WCS 7 - product overview study notes

Features and benefits in WCS 7.0
 

Express –Professional –Enterprise

• Madison starter store
• Madison mobile starter store
• Brazil starter store
• MayUJoy starter store
• Remote widgets
• Coshopping
• Subscription support
• Product Ranking
• Digital wallet
• Social Commerce
• Social Bridging
• Websphere commerce search
• IBM gift center
• Punch-out payment
• Payment plug-in, Payment rule engine, payment plug-in controller
• Globalization and Localization support
• Marketing + Coremetrics supports
• Promotions
• Distributed Order Management Integration(DOM)
• Administration tool
• Coremetrics integration supports
• Websphere commerce Accelerator
• IBM Management Center-Catalogs, promotions, marketing activity, assets and managing  store

Professional –Enterprise

• Cross channel order processing
• Sales Center
• Workspaces
• Auctions

Enterprise

• B2B direct start store/Indirect starter store
• Elite starter store
• Extended site starter store
• Demand chain business model
• Supply chain business model
• Contracts and Entitlement
• Pricing
• Request for quote
• Enhanced Websphere Commerce search
• IBM Management Center –catalog filter ,price rules, price list

Fix pack and Feature pack list

• Fix pack 1

a)     Supports Feature pack 1

b)     Support IE8 for all starter stores

c)     Supports DB2 version 9.7

d)     Support for 64-bit WebSphere Application Server

e)     Support for Arabic language in the Madisons starter store

f)       Enhance WebSphere Commerce Accelerator Tax notebook to show start and end dates for tax rules

g)     Enhance returns capability to support non-ATP inventory

• Fix pack 2

a)     Supports Feature pack 2

b)     Support for 32-bit AIX 7.1

c)     Support for Windows 7 on WebSphere Commerce 7.0 Developer Edition

d)     Support for Oracle 11gR2

• Feature pack 1

WCS Editions

• Websphere Commerce Express
• Websphere Commerce Professional
• Websphere Commerce Enterprise
• Websphere Commerce Developer Express
• Websphere Commerce Developer Professional
• Websphere Commerce Developer Enterprise
• Sales Center for Websphere Commerce
• Gift Center for Websphere Commerce

Platform Details

• Hardware

a)     Intel 32 bit,64 bit for Windows , Linux

b)     Intel X86, X86/64 –windows ,Linux

c)     SPARC – Solaris only

d)     Z series – Linux only

e)     POWER® – AIX® and Linux

• Operating System

a)     Dropped –Windows 2000,Linux RHEL 3,Solaris 9

b)     Added –winserver 2008,win visa ,Linux SUSE 11

• Browser

a)     Dropped –Opera ,IE 5,Netscape ,Mozilla ,FF 1 and 2

b)     Added – IE8

• WAS server

a)     Websphere application sever 7

b)     Rational application developer 7.5

• Database

a)     DB2 9.5         jdbcdriver db2jcc4.jar

b)     Oracle 11g     jdbcdriver ojdbc6.jar

• Other Supports

a)     IBM Support assistant v4.1

b)     Websphere portal server 6.1

c)     Websphere MQ 7.0

New Features in WCS7.0

• Multi-channel precision marketing

a)     Automated marketing based on an individual consumer’s preferences and shopping intentions

b)     Desktop Browser To Trigged Event To Marketing engine Rules To Marketing message To Desktop Browser (same for all touch points)

c)     In other words the consumer’s experience is extended with triggers, or events, that can originate from any touch point, such as a desktop browser, mobile device, or a kiosk. The triggers are processed by a rules based marketing engine which produces targeted marketing messages. These messages are routed to the same touch points which originated the trigger.

d)     IBM Management Center => Marketing tool => Activity Builder

e)     Dynamic add/delete of customers from customer segments

f)       Enhanced promotions tool usability

g)     New promotion features

• Mobile Commerce

a)     Mobile Commerce is a method to enable mobile devices to participate in the shopping experience.

b)     A generic user interface optimized for mobile device interfaces is implemented with easily deployed page templates for these pages:

c)     Product information, order status, physical store locator, wish list, shopping list, and mobile message opt-in.

d)     Mobile messages can be sent to inform you of marketing information or for current order status.

e)     Mobile enabled pages integrate with Multi-channel Precision Marketing to provide a set of mobile enabled triggers.

