Microsoft Commerce Server Hosting Services

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

The 2007 version includes new capabilities and improvements that allow a developer to create more flexible and high-performance sites faster, as well as empowering and enabling administrators and business users to more effectively manage and maintain sites. New integration features help enable customers to integrate new Commerce Server 2007 sites with their existing systems and infrastructure.

The following items describe some of the improvements included in Commerce Server 2007 in the areas of business user experience, developer experience, IT professional experience, and connected commerce.

Connected Commerce

E-commerce sites need to be part of a company’s overall line-of-business systems. By providing advanced integration features, Commerce Server 2007 makes such integration easier than ever. Specifically, Commerce Server 2007 will help enterprises:

Connect seamlessly to internal and partner applications and systems such as SAP, MBS, JD Edwards, and others through Microsoft BizTalk Server adapters. Commerce Server 2007 provides profile, order, inventory, and catalog subsystem adapters for BizTalk Server to accelerate and automate the delivery of products and services.
Manage and share business data through industry-standard Web Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) Extensible Markup Language (XML) protocols. All core subsystems are Web-service enabled to facilitate business data management and updates.
Manage and share business data through industry-standard Web Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) Extensible Markup Language (XML) protocols. All core subsystems are Web-service enabled to facilitate business data management and updates.
Exchange and aggregate product catalog information from across your business and from trading partners to present expanded product and service line offerings.

Business User Experience

E-commerce sites are today more dynamic than ever. Therefore, it is not enough to just build a great site; constant maintenance, updates and fine-tuning are required to ensure highest performance and return on investment. Specifically, Commerce Server 2007 will help business users with the following tasks:

Manage Customers & Orders, Catalog & Inventory and Marketing, through new Windows-based applications. By using the familiar look and feel of Microsoft Windows, with task-based interfaces and wizards to simplify complex tasks, these tools help business users achieve shorter turnaround times, lower maintenance costs, and make easy site updates and fine-tuning, helping to increase revenue.
Advanced Reports and Analytics expose business intelligence and data mining from multiple information sources, including click stream usage, visitor browse history, campaign effectiveness, and purchasing patterns. Based on SQL Server Reporting Services, users enjoy full life cycle management–including authoring, scheduling, versioning, taking data snapshots, access controls, and rendering.

Developer Experience

By building on the latest Microsoft technologies, as well as providing extensive out-of-the-box functionality, the 2007 version helps accelerate and simplify development. Specifically, Commerce Server 2007 will help developers:

Jumpstart development with a feature-rich starter site that provides developers a starting point to accelerate the creation and customization of a production quality solution.
Develop solutions more quickly with an integrated development environment through Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Integration with Visual Studio 2005 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (including ASP.NET 2.0) reduces the coding needed to customize commerce solutions for your organization.
Quickly modify the packaged merchandising, catalog, and analytics functionality to match the way you do business with a comprehensive but extensible commerce platform that provides a consistent set of data management .NET application programming interfaces (APIs).

IT Professional Experience

Setup, management, and administration tasks are simplified with high-performance, familiar management tools. Specifically, Commerce Server 2007 will help IT professionals:

Automate the distribution and movement of data and sites across multiple environments with site staging and replication.
Take advantage of new deployment and configuration tools that simplify the implementation of secure commerce solutions.
Reduce server management and training requirements with Windows-based management tools, including Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM).
Take advantage of the increased performance provided by 64-bit with support for SQL Server 2005 64-bit and with a native 64-bit version of Commerce Server 2007.

Performance, High Availability, 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.
ASP.NET 2.0 provides the reliable, high-performance foundation your business requires.
Staging enables the efficient and effortless deployment to Web farms across networks and behind firewalls.
Scalability, from a single-box deployment to a multi-tier Web farm means your Commerce Serverdeployment can grow alongside your business.
Cluster support facilitates high availability and ensures the uninterrupted operation of your business.

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Need help getting Commerce Server web site developed? Need help managing and administering your Commerce Server solution? EPI offers a complete range of design, development and other professional services that help ensure your success! Call today for information.