In my personal blog, I have posted some updates on the Commerce Server roadmap - check it out at http://blogs.msdn.com/rdonovan/archive/2007/05/23/update-on-commerce-server-futures.aspx reaffirming Microsoft's commitment to the enterprise e-commerce space.

A recap of the salient points:

  • Ongoing service packs and platform support updates will be provided for the standard support lifecycle of Commerce Server 2007, which ends 7/12/2011
  • Microsoft remains fully committed to the e-commerce space and will be providing successors for the current Commerce Server SKUs
  • Commerce Server is not going to be merged into other products; e-commerce is a unique enough scenario with extremely demanding requirements that will often times warrant a standalone deployment; that being said, we are going to continue to vigorously pursue deeper integration with other Microsoft products and technologies as it makes sense to provide the best integrated story possible
  • We will look to align major product revisions with major platform evolution waves encompassing Windows Server, SQL Server, .NET Framework, BizTalk Server, and other such dependencies; this philosophy is to prevent constant big-bang upgrade churn on a too-frequent basis
  • We will look to add new features and functionally incrementally on an interim a la carte basis outside of major product revisions to deliver new value and enhance capabilities in a non-invasive manner to existing CS2007 deployments  
  • Features and functions? Too early to start delving into the details but needless to say we take customer feedback very seriously (look at the transformation from CS2002->CS2007) and have quite a few new cool and innovative ideas in the pipeline as well.

Stay tuned for more details in the near future!