Demandware Teams With eBay on Omnichannel E-Commerce Solution

Demandware and eBay Enterprise on Monday announced an alliance to develop a fully enabled omnichannel commerce solution that will provide integrated access to Demandware's Commerce Cloud platform and eBay Enterprise's suite of back-end and fulfillment technologies and services.

The solution will let current and prospective clients significantly reduce the complexity of managing their front- and back-end systems to deliver an all-around customer experience, said the companies, which have several customers in common, including Michaels Stores.
"Demandware gains a broader set of capabilities beyond just e-commerce cloud for its customers, which should enable it to better compete against other e-commerce partnerships out there," said Rebecca Wettemann, a research VP at Nucleus Research.
"Likely more important is the boost Demandware gets from the eBay brand," she told CRM Buyer.

Current Offerings

Demandware's Commerce Cloud streamlines retail operations across all digital channels, delivering a unified view of customer data across all shopping channels, the company said.
It's automatically updated throughout the year, is highly secure and customizable, and can scale to support the largest enterprise dealers.
The eBay Enterprise suite of post-click commerce technologies and services includes retail order management, store fulfillment and drop-ship management.
It provides users with a centralized records system for orders and inventory across the supply chain so they can fulfill orders from distribution centers, physical stores or suppliers.
The company's commerce services include payments, tax, fraud prevention, fulfillment, and freight and customer care. They let users maximize order conversions, minimize risk, introduce operational efficiencies, and deliver great customer experiences, eBay Enterprise said.
It's not clear when the joint solution will be rolled out.

Potential Impact 

"The announcement is very attractive to both existing and new customers," remarked Ray Wang, principal analyst at Constellation Research.
"Consider Demandware the front end and eBay Enterprise's offering the back end that makes the front end more efficient and smarter. They work hand in hand and address a gap many customers have had," he told CRM Buyer.
Demandware "has a great customer base; eBay has a more modern architecture," Wang said. The joint solution will "help Demandware customers who seek to modernize an older platform."
However, the announcement "is unlikely to make existing eBay Enterprise customers that are using another commerce platform today jump to Demandware unless their existing platform is aging or in need of a significant upgrade," observed Nucleus Research's Wettemann.

eBay's Evolution

eBay Enterprise is owned by a group of investors -- Sterling Partners, Longview Asset Management, Innotrac, and companies owned by the Permira Funds -- that purchased it from eBay last year for US$925 million.
The investors then spun out Magento, an open source e-commerce platform that eBay had acquired back in 2011 to serve as one of the pillars of its X.commerce ecosystem together with PayPal, Milo and RedLaser. PayPal was spun off last year.

Importance of Omnichannel Strategies

Consumers increasingly are accessing online stores from mobile devices in a variety of ways -- through search engines, directly from a retailer's site, and through social media and other apps -- giving rise to data that retailers need to track.
The move to engage customers online has spawned yet another source of consumer data.
Additionally, consumers often want to be able to continue conversations they began in one medium in yet another medium.
All of that makes omnichannel support critical for businesses.
"The market is shifting as CRM is changing to include commerce," Constellation Research's Wang said. "Right now, companies expect to deliver from campaign to commerce, and we can expect more partnerships and acquisitions in this space in the next 12 to 18 months." 

 

Read More »

Oracle Pulls Plug on Java Browser Plug-In

Oracle earlier this week announced its decision to scrap its Java browser plug-in.

The plug-in, which has been a frequent target of hackers, won't be included in the next version of the kit for Java developers, JDK 9, which is expected to ship in September. Oracle's action was motivated by browser makers' withdrawal of support for the plug-in.
As browser vendors restrict and reduce support for plug-ins in their products, developers of applications that depend on the Java plug-in need to consider alternatives, the company said.

Victim of Mobile

In a white paper for developers released this month, Oracle said plug-ins have become undesirable in a tech world that's increasingly mobile.
"The rise of web usage on mobile device browsers, typically without support for plugins, increasingly led browser makers to want to restrict and remove standards based plugin support from their products, as they tried to unify the set of features available across desktop and mobile versions," the white paper said.
"Google and Microsoft have already gotten away from using the Java plug-in," said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.
"It's an evolution of the software environment," he told TechNewsWorld. "Plug-ins were great when we were first trying to enable multimedia features at websites, but the way that things are programmed now, they're more a security hazard than a benefit."

