Microsoft Insiders Disclose Details Of Commerce Server 2006

The Jupiter E-business suite lives, sort of, in Microsoft Commerce Server 2006, due early next year.

In new Web log postings, various Microsoft insiders are talking up the upcoming release and its promised tight integration with BizTalk Server 2006 and ASP.Net 2.0.

They say server will be a topic at the company's Professional Developers' Conference in Los Angeles in mid-September. The latest preview bits of the server will be handed out at the show, said blogger Richard Seroter.

Chief among the improvements over the current Commerce Server 2002 are better tie-ins to existing business applications from Microsoft Business Solutions, JD Edwards and other third parties through the aforementioned BizTalk integration, the company said. Tight ties to Visual Studio 2005 and the .Net Framework 2.0 should ease development of custom applications, according to this Microsoft Web site.

In the past couple of years, Microsoft planned then scrubbed the plan for an integrated e-business suite.

When they talked about its changed plan of action, executives said the vision of integrated server applications remained unchanged, but that the packaging and delivery of those applications would not come via a suite per se.

Microsoft has said that many of its next-gen server applications, including BizTalk 2006 and Commerce Server 2006, will offer native 64-bit capabilities.