results.
A 25 year veteran of the enterprise commerce world, Devon Hillard has worked with many of the largest retailers in the world including AT&T, Burberry, Restoration Hardware, Canon, Michael Kors, and many more.
A natural technologist, Devon still actively develops extremely high performance web applications, and has specialized in eCommerce architecture for much of his career. He co-founded Spark::red, the preeminent ATG Oracle Commerce hosting company, merging his technical and business skills to grow a profitable bootstrapped company to a successful exit in 2018. In addition to Black Magic Consulting, he serves as mentor for three VC funded startups in Colorado.
Russell brings over 20 years of technology leadership to Black Magic. His expertise spans digital transformation, AI strategy implementation, and mission-critical e-commerce platforms.
Roddy and his team build exceptional solutions on a range of technologies including Node.js, React, Angular, Python, iOS, Android, Ruby, Magento, Shopify, Wordpress, and much more…
Eli’s extensive experience as an officer in the USMC has honed his natural leadership and organization skills. There is no one better to create a tactical plan and ensure its flawless execution.
Email us to setup a free consultation. Bring us a problem or idea, and let us impress you!
Listen & Learn
A deep dive into your current state, strengths, pain points, and goals. We listen, ask lots of questions, and review relevant documentation to get a comprehensive understanding of the project or opportunity.
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The Plan
Based on our comprehension of your wants and needs, we develop a detailed strategy. We start with the problem or desired improvement, and how we intent to bridge the gap from a business goals standpoint. Then the technical approach and solution. And then our implementation plan.
Implementation
We build it. Using the highest standards and best practices, our team develops the solution using the appropriate tools and technologies. Working in close coordination with your business stakeholders and technical team, we ensure clear communication, timely delivery, and closely aligned values and goals.
Handoff or Support
Once the solution is complete, we execute a thorough and un-rushed launch and/or handoff. Our team is available for short or long term support and management as discussed.
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