Commerce Server Roadmap

Published: August 8, 2006 | Updated: May 29, 2007

Introduction

Commerce Server 2007 is Microsoft’s premier server for creating e-commerce solutions, building on over 10 years of innovation and success.

This document gives an overview of Commerce Server 2007, Microsoft e-commerce technology, and provides a look at where this technology is headed in the future.

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Commerce Server Present

Microsoft has long been committed to the e-commerce arena—from Site Server, to Commerce Server 2000, 2002, Feature Pack 1, and now 2007—the commitment is more relevant today than ever before with changing online business models and the rise of Software as a Service, Web 2.0, Service Oriented Architecture, and other new media technologies. With 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 then 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.

The Goals of Commerce Server 2007

Whenever we build products in WPT we define a set of high level goals used to help guide our decision-making process and prioritize our investments. For Commerce Server 2007, we focused on the following key areas:

Developers - Providing tighter integration with Visual Studio and ASP.NET 2.0, scalable architecture, and strong management capabilities to help organizations build a range of integrated business process solutions.

Best of breed business user tools - Enhanced business management applications such as Catalog and Inventory Manager, Customer and Orders Manager, Marketing Manager, and Reports and Analytics, help business users directly interact with your Web-based business applications.

Deep platform integration and extensibility

• Commerce Server BizTalk Adapters
  Commerce Server helps organizations solve end-to-end connectivity and communication with their other line-of-business applications and trading partners. Commerce Server 2007 offers BizTalk Adapters that enable integration with CRM systems, legacy inventory and catalog management applications, and fulfillment/ERP systems.
• Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
  All Commerce Server subsystems are exposed through .NET APIs and Web services. The .NET API allow for seamless integration into ASP.NET, WinForms and Console applications.
• SQL Server Reporting Service
  Commerce Server’s business analytics engine is integrated into Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Service, enabling organizations to mine multiple information sources, including click stream usage, visitor browse history, campaign effectiveness, and purchasing patterns.

Low cost and time to market - A focus on rich out-of-the-box functionality and an included production-ready starter site eases time to market. The starter site has been thoroughly tested for security and performance, supports multiple languages and currencies, and is built using industry best practices, enabling businesses to customize and deploy new solutions.

Performance and scalability - Native 32- and 64-bit support enables you to take advantage of the latest hardware to achieve unprecedented levels of performance and scalability. As your business grows, so will Commerce Server; from a single-box deployment to a multi-tier Web farm.

Commerce Server Feature Overview

With the release of Commerce Server 2007, customers gained the benefits of deep integration with .NET 2.0; enabling customer-specific needs to be easily extended. Commerce Server 2007 significantly revamped the existing business management applications to a rich Windows-based application from the previous Business desk, introduced new capabilities for inventory, staging service, Microsoft Operations Manager Commerce Server 2007 Management pack, BizTalk adapters, and support for 64-bit and many more.

• By providing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and BizTalk adapters, enterprises can integrate their online commerce channels with their supply and demand chain and connect with ERP, CRM, or other LOB systems.
• Based on the new .NET Framework 2.0 and fully supporting all of its new features simplifying Web Applications, WinForm and Console Application development.
• The Starter Site is a production-ready Commerce Server application providing a blueprint with prescriptive guidance. The Starter Site can be easily customized and deployed to lower time to market and total cost of ownership.
• The Commerce Server SDK is a free downloadable package allowing enterprises to customize and extend Commerce Server 2007 management applications.
• Commerce Server 2007 delivers performance tested on Top 10 Real World customer deployment requirements representing worst case scenarios.
• Commerce Server Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 delivers enterprise-class operations management allowing enterprises to have real-time monitoring.
• Commerce Server 2007 supports native 32- and 64-bit support, enabling you to take advantage of the latest hardware to achieve unprecedented levels of performance and scalability.
• Commerce Server Staging makes it easy to move data and files effortlessly to Web farms, across networks, and behind firewalls.
• The Commerce Server 2007 Business Analytics System provides business intelligence and data mining from multiple information sources, including click stream usage, visitor browse history, campaigneffectiveness, and purchasing patterns.

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The Future of Commerce Server

Commerce Server 2007 represents a core solution capable of running the most demanding e-commerce applications in the world. Coming up next, Commerce Server customers can look forward to the following:

• Ongoing service packs and platform support updates will be provided for the standard support lifecycle of Commerce Server 2007, which is currently slated to end on July 12, 2011.
• Microsoft remains fully committed to the e-commerce space and will be providing successors for the current Commerce Server SKUs in the future.
• The release of major Commerce Server product revisions will be aligned with major platform evolution waves encompassing Windows Server, SQL Server, .NET Framework, BizTalk Server, and other such dependencies; this philosophy is designed to prevent constant "big-bang" upgrade churn on a too frequent basis.
• Microsoft will look to add features and functionality incrementally on an a la carte basis outside of major releases such as Commerce Server 2007 to deliver new value and enhance capabilities in a non-invasive manner to existing deployments.
• Commerce Server will remain a standalone product; e-commerce is a unique enough scenario wth extremely demanding requirements that will often times warrant a standalone deployment; that said, Microsoft is continuing to pursue deeper integration with other Microsoft products and technologies as appropriate to provide the best integrated technology story possible.

Additional product roadmap details will be posted here as they become available.

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Summary

As the e-commerce needs of your enterprise continue to evolve, Microsoft remains committed to ensuring the success of its customers by delivering innovations and value through future releases to help developers, IT professionals, designers, enterprise businesses, small businesses, hosting services, and business users drive integration and value to your company through e-commerce.

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