Product Reviews

If your company has been looking for a complete e-business solution, fully scalable from the SME right through to enterprise-wide implementation straight out of the box, then you might have been about ready to give up.

There are plenty of well-known and reliable Web servers out there, of course, so getting your PC online isn't a problem. Next, however, you'll need to acquire some heavyweight server-side database software and design some fancy stock catalogues to deliver those products. Then, of course, you need to develop the front-end Web site to call the catalogues, process e-business transactions and handle security and credit card evaluation.

Finally, all of this power is of little use if you can't find out who bought what when, and target future marketing campaigns based on the result. So you need some decent CRM (customer relationship management) software to link into your back-end server database log files and your email client.

All-in-one solution

With such a large task at hand, the chances are that you'll be considering talking to large corporate suppliers. These guys will sort the whole thing out for you and take the flack if things go wrong, but for all of this you can expect to exchange some serious money.

But what if you already have a small but beautifully formed IT department that handled the installation and implementation of Microsoft Windows 2000 LAN for you with no problems? Plus you have a very nice person who maintains the existing Web site remotely without any fuss. Could you perhaps bring your e-business in-house, gain complete control and save your company a small fortune? With Microsoft Commerce Server 2000, it's possible that you could.

So what exactly is Commerce Server 2000? In one box you get what amounts to being a very capable platform for building e-commerce solutions - all you need is at least Windows 2000 Server in place and off you go. This software is designed from the ground up to help companies deploy and implement e-business on-site, with as little back-room programming as possible; in other words, it's designed for business and not a truckload of developers.

To achieve this aim, Microsoft supplies tools and ready-built templates for creating and customising the front-end Web site, plus product management facilities and databases ready made and primed to go. Built-in order-processing features are also on tap, along with pre-configured systems that can handle user profiling, marketing campaigns and target mailings. In other words, from Web content through e-business to CRM, Commerce Server is integrated and it all works together pretty much straight out of the box.

Using sample solution sites included with Commerce Server, you can implement a complete new site in very short order. These sample sites are ready-built working examples of both B2B and B2C situations, and contain everything required to run. Inside you'll find SQL data and ASPs, plus images and COM+ components. You also get ready-made platforms for add-ins such as credit card validation, taxation, shipping and content management, plus, of course, the prerequisite shopping basket scripts and order-tracking capabilities.

You'll have to do some work at some point, however, as somebody has to tweak the actual e-business Web site to make it your own. Even here though, Commerce Server provides a comprehensive SDK (software development kit) to help. For the Web developer who knows about constructing database applications, the tools provided will make things easy.

Making it all work

Commerce Server 2000 is actually the latest in a long line of the new .NET Microsoft 2000 Server releases. There are eight server modules in all, each one aimed at a particular business network situation (see Spreading the .NET).

Commerce Server is centred on e-business, and was formerly marketed as Site Server 3 Commerce Edition. This new version improves on the old Site Server dramatically, with the main idea being to automate and simplify the technical aspects

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wherever possible. You get a much simpler installation procedure, for instance, that shouldn't pose any problems for your average network-literate IT person. Day-to-day management is also catered for without further programming, via the ready-built browser-based consoles.

For example, making your own product file is as simple as selecting Create from the Catalogues menu. Any keyboard-competent user can then add products and categories, maintain custom pricing and import catalogues from third-party data sources. For those worried about future growth, the catalogue is a robust SQL implementation (SQL Server 2000 is included in the box) fully capable of handling millions of transactions if required.

The upshot of all this is that you can distribute e-business stores in record time, simply by separating the design from the mechanics. In simplistic terms, all you need do is apply a theme and edit a few HTML and ASP scripts to get the look and feel you have in mind.

When you do want to get clever with the code, the software can be tailored with Visual InterDev using VBScript or JavaScript on the server side to generate Web pages dynamically. Even at this level, Commerce Server makes the job easier, this time by breaking the e-commerce chain into visual 'pipelines'.

Each of these pipelines might handle a different business rule, such as a stage in the campaign targeting procedure. Presented in a visual way like this, developers can attach script code to any section of the pipe, adding third-party features and validation links to extend the system.

Managing your customers

Once everything's in place and you're selling from your site, you'll want to amend products, edit shipping tables, change tax options and otherwise perform administration tasks. To help with this, a DHTML browser-based management console called Business Desk resides on any PC and handles site content remotely. You can modify product catalogues, update advertising banners and run productivity reports from anywhere, so long as you have the appropriate security and a connection - either intranet or Internet.

Including CRM functionality is what makes Commerce Server particularly attractive as an all-in-one solution. The new customer profiling and targeting systems can really be of use when it comes to maintaining profitable relationships with your customers. Profiling, for instance, can provide detailed views of information such as user demographics and customer clickstream data, plus the length of each session.

You can target sales using the Targeting System and take advantage of the profile information. You can then use this data to tailor your shopper's online experience on a personal level; for example, to customise actual catalogue data like pricing or Web pages, or deliver targeted advertising. The marketing department can then use the Campaign Manager to manage personalised email campaigns, based on actual verified visitor data.

Business to business

There's no doubt that Microsoft sees Commerce Server 2000 as a vital element of its .NET initiative. What's more, the use of XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) throughout definitely points the way to a more ordered future for integration across Internet platforms. The fact that Microsoft has seen fit to create its own 'standard' protocol for utilising this XML interface, however, is a little worrying.

XML as it stands is simply a method of moving data, and the data itself must arrive in a recognisable format before remote applications can talk to one another. Microsoft has adopted SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) to achieve this aim, and expects the protocol to provide a common messaging format, linking applications and services over the Internet. Whether others follow suit and adopt this new standard, we'll have to wait and see.

A price tag of £8,525 might seem steep, but Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 is an ongoing solution, not a one-off e-commerce Web site maker. If you add up the cost of integrating SQL Server, e-business transaction processing server, product database administration software, customer profiling and campaign management software, then you're starting to talk serious investment.

Commerce Server can bring all this in-house and under your control, with the emphasis of e-business to some extent taken away from the technical team and placed back in the hands of the sales and marketing departments. You'll need Microsoft Windows 2000 Server experience to install Commerce Server and SQL Server 2000, but you certainly won't need three months in the programming cupboard to make it work.