Specifications

PC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 www.pcmag.com
44
FIRST LOOKS
BY RICHARD V. DRAGAN
A
imed squarely at larger
companies,
IBM’s Web-
Sphere Commerce Pro-
fessional Edition 5.5
($80,000 per
CPU) offers a truly scalable plat-
form for e-business. If you can
get over the initial sticker shock,
this package is remarkably deep:
IBM has bundled many advanced
capabilities in the core product,
including analytics, auctions, and
extensive site administration for
business managers.
We installed WebSphere
under Windows Server 2000
with
SP3. (As a J2EE-based solu-
tion, the platform is also avail-
able on Linux and
AIX.) The re-
lease comes on ten
CDs, five of
which are required for the mini-
mal recommended installation.
There is a (welcome) Quick
Start option that sets up and
connects the various compo-
nents, which include
IBM DB2,
IBM’s HTTP Server, and Web-
Sphere Application Server 5.0 as
the underlying platform.
Of course, quick is a relative
term: The wizard ran for about 2
hours. Additional components
for the recommendation engine
(using technology from Like-
Minds) and the Commerce Ana-
lyzer for a data mart require sep-
arate installation procedures.
You can swap out selected
components—using Oracle as
IBM’s Sphere of Influence
the database instead of DB2, for
example—in the set-up utility.
For production environments,
the wizard automates creating
a three-node installation where
database, app server, and com-
merce components reside on dif-
ferent servers for scalability.
WebSphere also provides a
half-dozen sample stores in
store archive (.sar) files, which
are very helpful when you’re
creating a new online store.
Using a wizard, we created a
sample online clothing store and
simulated browsing and shop-
ping activity for 100 users.
The default functionality
found in these sample stores is
truly impressive. In addition to
the expected support for search-
ing, shopping carts, and placing
and tracking orders, the default
store includes advanced features
such as guided selling, which
brings site visitors to products
interactively. There’s also sup-
port for auctions (including a
discussion board to post mes-
sages about items on the virtual
block), plus excellent support for
multiple languages (10 by de-
fault) and over 20 currencies.
Support for a payment module
to process credit card orders on-
or off-line also comes built in.
For administrators, the Com-
merce Accelerator tool is a very
impressive console for control-
ling every aspect of a store. This
menu-driven Web application
provides easy access to catego-
ries, products, users, orders, and
campaigns. It also gives you a
handle on advanced options for
auctions and tweaks for the
guided-selling features.
With WebSphere,
IBM has
done an excellent job at letting
business managers control a site
instead of having to call
IT for
everyday store maintenance. A
good example of this is the Pro-
motion wizard, which guides
you through the details of setting
up sales and discounts. Logic for
discounts is extensive and even
includes support for how to han-
dle overlapping discounts.
Another standout feature for
business managers is the Prod-
ucts screen, which gives you
powerful searching capabilities
for finding products to view and
modify. We liked the screen that
listed all the images associated
with a set of products. Adding a
product was also speedy enough,
though uploading new product
image files required a separate
step. We also applaud the control
you’re given over ads and ban-
ners, which you can easily con-
figure throughout a site by
means of a convenient screen.
Reporting in WebSphere is
also strong, with about a dozen
precanned reports for tracking
inventory and orders, overall
site revenue, and other metrics
for your store.
IBM’s experience
with real customers shines
here—and throughout the prod-
uct—since the reports needed
for real-world stores (such as
tracking expected inventory
shipments and customer re-
turns) are included. The Com-
merce Analyzer tool sets up a
data mart based on your store’s
sales data and lets business deci-
sion makers determine what’s
working and what’s not with
over 200 reports.
Online stores generated by e-
commerce solutions usually
come half-full or half-empty, de-
pending how you look at them.
It’s usually up to your develop-
ment team—or third-party add-
ons—to customize the store for
your precise needs.
IBM bun-
dles almost all of the whistles
and bells and real-world neces-
sities for most
B2C and B2B sce-
narios. This raises the price tag
of the solution, but you aren’t
likely to find any limitations.
The default store has features
that will likely cost more to im-
plement on your own.
All things considered,
IBM’s
WebSphere is a deep e-com-
merce solution that’s tailored to
the needs of real business users.
WebSphere Commerce Profes-
sional Edition 5.5
Direct price: $80,000 per CPU. IBM
Corp., 888-746-7426,
www.ibm.com/websphere/
commerce.
lllll
Designed for store managers, not techies, IBM’s WebSphere af-
fords excellent control over virtually every aspect of your store.
It’s easy to drive new sales using wizards that let ordinary
business users select products for discounts and promotions.