History of Vulnerability

Plug-ins are similar to browser extensions, but with a lot more permissions, noted Alex Smith, director of identity and access management products at Intermedia.
"They were primarily created to allow non-HTML content to be viewed from within the browser. A program external to the browser, like a PDF viewer, would actually render the content and then display it within the browser," he told TechNewsWorld.
"In the case of the Java plug-in, this allows Java code -- not JavaScript -- to be executed locally -- that is, outside of the browser -- and displayed within the browser window," Smith said.
"Since the Java client has a long history of security bugs and sloppy patching, it makes for a really attractive attack vector when paired with a browser," he added.
Because the latest versions of the leading browsers have disabled the Java plug-in, Oracle's move won't affect many consumers, but it could have an impact on some businesses.
"I only really see it used for legacy applications, typically in-house-developed apps which should have died years ago," Smith said.
"Forcing companies to deal with and remove this legacy crap might be painful in the short term, but it's always the right thing to do in the long term," he added.

HTML5 or Web Start?

For some companies, however, retiring those legacy apps -- even in the name of security -- could prove to be difficult.
"Overall this is a good step forward, but it doesn't address legacy dependencies," said Simon Crosby, CTO at Bromium.
"For example, if your company uses Oracle ERP 11, you're still stuck on Java 6 or 7 on the endpoint, which have a woeful security record," he told TechNewsWorld. "You can't buy a new ERP system just to prevent cyberattacks."
Pulling the plug on the Java plug-in means developers will have to move any apps that use it to another technology. Oracle recommends using Java Web Start, although that may not be the best alternative.
"I believe that most vendors should invest in HTML5 technologies that are native to the browser and receive the development attention of the whole community," Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, told TechNewsWorld.
Removing unnecessary plug-ins from browsers can only improve security, said Craig Williams, senior technical leader at Cisco's Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group.
"By removing plug-ins from the browser," he told TechNewsWorld, "we remove this attack surface, making all users more safe from both known and unknown zero-day vulnerabilities." 

Read More »

No Place Like Drone

Winter finally cranked into gear in my neck of the woods with a single-day 40-centimeter snowfall (that's about 16 inches) that's still mostly on the ground. Scooting around town isn't exactly the most enjoyable thing in the world at the minute, so now, more than ever, I'd like to get my hands on the 184 from Ehang.
It can transport a person for up to 10 miles or a 23-minute flight time, and there's no need to have a pilot's license. Just tap in your destination, press a button, and you're airborne. You can relax with air conditioning, a 4G data connection, and a reading light (or look out the window nervously while you're whipping along as fast as 60 mph at up to a height of 11,000 feet).

The safety aspect is a touch worrisome, but Ehang apparently has failsafe measures in place. Plus, humans are nothing if not a bold species -- and my spirit of adventure, married with a desire to avoid walking in foot-deep snow for the next four months, means I am supremely eager to have one of these carting me around, death wish be darned.
If flying cars aren't the future, perhaps automated octocopter transports are -- at least until we're all in self-driving cars.

Read More »

Kodak's Back

As we continue our never-ending love affair with nostalgia, the technology from our past will continue to re-emerge. The latest is Kodak's 21st-century spin on the Super 8 camera.
The home movie camera that gave rise to innumerable amateur videographers is back. The prototype Kodak displayed at CES had a 3.5-inch fold-out screen, so you won't need to close one eye and peer through a viewfinder to see what you're capturing.

Details otherwise are scant, though images show an SD card slot and various cable sockets, so the footage you capture may not exist only on a Kodak film cartridge.
Also, when you send footage to Kodak for processing, you'll receive a digital copy, so Kodak is somewhat in tune with the modern video recording. It's antiquated even to consider sending one's footage away for processing -- yet it brings a physicality and a sense of romance that digital video can't match. I hope the world isn't quite finished with filming kids' birthday parties with a Super 8 camera.

Read More »

Gadget Ogling: Fitbit's Smartwatch, Super Home Movies, and Flying Machines

Welcome to another edition of Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that breaks down the latest in gadget announcements while holed up far, far away from CES.

One of the most important weeks in the technology calendar brought gadgets running the gamut from weird to wonderful. On the show floor this week are a Fitbit smartwatch, a revival of a classic brand, and a personal transport system.
The Fitbit Blaze includes a continuous heart-rate monitor, a connected GPS, and a multisport mode that offers performance data for certain activities, with a feature that recognizes the type of workout or sport and tracks it appropriately.
Throw on top of that Fitbit's sleep tracker and a reported five-day battery life, and you have what looks a solid smartwatch with the strongest brand name in fitness trackers behind it.

Read More »