WebSphere Commerce product overview

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WebSphere Commerce product overview

E-Commerce is about...

Delivere a shopping experience integrated across all customer touch points.
Provide a rich, relevant, personalized experience across multiple channels of the business.
Leverage the power of the brand and present its value consistently to the customers.

WebSphere Commerce offers the ability to do business directly with...

consumers (B2C)
businesses (B2B)
indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models)

Starter stores come with standard e-commerce functions such as browsing, searching, site maps, profile management, registration, address lists, wish lists, shopping carts, checkout, order history, advertisements and discounts. In addition, you can add integrate with social commerce features, and mobile support.
Site designers can customize the appearance of the site by changing the stylesheet.
Use the extended sites business model, you can quickly create extended site stores that allow for the stores specific to a brand, geography or customer group.
International support is provided via multiple built-in languages, currency and cultural support.
Display advertisements and discounts that are relevant to both the current shopper and the current site context.

Commerce components

WebSphere Commerce has three main components:

A database
An application server (Java EE)
A Web server

Supported databases...

DB2
Oracle
Apache Derby (development environment only)

WebSphere Application Server, provided with the WebSphere Commerce product, is the only supported application server.
The supported Web servers are:

IBM HTTP Server
Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS)
Sun One/Sun Java System Web Server

The following operating systems are supported for WebSphere Commerce:

AIX
Solaris
Windows
Linux (Red Hat and SuSE)

Product portfolio

There are three editions of WebSphere Commerce. Each edition provides an increasing set of functionality:

WebSphere Commerce Express
Affordable solution designed to help growing mid-market companies do business on the Web.

WebSphere Commerce Professional
Provides a richer environment that supports multiple sales channels and more operating systems.

WebSphere Commerce Enterprise
Ultimate sales environment for running large, high-volume business-to-business and advanced business-to-consumer e-commerce Web sites.

IBM WebSphere Commerce Developer editions are available for WebSphere Commerce Enterprise, Professional and Express. IBM WebSphere Commerce Developer includes everything develop and test end-to-end e-commerce sites.
WebSphere Commerce Developer uses IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere software as the foundation of the Java IDE. Rational Application Developer extends the Eclipse environment with visual development features.

Features and benefits

Feature Benefit Express Professional Enterprise
Starter stores for consumer direct business models including Web 2.0, mobile, and Social Commerce features Reduce costs in site development and deployment.

Madisons starter store
Madisons mobile starter store
Social Commerce
Remote widgets
Digital wallet
IBM Gift Center for the Madisons starter store
x x x
Starter stores for B2B direct and indirect business models: Reduce costs in site development and deployment.

Elite starter store
Extended Sites starter store
Demand chain business model
Supply chain business model
x
Globalization and localization support Supports globalization.
All starter stores are localized. In addition to localization, these starter stores have additional features specific to a market.

Brazil starter store
MayUJoy starter store
x x x
Cross-channel order processing Efficiently serve customers, contact-center representatives, gift registrants, distribution channel partners and others.
Interfaces integrate with external systems such as POS, kiosk, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and fulfillment systems (multichannel order management).
x x
Business user tools for managing catalogs, promotions, marketing activities and assets
IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce Supports merchandising and marketing tasks for business users (Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Catalog Managers and others). x x x
WebSphere Commerce Accelerator Maintain online stores, hubs, and catalogs by completing various store operations, from managing the presentation of the store to creating and maintaining orders to tracking store activities. Manage business operations such as managing stores, inventory, fulfillment, orders, returns, payments, and auctions x x x
Analytics and business intelligence using additional software The Coremetrics enhanced Web analytics for WebSphere Commerce provides tools which simplify the process of setting up the site to take advantage of the industry leading hosted Web analytics solution. This includes a framework that simplifies site configuration, including tagging the JSP files so that they provide appropriate analytics information to Coremetrics. The framework is implemented as a tag library, specifically designed to act as an intermediary layer between WebSphere Commerce and Coremetrics. x x x
Payments using a payments plug-in architecture The Payments subsystem contains three main parts: Payment rules engine, Payment plug-in controller, and payment plug-ins. x x x
Open standards support Built on accepted, industry standards like Java technology, JavaServer Pages, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and XML, WebSphere Commerce can be integrated to the existing middleware and systems. x x x
Developer tools Standards-based, rapid application development environment that uses and extends IBM Rational Application Developer based development environment. x x x
Gift Center for WebSphere Commerce A separately ordered product that provides a multichannel gift registry solution.
A Gift Center sample is available for consumer direct stores:

IBM Gift Center for the Madisons starter store
IBM Gift Center for the Consumer direct sample store

x x
Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce A separately ordered product that improves the productivity of call center employees. Gives call center representatives the functionality they need to service and up-sell cross-channel customers. x x
Workspaces A workspace is an access-controlled work area where you can make and preview changes to managed assets, without affecting what is currently running on the site. Working in the context of a workspace is similar to having the own private copy of the managed assets. You can make changes and preview changes without affecting managed assets outside the workspace. Once you are happy with the changes you have made in a workspace, you can commit the changes to the production database, and begin to see the effects on the site. x x
Auctions WebSphere Commerce provides an auctioning component that lets you sell products to the highest bidder. This component provides an ideal environment for implementing small to moderate-scale auctioning as part of the e-commerce solution, and for conducting auctions simultaneously. x x
Contracts and entitlement You entitle customers to various aspects of a store such as what products they can purchase from a store, the price they pay for a product, and what payment methods a store will accept from customers.
Customer entitlement is controlled by the following WebSphere Commerce components:

