Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 a Proven Leader For Today’s Agile Business

REDMOND, Wash., March 28, 2001 — Microsoft Corp., with Commerce Server 2000, is leading the charge to make the Internet a more efficient tool for today’s smart businesses. With its enterprise-ready foundation, integrated personalization and analytics, and extensible catalog and ordering systems, Commerce Server 2000 is the top choice of customers and partners for quickly building scalable, effective e-business solutions on the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 platform.

“An e-business platform needs to do far more than serve up the essential ‘abilities’: availability, reliability, scalability and manageability. It also needs to provide businesses with the agility to understand, anticipate and respond in real time to individual customer needs and to changing market opportunities,”
said Chris Atkinson, vice president of the .NET Enterprise Solutions Group at Microsoft.
“Commerce Server 2000 offers all these capabilities, providing a rock-solid foundation for e-business and the tools our customers need to succeed and thrive in this new era of the digital economy.”

Commerce Server 2000 is the fourth generation of Microsoft’s e-business site development and management system. New customers add to the thousands of customers that have already built their e-business platform on Commerce Server 2000’s predecessor, Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition.

Customers Large and Small Adopt Commerce Server 2000

Commerce Server 2000 is the choice of leading companies such as Ford Motor Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., J.D. Edwards & Co., CROSSMARK, eHobbies.com, Integrix Inc., StorageTek and Telenor AS, adding to a customer list that includes Clarus Corp., Henry Schein Inc., RadioShack Corp., Starbucks Coffee Co. and others.

Everyone from enterprise-size corporations to dot-com start-ups now faces an audience of global customers. Being successful in this dynamic marketplace is critical to the survival of the dot-com. An example is eHobbies, where its technology choices directly affected its ability to succeed.

“We launched our company on Pandesic’s e-commerce platform in October 1999. A victim of the tide turning against dot-com companies, Pandesic told us that it was closing at the end of January 2001,”
said Brent Cohen, chief operating officer and co-founder of eHobbies.

After a full evaluation between Blue Martini with Oracle and Microsoft with Great Plains, eHobbies decided our best course of action was to build our business using Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 and Great Plains Software’s eEnterprise 6.0.

“We still have a lot of work left to do, but eHobbies is in a much better position technologically than we’ve been in at any point in our company’s history. We would not have had a successful transition were it not for the help we received from Microsoft and Great Plains.”

Enterprise organizations have also turned to Commerce Server 2000 for their e-business infrastructure. Telenor, the leading telecom company in Norway, is also expanding internationally, operating in 30 countries and employing over 23,500 people worldwide. As part of its customer-focused strategy, Telenor decided to build a personalized portal based on Commerce Server 2000 for its residential customers. Its technical challenge was to rapidly develop a flexible, reliable and scalable system capable of integrating with back-end legacy systems. Commerce Server 2000 enabled Telenor and its consulting partners, Accenture and Microsoft Consulting Services, to create a sophisticated site with advanced personalization, data warehousing and seamless integration with its existing legacy systems.

Data Return, Digex and USi Provide Hosting for Commerce Server 2000

Commerce Server 2000’s hosting partners provide a full range of industry-leading solutions for companies looking to outsource their e-business solutions. With a wide range of offerings, these partners deliver required functionality, mission-critical reliability and e-business expertise, using Commerce Server 2000 as the foundation of their e-commerce solutions.

“The functionality built into Commerce Server 2000 helps Data Return’s customers drastically reduce the time required to build effective electronic-commerce solutions,”
said Bill Lowry, director of product marketing for Data Return Corp., a leading managed hosting services provider and Microsoft’s Global Hosting Partner of the Year.
“By incorporating a consistent framework for building B2B or B2C applications, we feel Commerce Server 2000 will be less expensive to support over time and help us deliver better service for our enterprise customers like RadioShack.com that have chosen to incorporate Commerce Server 2000 in their e-business infrastructure.”

