WebSphere Commerce 5.6.1 will be out of support by the end of the upcoming September, which is merely 4 months away. After that, IBM will no longer answer customers’ calls for this version. For eCommerce sites that still employs version 5.6.1, we strongly recommend them to upgrade to version 7 as soon as possible.

eZcommerce is a complete E-Commerce Solution with an online storefront, a set of simple catalog management, smart marketing and customer care tools packaged with managed services.

To the applause of the audience at Monday’s general session, Craig Hayman announced that IBM has acquired Cast Iron Systems. Afterwards, at a press conference Hayman was joined by the CEO of Cast Iron Systems, Ken Comee. The Mountain View, California company provides industry-leading cloud integration software, appliances and services.

When it comes to meeting the evolving needs of today’s customers, WebSphere
Commerce is the leading, comprehensive interaction platform that delivers a smarter
shopping experience for your customers.

Zobrist Consulting announces the release of a new offering – the “Take Control Maintenance Plan” for WebSphere Commerce.

Business Partners who invest in the proper skills and expertise are well positioned to help clients achieve a faster time-to-value with the right solutions, reduce risk in solution development, and increase their return on investment over time.

If you are using Management Center without customization in version 6 there are no extra steps required to continue using Management Center in version 7. For customized versions of Management Center you need to follow the Management Center customization migration process using the OpenLaszlo migration tool.

WebSphere Commerce Build and Deploy (WCBD) is the first tool aims to provide a standardized, ANTbased, build and deployment framework that is designed to satisfy most typical build and deployment needs, leaving only few configuration steps for a quick startup.

The business user tool offers a marketing dialog activity builder for building and managing marketing and merchandising dialogue activity (using trigger events and actions) with the shopper. Other enhancements include support for dynamically managing customer segments, as well as managing content, and e-marketing spots, and sales catalog in an extended sites model.

The Madisons starter store improves on the Web 2.0 store through more convenient packaging, improvements in store functionality to aid shoppers in their shopping experience, and improvements to store design to reduce development costs.

The Elite Web 2.0 based B2B starter store provides a rich experience and streamlined checkout process to enable B2B businesses to deliver a B2C-like shopping experience.