Microsoft announced general availability of its Site Server 3.0 product today, including versions aimed at intranet and commerce providers.
The new release of the software, which had entered beta testing in January, increases capabilities for site and commerce personalization, and allows for software plug-ins intended to appeal both to sellers and buyers of products via electronic commerce.
Despite recently announcing it will buy out Firefly, which provided a snap-in module for site server that allowed for profile management, Microsoft said it will continue to rely on resellers and independent developers to fill out the solution.
“We are not a one-stop shop,” Anthony Bay, general manager for commercial systems at Microsoft, said during a news conference at the Internet & Electronic Commerce Conference in New York City. “We provide the infrastructure and the interoperability.”
Site Server will interface with systems that use SQL, Oracle databases, SAP R/3, and IBM mainframes, Bay said.
The product also will incorporate personalization technologies that will support increased enterprises’ emphasis on managing intranet information dynamically and serving it directly to users on sign-up.