“Digex has added Commerce Server 2000 to our standard supported e-business application line of products, because of its rich functions and ability to serve our clients’ needs,”
said Shawn Bice, senior director of software engineering for Digex.
“We have implemented the personalization functions of Commerce Server 2000 within our own Digex ClientCentral, our customer portal, to accomplish segregation of views between the executive, accounting and engineering audiences of our clients. With Commerce Server 2000, we can provide the appropriate information to the individual viewer, based on job function. Our expectation is that our clients will similarly be able to take advantage of Commerce Server 2000 to launch their electronic business initiatives, integrated with Digex SmartServices.”

USinternetworking Inc.’s E-Business Powered by Commerce Server 2000 offering provides enterprises with the applications, platform and expertise needed for fully integrated e-business, while allowing them to focus their resources on core competencies.

“As the first Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Hosting and Application Services for E-Commerce, USi delivers best-of-breed, e-business managed application services on the Microsoft .NET Platform and Commerce Server 2000 for enterprises looking to stay focused on their core business, not the management and support of technology,”
said Steve McManus, president and general manager of E-Business Services at USi.
“With our proven record of managing enterprise-class e-business solutions and Microsoft’s delivery of Commerce Server 2000, we can meet our client’s needs for complete life-cycle management services and secure and reliable performance, while continuing to drive industry-leading service level agreements.”

Accenture, Avanade, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Compaq Offer Commerce Server 2000 Integration and Consulting

One of the key challenges facing all customers today is implementating and integrating e-business systems with internal applications. With Commerce Server 2000, customers can leverage the experience and expertise of industry leaders such as Accenture, Avanade Inc.,
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Compaq Computer Corp. to design, develop and implement sophisticated e-business solutions on Commerce Server 2000. These global systems integrators offer end-to-end solutions based on a solid understanding of the technology, the industries and e-business.

“Commerce Server 2000 plays a central role in Compaq’s strategy of providing a complete spectrum of robust, customized e-commerce solutions. Through the FrontLine Partnership, Compaq has been working closely with Microsoft on Commerce Server 2000, supplying Compaq ProLiant servers for Microsoft’s performance testing, supporting the Commerce Server 2000 Integration Test program and developing a complete set of solutions capabilities. These include our online sizer, recommended configurations and solution guides for scaling Commerce Server 2000 up and out, and our Professional Services expertise,”
said Rick Fricchione, vice president, Enterprise Ready Microsoft Practice Group for Compaq Global Services.
“For example, by using a reference model approach and drawing on our strong architectural experience and methodology, we have created a Commerce Server 2000-based accelerated solution to allow customers to quickly and easily design, deploy and manage a direct-selling environment as part of an integrated e-commerce business.”

ISV Momentum Builds for Commerce Server 2000

Commerce Server 2000 customers can easily and quickly create tailored e-business solutions by adding applications from third-party domain experts and a network of independent software providers (ISVs). The Commerce Server 2000 ISV Partner Program ensures that ISVs meet strict, defined requirements of a comprehensive testing and certification process. Obtaining this certification is an eligibility requirement for ISVs to join the program.

To date, both NCompass Labs Inc. and Interact Commerce Corp. have received certification in the Commerce Server 2000 ISV Partner Program.

“The integration of our content management application with Commerce Server 2000 will provide enterprise customers with a best-of-breed offering for their e-business needs,”
said Gerri Sinclair, CEO of NCompass Labs Inc.
“The ISV certification program provided us with the tools, infrastructure and information that made it straightforward for us to provide a seamless and tight integration with Commerce Server 2000’s personalization and profiling capabilities.”

Other leading vendors such as CyberSource Corp. and Visual Insights have chosen to integrate their solutions with Commerce Server 2000 to provide Internet commerce services and e-business performance and Web analytics to their customers. Webridge Inc., a leader in providing complete B2B sell-side solutions for the enterprise, takes full advantage of the broad set of server components and tools offered by Commerce Server 2000.

More information on Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 and the ISV Partner Program is available at http://www.microsoft.com/commerceserver/ .

Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 ISVs and Systems Integrators

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