Redmond, Wash., August 31, 1998 — ECommerce is a hot topic in today’s marketplace, but the task of understanding and conducting eCommerce can be daunting for developers and customers alike. To realize the full potential of eCommerce, data must be exchanged electronically within a corporation as well as outside of a company’s four walls, which requires the tight integration of various computer systems. In reality, many of these systems were never designed to “talk” to one another, making integration all the more difficult.
Microsoft, industry leading developers and customers are addressing such obstacles at the Business Applications Conference 98, September 9-11, at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. Geared toward developers, the conference is a highly technical how-to workshop that will demonstrate the linking of disparate business solutions. Demonstrations will include sample applications in five tracks: eCommerce; line of business; collaboration; tracking; and business intelligence.
“Microsoft has always done a good job of presenting products to the marketplace, but we haven’t always been good at explaining how to piece them together into complete business solutions,” said James Utzschneider, director of line of business evangelism at Microsoft Corp. “In order for eCommerce to become a reality in the general marketplace, developers and customers need to learn how to connect the dots, which is the overall goal for this conference.”
In the eCommerce track, representatives of Microsoft product groups, customers and industry experts will show developers how to design, build and deploy end-to-end eCommerce solutions by integrating the Microsoft Windows Distributed interNet Applications (Windows DNA) architecture with third-party and custom applications. Attendees will learn how to solve the common eCommerce issues of security, Internet transactions, data format and transport independence.
Attendees will walk through the full life cycle of a sample eCommerce application, from the designing, building and testing phases to deployment and management of the application. The sample application will represent a web-based procurement system that integrates a Baan ERP system at one fictitious company with a supplier’s SAP and mainframe-based ERP system at another fictitious company. Attendees will go home with a sample application framework that they can use as the basis for their own eCommerce solutions.
The eCommerce track, like the others at the Business Applications Conference, will demonstrate how organizations that effectively link disparate computer systems can experience the greatest efficiency and competitive advantage, while realizing the vision of an integrated “digital nervous system.”
