Whither Commerce Server?

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Microsoft will continue to offer e-commerce functionality beyond the newly shipping Commerce Server 2007, but the company is still being coy about how it will be delivered to customers.

The next step is to tailor the technology for small and midsize businesses and for hosting partners, said Brian Goldfarb, lead product manager for Microsoft's Web Platform and Tools team. How that offering will be packaged and delivered will be settled in the next 18 months or so, he said.

"We will focus on building the core commerce infrastructure, the basic functionality that everyone needs to take advantage of e-commerce—the shopping cart, the catalog—and tailor it for SMBs and shared hosting companies," Goldfarb said. "Nobody in this space is doing that today." Commerce Server competes with offerings from ATG and IBM.

Whether Commerce Server's core capability will show up in a successor server SKU or be delivered via the platform—within ASP.Net or BizTalk Server, for example—remains unclear. Both options are possible, Goldfarb said.

Still, he came close to promising a successor Commerce Server SKU for high-value functions needed by enterprises that go beyond those core deliverables.

"There is early thinking about how to make the marketing engines better, to make the custom experience, BI [business intelligence] and optimization better," Goldfarb told CRN. "There is absolutely a need for the technology, and I do agree there's need for a SKU. But how you package up that SKU is unclear," he added.

Some partners say much of Commerce Server's functionality likely will show up in BizTalk Server successor products and be exposed via Office client applications.

"With SOA and Web services, most of Commerce Server will be in BizTalk, with the UI integrated into Office and linked via smart forms using the Unified Communications Framework," one knowledgeable source told CRN a few months ago. The new Commerce Server 2007 "will hold the current user base until the next wave migration. ISV potential will remain for those who want a discrete Commerce Server- like product."

The fact that Goldfarb was the go-to guy for this announcement is noteworthy. Commerce Server, like Content Management Server, has bounced around at Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash., company quietly moved Commerce Server out of the Business Process Integration group last month. The server is now part and parcel of Goldfarb's Web Platform and Tools team, which has responsibility for ASP.Net, Atlas, Visual Studio, Internet Information Services and Internet Explorer for Web developers.

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