• Social commerce

a)     Social commerce uses Web social networking concepts to allow customers to market your products for you.

b)     The social networking concepts that have been implemented are

a.      product reviews and ratings

b.      product blogs at the category level

c.      user profiles viewable by others

d.      Photo galleries at the product category level.

c)     These social networking concepts involve data stored by external products and services.

d)     The integration of these products and services are accomplished with WebSphere sMash technology.

e)     Bazaarvoice is a third party service provider that provides a service for hosting ratings and reviews.

f)       Pluck is a third party service provider that provides a service for hosting blogs, profiles, and galleries.

g)     IBM Lotus Connections is a product that also provides hosting for blogs, profiles, and galleries.

a)     The high efficiency data loading utility is provided for loading catalog, pricing, and inventory data for initial installation of a store implementation.

b)     It can also be used to update this data. Compared to the mass loader in V6, the data load utility is easier to implement the input data specifications, and provides improved performance and scalability for large amounts of data.

c)     The key improvement in the data loader design is that it supports data loading by business objects and data loading by database tables.

d)     This design also allows the utility to have better reliability and data consistency in the result of a load failure.

• Starter store enabled by web 2.0

a)     The starter stores have been enhanced by adopting Web 2.0 technology at more current support levels. The starter stores have the ability to selectively enable Web 2.0 style shopping paths by using the Accelerator change flow function.

b)     The functional improvements are improved page layout and styling, more complete use of Web service tags, updated Ajax framework, and Dojo libraries updated to Dojo 1.3.1.

c)     Both the business-to-consumer and the business-to-business starter store business models adopt the Web 2.0 technology.

d)     Madison’s business-to-consumer starter store has the same functionality as Madisons in V6, feature pack 5. The Elite business-to-business starter store is new in V7.

• Elite Business to business starter store

a)     The Elite business-to-business starter store has support for streamlined checkout, contract based pricing, buyer organizations, order scheduling and splitting, back ordering, save orders, and organizational participants.

b)     The Elite starter store also is integrated with Multichannel Precision Marketing using triggers, targets and actions.

• Management Center enhancement

a)     The Management Center has been enhanced with more operations formerly done only in Accelerator. You can now create customer segments, create e-marketing spots, and change your password at login.

b)     General usability and efficiency has been improved with case-insensitive search, keyboard shortcuts, text edit undo and redo, and direct editing of list columns.

• Migration assistant utility

a)     A set of migration utilities assist migrating older WebSphere Commerce versions to V7 using a graphical wizard on top of an Apache Ant script framework.

b)     You can migrate from V5.6.1 or from V6.0 with any feature pack enabled. You can also accommodate upgrading to a higher edition of the product.

c)     The Ant scripts handle migrating your database, applications and Web server configurations.

Changed Functionality

• Madison starter store replaces Consumer direct
• Apache Derby replaces Cloudscape database support
• DB2 loop-back configuration has been removed on Unix platforms
• Oracle database character set has been changed from UTF8 to AL32UTF8
• Order trash can feature disabled by default

Deprecated and Discontinue Functionality

Deprecated Feature	New Feature
Accelerator.Change Flow	Management center.Store management tool
Accelerator.Manage Files	Management center.Asset tool
Accelerator.Change Page	Management center.e-Marketing spot
Accelerator.Banner	Management center.e-Marketing spot
Accelerator.Upload Logo	Management center.e-Marketing spot
Accelerator.Catalog tool	Management center.Catalog tool
Accelerator.Prmotion tool	Management center.Promotion tool
Accelerator.Marketing tool	Management center.Marketing tool
Accelerator.Price tool	Management center.catalogfilter,Pricing tool
Accelerator.Extended sites catalog filter	Management center.catalog filter,Pricing tool
Accelerator.B2B contract catalog filter	Management center.catalog filter,Pricing tool
Accelerator.Marketing engine	Management center.marketing engine
Configuration Noun	Online store noun
Accelerator.content spot	Management Center.e-Spots
OMS/ERP integration	DOM integration
WCS payments	Payment subsystem and appropriate plug-in
Product Advisor	Websphere commerce search
PriceTCMasterCatalogWithOptionalAdjustment	PriceTCMasterCatalogWithFiltering
Discontinue Feature	New Feature
WCS Analyzer	Coremetrics ,Omniature –see details
IBM Lotus quick place	See details
Staging check utility	Stagegroup – see details

• Data Loading utility