Introduction to Microsoft Commerce Server 2007

From Microsoft's website: "Microsoft has long been committed to the e-commerce arenaÉWith Commerce Server 2007, we have taken Connected Commerce to the next level by helping enterprise organizations better integrate business processes and disparate systems; making it easier than ever to create robust, end-to-end Connected Commerce solutions. Furthermore, we are providing a production-ready Web application and taking full advantage of Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 technology, making it possible to get to market in record time."

"Commerce Server 2007 provides a comprehensive solution for many business scenarios, including:

• Business-to-consumer (B2C) sales of tangible or digital goods or online service delivery.
• Business-to-business (B2B) scenarios, such as e-procurement and trading communities.
• B2X scenarios, combining Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B)."

Commerce Server 2007 comes with a starter site that can form the basis of your web installation. It has everything you need to deploy and run an online store, including product catalog, shopping cart/check-out functionality. But that's just the beginning. With Commerce Server 2007, you can connect to internal/external applications such as SAP, JD Edwards, and Microsoft Dynamics products (including SharePoint, Navision and CRM); you can transmit data to external parties using standard web protocols (SOAP and XML: see Sidebar); you can enable customer/partner self-service options such as order status, changes, and wish lists. New Windows-based applications enable you to learn how to manage your catalog, customers, orders, inventory and marketing more quickly than ever before. Reports and Analytics features provide data so you can analyze the success of your site and related marketing efforts.

Microsoft has extensive information about Commerce Server 2007 on its website. You can download a PDF Brochure from the website.

FYI

Software as a Service (from Wikipedia)

Software as a service (SaaS) is a software application delivery model where a software vendor develops a web-native software application and hosts and operates (either independently or through a third-party) the application for use by its customers over the Internet. Customers do not pay for owning the software itself but rather for using itÉSaaS is generally associated with business software and is typically thought of as a low-cost way for businesses to obtain the same benefits of commercially licensed, internally operated software without the associated complexity and high initial cost. Many types of software are well suited to the SaaS model, where customers may have little interest or capability in software deployment, but do have substantial computing needs. Application areas such as Customer Relations Management, Video Conferencing, Human Resources, Accounting and Email are just a few of the initial markets showing SaaS success. The distinction between SaaS and earlier applications delivered over the Internet is that SaaS solutions were developed specifically to leverage web technologies such as the browser, thereby making them web-native.

Service Oriented Architecture (from Wikipedia)

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that guides all aspects of creating and using business processes, packaged as services, throughout their lifecycle, as well as defining and provisioning the IT infrastructure that allows different applications to exchange data and participate in business processes regardless of the operating systems or programming languages underlying those applications. SOA represents a model in which functionality is decomposed into small, distinct units (services), which can be distributed over a network and can be combined together and reused to create business applications. These services communicate with each other by passing data from one service to another, or by coordinating an activity between two or more services.

A flexible, standardized architecture is required to better support the connection of various applications and the sharing of data. SOA is one such architecture. It unifies business processes by structuring large applications as an ad-hoc collection of smaller modules called services. These applications can be used by different groups of people both inside and outside the company, and new applications built from a mix of services from the global pool exhibit greater flexibility and uniformityÉThe goal of SOA is to allow fairly large chunks of functionality to be strung together to form ad-hoc applications which are built almost entirely from existing software servicesÉThe great promise of SOA is that the marginal cost of creating the n-th application is zero, as all of the software required already exists to satisfy the requirements of other applications. Only orchestration is required to produce a new application.

Back to Microsoft Commerce, page 1.