Business accounts
Contracts
Business policies
x
Catalog filtering You can filter the catalog to a specific set of users and exclude any products in the master catalog that you do not want to sell at the store. Use the Catalog Filter on B2B contracts and hosting contracts. x
Request for quote A buyer can create a Request for Quote (RFQ), using the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, for unique variations of goods and services that are offered in a catalog. If buyers cannot find a product or category matching their needs within a catalog, they can select attributes from the personalized dictionary to precisely define the product specifications. A buyer can also create an RFQ using the contents in their shopping cart, or add a shopping cart to an existing RFQ. x

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Feature	Benefit	Express	Professional	Enterprise
Starter stores for consumer direct business models including Web 2.0, mobile, and Social Commerce features	Reduce costs in site development and deployment. Madisons starter store Madisons mobile starter store Social Commerce Remote widgets Digital wallet IBM Gift Center for the Madisons starter store	x	x	x
Starter stores for B2B direct and indirect business models:	Reduce costs in site development and deployment. Elite starter store Extended Sites starter store Demand chain business model Supply chain business model			x
Globalization and localization support	Supports globalization. All starter stores are localized. In addition to localization, these starter stores have additional features specific to a market. Brazil starter store MayUJoy starter store	x	x	x
Cross-channel order processing	Efficiently serve customers, contact-center representatives, gift registrants, distribution channel partners and others. Interfaces integrate with external systems such as POS, kiosk, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and fulfillment systems (multichannel order management).		x	x
Business user tools for managing catalogs, promotions, marketing activities and assets IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce	Supports merchandising and marketing tasks for business users (Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Catalog Managers and others).	x	x	x
WebSphere Commerce Accelerator	Maintain online stores, hubs, and catalogs by completing various store operations, from managing the presentation of the store to creating and maintaining orders to tracking store activities. Manage business operations such as managing stores, inventory, fulfillment, orders, returns, payments, and auctions	x	x	x
Analytics and business intelligence using additional software	The Coremetrics enhanced Web analytics for WebSphere Commerce provides tools which simplify the process of setting up the site to take advantage of the industry leading hosted Web analytics solution. This includes a framework that simplifies site configuration, including tagging the JSP files so that they provide appropriate analytics information to Coremetrics. The framework is implemented as a tag library, specifically designed to act as an intermediary layer between WebSphere Commerce and Coremetrics.	x	x	x
Payments using a payments plug-in architecture	The Payments subsystem contains three main parts: Payment rules engine, Payment plug-in controller, and payment plug-ins.	x	x	x
Open standards support	Built on accepted, industry standards like Java technology, JavaServer Pages, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and XML, WebSphere Commerce can be integrated to the existing middleware and systems.	x	x	x
Developer tools	Standards-based, rapid application development environment that uses and extends IBM Rational Application Developer based development environment.	x	x	x
Gift Center for WebSphere Commerce	A separately ordered product that provides a multichannel gift registry solution. A Gift Center sample is available for consumer direct stores: IBM Gift Center for the Madisons starter store IBM Gift Center for the Consumer direct sample store		x	x
Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce	A separately ordered product that improves the productivity of call center employees. Gives call center representatives the functionality they need to service and up-sell cross-channel customers.		x	x
Workspaces	A workspace is an access-controlled work area where you can make and preview changes to managed assets, without affecting what is currently running on the site. Working in the context of a workspace is similar to having the own private copy of the managed assets. You can make changes and preview changes without affecting managed assets outside the workspace. Once you are happy with the changes you have made in a workspace, you can commit the changes to the production database, and begin to see the effects on the site.		x	x
Auctions	WebSphere Commerce provides an auctioning component that lets you sell products to the highest bidder. This component provides an ideal environment for implementing small to moderate-scale auctioning as part of the e-commerce solution, and for conducting auctions simultaneously.		x	x
Contracts and entitlement	You entitle customers to various aspects of a store such as what products they can purchase from a store, the price they pay for a product, and what payment methods a store will accept from customers. Customer entitlement is controlled by the following WebSphere Commerce components: Business accounts Contracts Business policies			x
Catalog filtering	You can filter the catalog to a specific set of users and exclude any products in the master catalog that you do not want to sell at the store. Use the Catalog Filter on B2B contracts and hosting contracts.			x
Request for quote	A buyer can create a Request for Quote (RFQ), using the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, for unique variations of goods and services that are offered in a catalog. If buyers cannot find a product or category matching their needs within a catalog, they can select attributes from the personalized dictionary to precisely define the product specifications. A buyer can also create an RFQ using the contents in their shopping cart, or add a shopping cart to an existing RFQ.			x