Where does Commerce Server 2007 belong in the platform?
Patrick points to this article "Microsoft Ships Commerce Server 2007, But Road Map Remains Unclear" and questions the roadmap of Commerce Server and its relation to SharePoint. Excellent question.
Since a couple of days Commerce Server 2007 (CS2007) is Generally Available. See Ryan Donovan's announcement for more info.
What's Commerce Server?
Commerce Server 2007 enables you to create full-featured Web business applications and extend your business across networks, while allowing you to integrate e-commerce solutions within your existing infrastructure.
And note the Web business applications marked in bold.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed that Commerce Server moved closer to the Web Platform and Tools team than ever before. However I've never questioned this move. Now looking into what Commerce Server 2007 has to offer and how it has been built, I better understand the move. The Commerce Server product is fully built on top of ASP.NET 2.0 and IIS. This also means that it's completely extensible through web services and Visual Studio 2005. More info can be found here. As such it can become part of a complete service oriented architecture.
This however doesn't explain it's future roadmap nor the relation with SharePoint. Meanwhile SharePoint is part of the Office System space which moves away from the web platform team. Maybe Ryan or Brian can clarify ...
Going further and looking at Microsoft's Business Solutions platform (Dynamics), Commerce Server can be seen as an essential part of building a connected commerce platform. Due to it's extension points it's easy to build new web or smart client applications on top of it. It also connects to BizTalk through the adapters and relies on SQL Server for the data. A Microsoft Operations Manager Management pack manages CS in the server park.
In the near future we can also expect a version for small- and midsize businesses and hosting partners.
I'm pretty sure most of this will be discussed at Convergence 2006 EMEA. Also at TechEd: Developer we will most likely have some coverage in sessions and at the product booths. Watch-out for updates on the site.
If you like to learn more on Commerce Server you can check-out the web casts on TechNet:
- Commerce Server 2007 BizTalk Adapters In Action
Presenters: Brian Blum and Alan Faulkner, Microsoft
In this session, Brian and Alan walk you through all aspects of working with the Commerce Server BizTalk adapters. The session covers creation of send ports and receive ports, property schemas, configuration validation, schema deployment, and troubleshooting. Along the way, you'll learn invaluable tips and techniques for successfully developing integration applications with Commerce Server 2007 and BizTalk Server 2006.
- Developing with the Commerce Server 2007 Marketing System
Presenters: Madhur Joshi and David Lott, Microsoft
The Commerce Server 2007 Marketing System provides rich user-centric targeting functionality including discounting and promotions capabilities, targeted advertising, and personalized direct e-mail campaigns. In this session, Madhur and David show you first-hand how to harness the power and flexibility of the Marketing System runtime. Topics covered include: house ads, paid ads, targeting expressions, direct e-mail template creation, web.config settings used by the Marketing System, code for running the basket pipeline for discounting, and troubleshooting techniques.
- Commerce Server 2007 Product Catalog Deep-dive
Presenter: Austin Skyles, Microsoft
The Commerce Server 2007 Product Catalog System is a highly scalable and high-performance system for modeling electronic catalogs. It includes a flexible schema model, powerful XML import and export capabilities, rich search features, a Web service interface for building distributed applications, and out-of-the-box applications for catalog management. In this session, Austin explains these aspects of the system, covers a high-level view of the architecture, and shows how to get started with coding against the system.
Some Commerce Server bloggers I found:
Tags: Microsoft, ASP.NET, Commerce Server
Comments
- Anonymous
August 05, 2006
We are definitely working on refining the roadmap over time -- we'll be posting one publicly in the next few weeks that has some info to the ms.com site.
As for sharepoint, it is still too early to speculate how CS will interact with other related projects -- but key for us is knowing the we are deidcated to the enterprise commerce workload and we are going to work very hard to ensure we continue to provide a best-in-class solution - to do that we'll continue to work very closely with our key business partners in DevDiv, Office and beyond.
-Brian