The Commerce Server, a product from software giant Microsoft, is targeted at reducing complexity and building scalable Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Commerce (B2C) applications. Using Commerce Server, you can develop and deploy enterprise level e-commerce applications efficiently and manage transactional and backend data for such applications seamlessly. Microsoft Commerce Server is a scalable platform for developing, deploying, monitoring and even upgrading e-commerce applications seamlessly. MSDN states, "this extensible platform enables you to build solutions that scale with business needs and integrate with existing systems and data."

The following are some of the basic features provided by Microsoft Commerce Server.

·         Provides a scalable, extensible data warehouse and its management and configuration tools.

·         Provides a scalable, flexible, dynamic profiling system.

·         Provides event logging, performance monitoring and single sign on support.

·         Provides a flexible, extensible content selection framework and support for multilingualism.

·         Provides powerful user and catalog management systems.

You can use the Commerce Server for a "seamless connection to internal and partner applications and systems such as Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, JD Edwards, and others through Microsoft BizTalk Server adapters." According to Microsoft, "Commerce Server enables you to create full-featured Web business applications and extend your business across networks, while allowing you to integrate e-commerce solutions within your existing infrastructure." There is an excellent article from Microsoft that discusses the architecture of Commerce Server in its entirety. You can find this article at Commerce Server Architecture.