Friday, October 2, 2015

Most Awaited version of WCS- Websphere commerce v8 !!

After a much awaited and most speculative version of Websphere commerce is out with some predictions like replacing the business tools framework with Struts+BOD with Spring+BOD etc.

Below is first draft version of my understanding on our new rock star i.e Websphere Commerce v8.. more to come after Nov' 30 or I get hand of any concrete information.

WebSphere Commerce Enterprise v8 is an omni-channel, e-commerce platform that enables business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) sales to customers across all channels, which include web, mobile, social, store, and call center. WCS v8 delivers a new approach to e-commerce with an improved business user experience to help merchandisers and marketers deepen customer engagement and greatly enhance business results. Version 8.0 also includes a new customer service capability that enables organizations to provide a seamless experience across digital and call center channels.

The Enterprise edition allows brands to engage shoppers in a personalized and consistent way with merchandising tools, precision marketing, site search, customer experience management, catalog and content management, and social commerce capabilities. Organizations can go to market quickly and easily with an advanced starter store for B2C and B2B that is responsive to optimize content for various device types and formats, which include web, mobile, and tablet.


Below are major changes with high level understanding:


IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce: Replacing Sales center with light weight Web application

Version 8.0 delivers enhancements to Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce that offer a better customer service and support experience. The customer service representative (CSR) can utilize the same buying experience that customers use to provide assistance with site activities, for example, assist customers to manage their cart content and assist with the checkout process. As a part of the buying experience, the CSR can look up customer accounts and orders, and help customers with their account management. Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce is a separately purchased solution for WebSphere Commerce V8.0 clients.

The pattern they are using seems to be one of the most familiar pattern which we have used for various client implementation i,e  webased esite based cal center approach with UI treatment for an intuitive fronted for CSRs.

Some high level points:

  • These new capabilities are built into the WebSphere Commerce V8.0 storefront and enable a CSR to perform key tasks on behalf of a guest, registered customers, and for both B2B and B2C business models
  • Light weight web based application which cost effective that delivers a UI interface for CSRs.
    •  A common experience for customers and CSRs that helps CSRs solve customer issues faster.  
  • Personalized content and promotions presented to CSRs to help drive increased sales.  
  • If using SOLR then a Powerful WebSphere Commerce site search to quickly find the right products for customers.
    • Work with customer accounts for both B2B and B2C business models. 
    • Find products through catalog navigation or through powerful facetted search that provides detailed product information. 
  • Work with customer orders so they can create new orders, view order history, and cancel orders. 
Note: Entitlement to IBM Call Center for Commerce V9.4 is required for use of IBM Customer Service for WebSphere Commerce.

IBM Management Center for WebSphere Commerce 

In Version 8.0, the Management Center is updated to use Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and the open source Spring Framework. This update makes it easier for developers to customize and embed custom tools in the Management Center. With DHTML, Management Center is no longer dependent on AdobeTM Flash technology, and developers who customize the Management Center can now view their changes without first compiling their code. Additionally, the Management Center user interface now has a new look.


Additional changes

In addition to the enhancements for business users, Version 8.0: 
• Leverages a software platform upgrade to the latest versions of the web application server, database, and integrated developer environment.
• Incorporates the capabilities of earlier WebSphere Commerce V7.0 feature packs.
• Provides more streamlined packaging options.
• Allows businesses to use the Gift Center capability in their physical stores, without the purchase of an additional license.

Going out :

  • IBM Sales Center for WebSphere Commerce V7.0 is not compatible with WebSphere Commerce V8.0. 
  • Madisons starter store is deprecated for WebSphere Commerce Version 7 Feature Pack 8. Madisons starter store provided all of the pages and features necessary for a functioning consumer direct online store.

Availability of national languages 

Release date: Nov 30 2015
Languages Supported:
Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, English (US), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese,(Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish
NOTE:Aurora Starter Store is also translated into Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish.

Reference and Thanks:

IBM document update for WCS v8: http://www-01.ibm.com/

Mobile enterprise application platform- A critical component of Omnichannel platform- Part 1

In past few years quite often my clients face this question 

  1. Should I move to omni channel platform or I am good with existing application?
  2. Do I need “Mobile enterprise application platform”?
  3. Should I go with Open source or paid version and what benefit I get from my paid version?
  4. What are my options in Opens source for iOS( Android most of us know its free)
  5. Last but least IBM Worklight vs Kony vs SAP vs PhoneGap
There is no doubt that mobile has been changing the life of people by changing the way people do their work. But it is also true that without mobile apps mobile(exception to retailers with Adaptive design) itself has no more use, it will be just like car without petrol. This is the age of apps and days are not away when it will be tough for retailers to survive without mobile apps. Demand of mobile applications is increasing day by day as number of mobile users are increasing. As per the latest report of 2015 the famous and bold predication made that by 2014, mobile internet users will overtake desktop internet (smartinsight.com) is now true. 

