Microsoft Commerce Server is a Microsoft product for building e-commerce systems. It uses Microsoft .NET technology.
The latest release of the product is Commerce Server 2009. It was launched at the National Retail Federation (NRF) in New York in January 2009, with its official launch at the MIX09 event in Las Vegas in March 2009.
With its inaugural release in 2000, Commerce Server replaced Microsoft Site Server, expanding on the functionality of it and establishing a focus on e-commerce functionality (rather than concerning itself with document management or content metadata). It helps create e-commerce solutions and Web sites with high-performance, familiar tools that simplify setup, management, and administration tasks.
Commerce Server 2009, which became available on Microsoft's price list on April 1, 2009, introduced multi-channel awareness into the product, a new default site (running in Microsoft's SharePoint product) - including 30 new web parts and controls, and WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editing experiences for business people and site designers.
These features were introduced through the new Commerce Foundation - a new abstraction layer which unifies calling patterns of the core systems (see below) and allows for different presentation and business logic to be easily added and represented as 'selling channels'; and SharePoint Commerce Services which includes integration with Microsoft SharePoint - a new default site with 30 new web parts and controls pre-assembled. The default site can be skinned through the new page templating technology, allowing for individual pages to be easily changed by selecting a different template.
