Commerce Server Updates Planned

Planned sample sites tailored to specific businesses, such as apparel retailers, could streamline development and deployment of new e-commerce Web sites built on Commerce Server. Microsoft will work exclusively with partner Cactus Commerce to develop the sample sites and several other planned enhancements, which could conflict with other partners’ plans to customize and extend Commerce Server. The company also announced a new release of Commerce Server, code-named Commerce Server 7, planned for 2010. Together the announcements suggest Commerce Server has a future, but that Microsoft will lean more heavily on outside help for ongoing product development, marketing, and support.

Supports E-Commerce Sites

Commerce Server extends Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server with a set of developer tools, runtime services, and management utilities that help companies design, build, deploy, and maintain e-commerce Web sites. For example, the product includes subsystems for creating and managing product catalogs, taking and processing online orders, tracking users, marketing, and data analysis and reporting (for example, analyzing site traffic or sales trends). The product uses SQL Server to store and retrieve data, and a sample e-commerce Web site called the Starter Site provides developers with a starting point for building custom sites.