On top of that another complication develops is the customer behavior pattern is really forcing retailers to move to omnichannel platform. A very simple example will be variation in device preferences throughout the day , depicted in Fig.2 
Fig1: Mobile vs Desktop
Fig.2: Day Pattern for different channel





















Recently, I was going through one of the Gartner survey where they tested the available mobile platforms on the various protocols to understand which are best. They came with top 6 leading mobile apps development platform. Below is some high level information for all 6 but in my next post I will give more dept analysis on open source vs paid version. Also please find some interesting trend on there popularity after they hit the market–

1)   SAP- Mobile platform

Compared with other major independent software vendors (ISVs), SAP bet early on mobility. Its latest mobile offering,Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP), has matured rapidly since its initial release in 2010, providing a flexible application development environment with plug-ins for Eclipse and Visual Studio, along with a proprietary studio. While it has a steeper learning curve than many other solutions, it is an excellent choice for broad mobile initiatives, especially in conjunction with SAP's Afaria mobile device management (MDM) solution. SAP closed its acquisition of Syclo, another leading vendor of mobile application development platforms, in June of this year. 

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2)   IBM Worklight

IBM® Worklight helps you extend your business to mobile devices. It is designed to provide an open, comprehensive platform to build, run and manage HTML5,CSS3,Dojo Mobile cross, hybrid and native mobile apps. IBM Worklight can help you reduce both app development and maintenance costs, improve time-to-market and enhance mobile app governance and security. 
Even the recent surveys shows that IBM Worklight is gradually picking the pace in the market and it is becoming favorite of developers as well as the enterprises. In the graph given below one can see the search trend of IBM Worklight. It is clearly visible that there will be a very tough competition for first position in near future.

3)   Adobe (Phone Gap)

Adobe Systems acquired Nitobi Software, maker of the PhoneGap framework, in the fourth quarter of 2011. PhoneGap is used to wrap HTML5, apps in native containers, making it a strong choice for media-rich enterprises with requirement for mobile clients, or organizations that want to wrap mobile Web applications developed with other platforms like Sencha, Dojo Mobile, jQuery Mobile and others. It's available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS platforms. More details are covered below

Search trends of Phone Gap also looks very promising. They are also being very constant since last couple of years. It will be difficult to say whether this technology will ever become number one preference of the enterprises or not?

4)   jQuery Mobile (Open source)

Part of the non-profit Software Freedom Conservancy's jQuery open source project, jQuery Mobile is a good fit for organizations that need an open source mobile Web framework that will allow them to leverage existing jQuery skills. The framework provides the ability to use HTML, JavaScript and CSS to build interactive mobile Web pages for an array of smartphones, and it can be used with PhoneGap to build hybrid mobile applications.


The search trend of jQuery mobile are as follow-

 

5)   Kony

When it first debuted in 2007, Kony focused on consumer-facing applications, but has since then added B2E capabilities, through organic growth. Kony's platform is a good fit for projects that require the use of native features on an array of mobile devices. The environment can be used to build apps once for tablets, smartphones, feature phones, mobile browsers and even desktop browsers, and then deploy to all of them.
It looks like Kony was a wave of the time which has faded as soon as it came in the news. These days developers are preferring other platforms over Kony. Some statement can be supported by the screen shot given below 

6. Antenna

Antenna Mobility Platform (AMP) is a good fit for organizations that need to build multiple applications for various types of mobile devices and deploy them as a cloud service. AMP is composed of a development studio together with a scalable cloud runtime service and set of clients that run on a wide array of mobile devices. Its AMPchroma mobile software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, which was debuted in February 2012, adds more capabilities, like integration with MDM based on Antenna's acquisition of Volantis Systems.


Again the search trend of Antenna has been very constant and this technology is surviving from the last couple of years. The search trend graph of Antenna shows the following results-
Looking at each and every platform, it can be just said that each one of them has 
something very unique to offer to the app developers as well as mobile app development service providers. I would suggest my readers to discuss the desired platform and its advantages with the developer of your project before making the final call.

In my next blog post I will share information on Mobile platform Open source vs Paid version . Till then, enjoy my blogs and don’t forget to leave a comment!


Reference:
  1. Gartner
  2. IBM
  3. CNET
  4. Linked in Independent articles
  5. Google analysts
  6. Independent articles published by experts
  7. Wikipedia
  8. Omnie Solutions (http://omniesolutions.blogspot.com/)
  9. Smart Insight smartinsight.com