Commerce 5.6.1 End of Support

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.

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.  One major downside of sticking with version 5.6.1 is that version 7 would be the last version to support direct upgrade from version 5.6.1. That is, any future Commerce will be not be able to be upgraded from version 5.6.1 without going through some intermediate version. For those of you dragging your feet to the new version, upgrade can be painful, but version 7  can also present new possibilities of doing business. Beside the fact that for most companies, owning a piece of unsupported software is unacceptable per their policies,  this also a great opportunity for many customers to check out some new technologies that emerged since version 5.6.1 was released.  WebSphere Commerce 5.6.1 was released back in 2005. Just to give you an idea what a difference 5 years make, Youtube was found in 2005, Facebook went online a year earlier in 2004, iPhone? It did not even exist until 2007.  Google was big back then, but even that juggernaut of the decade only started dabbled into (and revolutionized) online advertising with its AdSense. In summary, so much has changed since 2005 that if you ask someone what the Internet would look like without Youtube, twitter, iPhone (or new generations of smartphone inspired by iPhone)? He probably would say two words: “Stone Age.”

WebSphere Commerce version 7 was released late last year, and IBM was certainly aware of these new things coming into our life, evidenced by new features such as Mobile Commerce, Social Commerce, etc. These features make eCommerce shopping activities ever more ubiquitous. If the Internet librated consumers from driving to a shopping mall 20 miles away and spending another two hours walking inside of a big concrete structure, Mobile Commerce freed people from having to sit in front of a computer to conduct their shopping activities.