WebSphere Commerce Portal V5.4 Solutions

100 WebSphere Commerce Portal V5.4 Solutions

4.1 Business scenario

This section describes the business scenario of the fictitious CEP commerce

enabled portal solution, and includes the following topics:

򐂰 Initial context, which describes the current business solution of CEP.

򐂰 Business challenges, describing the business drivers for moving towards a

commerce enabled portal solution.

4.1.1 Initial context

CEP developed a multi-channel business-to-business commerce solution using

the WebSphere Commerce Business Edition V5.4. The solution is a customized

version of the ToolTech sample store provided by the Commerce Enhancement

Pack. It includes the following features:

򐂰 Contract-based purchasing

򐂰 Order management

򐂰 Advanced search

򐂰 Catalog navigation

򐂰 Enhanced buyer-side administrative tasks

򐂰 Enhanced seller-side administrative tasks

򐂰 Enhanced payment integration

򐂰 WAP-enabled

򐂰 Sametime enabled help desk support center

The store supports multi-channel access and the look and feel is customized

according to the supported channel.

The customer’s security policy enforces specific placements of the system

components (see Figure 4-1 on page 101):

򐂰 Databases must be placed within the restricted zone.

򐂰 Business applications, such as the commerce solution, must be placed within

the production zone.

򐂰 Development environments are located within the intranet zone.

External users have to pass from the Internet to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) to

access the CEP store. The DMZ provides only load balancing and reverse proxy

services to enforce security policies. Requests are routed from the Internet to the

Note: Throughout the working example chapters, we will refer to the ITSO

sample as the ITSO B2B CEP store.

Chapter 4. Business requirements analysis and solution design 101

DMZ to predefined nodes within the production zone. A set of firewalls secures

the access to resources as displayed in Figure 4-1.

Figure 4-1 Customer’s zone topology

4.1.2 Business challenges

After the successful launch of the business-to-business solution, the CEP

management wants to leverage and extend its business services. As a result the

managers are focusing on an integrated approach or user reach to increase their

customer satisfaction, which is a challenging business success factor. In order to

evaluate solutions, they have provided the following criteria:

򐂰 Leverage and integrate business services using industry standards.

򐂰 Multi-channel access point for internal and external users (for example,

standard Web browser clients, WAP mobile phones, and other mobile device

clients).

򐂰 Co-existence with current implemented solutions.

򐂰 Single sign-on.

򐂰 Enhanced commerce capabilities including:

– Dynamic Context Groups.

– Rule-based and role-based personalization (not implemented in the ITSO

working example).

Production ZoneOutside Zone Demilitarized Zone Internal Network

Domain Name

Server

User

Public Key

Infrastructure

I

n

t

e

r

n

e

t

Protocol Firewall

Domain Firewall

Domain Firewall

Business-to-Business

Solution

Commerce

Development

Database

Domain

Domain Firewall

Intranet

Restricted Zone