Ryan R. Donovan's Microsoft WebLog

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>> One of the key themes of the next version is providing a single, unified setup experience. In order to best do that, we need to optimize which platforms are supported.

I actually foresaw that the interactive part of commerce server would wind up with Sharepoint :o). So investing in Commerce Server will also to some extend now mean investing in part in a Sharepoint project. However, considering your mission you shold optimize for the cloud - not really scalability coming into mind here - but simplifying the software configuration offer. Microsoft Online just advertised Sharepoint online here in Europe and I am already going to look at that option for customers. It would be nice to see commerce going online as a scalable service offer that partners can resell. Beyond that application developers can deploy processing extensions i.e. operations sequences or special customer service operations to the online commcerce platform while the online sharepoint platform would already support deployment of sharepoint applications (would may be some mod for easy online skinning).

However, the main focus with the commerce foundation should be e-catalogue syndication. I.e support for UNSPSC - coming as gs1 implementations all around.

As a SAAS-offering with UNSPSC support in a scalable business model (SAAS - i.e. demand variable cost) - the suggestion to use Commerce Server would be a very strong initiative for most businesses possibly increasing the number of deployments and feedback. As you probaly agree the e-catalogue is the single most important thing (infering the virtual offers) so you need syndication. In that respect the experience could be a point of variability i.e. referring to the e-commerce service as a software factory for configuration of the portlet to virtualy render the offer.

Still too little syndication today ... platforms must help achieve that without calling for collaboration projects. Networks imply more automatics.

P.s. Beyond continous media, i.e. drive a video experience in the hypermedia without being constrained by a page metaphor - another reason for AJAX would be failure to implement portlets. I.e. lack of will to implement WSRP or WebParts early on. Now AJAX is here replacing SOA and WSRP in that sense - just as RSS replaced ICE. So timeframe is already restricted - a technical hybrid will emerge and WSRP or Webparts in their concrete form does not seem to be a feature of the hybrid (considering syndication as it already blew out years ago). So with respect to the portlet reference above may be the software factory should spit out ECMA script. Of course webparts may run in any .NET based site. But again AJAX is great for syndicating portlets because of javascript and the increased availability of the xmlhttp object since 1999.

Is BizTalk 2009 supported with Commerce Server 2009? I am trying to find out for a Commerce Server 2009 project. Or do you only expect support for BizTalk 2009 with Commerce Server 2009 SP1 or Commerce Server 2011?

Thanks,

Ben Cline

benc at magenic dot com