Update on Commerce Server Futures

It has been almost a year since we shipped Commerce Server 2007. We have seen phenomenal adoption in the 9 months since general availability and I look forward to showcasing some of the amazing customer deployments that are currently ongoing as these sites launch throughout the summer, fall, and winter timeframe. We are on the dawn of the release of CS2007 Service Pack 1 in June, which makes it a great time to start talking about what comes next.

Building a product roadmap is not an easy task – especially if you want to get it right to truly address customer needs, align with industry direction, and innovate in new and interesting ways all at the same time. This summer, we will start the unveiling process around all of the specifics – but in the mean time here is a sneak preview of some of our core roadmap tenets:

• 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.

The future of Commerce Server and e-commerce at Microsoft has never been brighter. I am very much looking forward to revealing the specifics as details are crystallized, as it’s going to be a fun ride.