Forreter Reearc, Ic., 60 AcorPark Drive, Cambride, MA 02140 UsATe: +1 617.613.6000 | Fax: +1 617.613.5000 | www.orreter.com The Forrester Wave™: B2C Commerce Suites, Q3 2012 bBriaK. Waker, september 24, 2012 FOR: eBuie&CaestrateProeioaKey TaKeaWays CmmrcstVrd’t Jt prvBc Fctt; TecCmmrcCbtoday’s marketplace is orcing eBusiness proessionals to consider alternatives to selecting s olutions ocused on just a transactional website. Vendors now oer solutions that enable marketing, commerce, and service capabilities across manyconsumer touchpoints and geographies. TCmmrcstMrkt igrwaFrmlk Fr Mttct stTe B2C commerce suite market is growing as rms respond to changing customer expectations. Te growing importance oonline, mobile, and so cial interactions or serving customers across touchpoints with multiple brands, opportunities to expand globally, and complex order management needs are driving the market or commerce suite solutions. iBM, br, orc, admwrlTpck iTCmmrcstMrkt As previous technology becomes outdated, less eective, and more expensive to maintain, improved multitouchpoin t commerce eatures, business tools, and solution exibility will dictate which providers lead the pack. Vendors need strong site management, content management, order management, and merchandising tools to win with clients.
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Forreter Reearc, Ic., 60 Acor Park Drive, Cambride, MA 02140 UsA Te: +1 617.613.6000 | Fax: +1 617.613.5000 | www.orreter.com
The Forrester Wave™: B2C CommerceSuites, Q3 2012b Bria K. Waker, september 24, 2012
FOR: eBuie &
Cae strate
Proeioa
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oday’s marketplace is orcing eBusiness proessionals to consider alternativesto selecting solutions ocused on just a transactional website. Vendors now oer
solutions that enable marketing, commerce, and service capabilities across many
consumer touchpoints and geographies.
T Cmmrc st Mrkt i grw a Frm lk Fr
Mttct st
Te B2C commerce suite market is growing as rms respond to changing customer
expectations. Te growing importance o online, mobile, and social interactions
or serving customers across touchpoints with multiple brands, opportunities to
expand globally, and complex order management needs are driving the market or
commerce suite solutions.
iBM, br, orc, a dmwr l T pck i T
Cmmrc st Mrkt
As previous technology becomes outdated, less eective, and more expensive
to maintain, improved multitouchpoint commerce eatures, business tools, and
solution exibility will dictate which providers lead the pack. Vendors need strong
site management, content management, order management, and merchandising
Mart has even enabled customers to order online and then pay with cash when picking up the
order in a store.7 As a result, orders will no longer be ullled rom a single ulllment center.
omorrow’s orders will be sourced rom a wide variety o locations that include not only the
ulllment center but also drop-ship vendors, distributors, stores, and third-party logisticsproviders that may either regionally stage high-demand products or support seasonal inventory
volumes — or both. Order management capabilities are critical to driving a high-quality
consumer experience. Tese capabilities may include business logic to support best-ulllment-
node selection, exible integration with a diverse supply chain, and customer service interaces
to manage issues and exceptions. And to drive protable orders, transportation and ulllment
costs must be actors in how orders are routed and brokered.
■ Support or multiple businesses and regions rom a common inrastructure. oday’s
multichannel businesses are increasingly multisite and multibrand businesses. Tis trend enables
more specic and targeted marketing opportunities or customers; they can also benet rom
search engine optimization (SEO) by enabling the use o more specic terms and metadata to
target related search terms. Innovative merchandising and marketing in areas like ash sales,
social commerce, and mobile commerce are also driving orces behind the need to support a
diverse set o sites and customer touchpoints rom a common inrastructure. But global
commerce has also emerged rom being a nice-to-have requirement to a must-have one — even
though many organizations may not yet be ready to ully invest in standalone sites and businesses
or new global markets. For many businesses, international markets present a long-term
opportunity to grow and diversiy their global retail operations and/or brands.
Tere have been a large number o mergers and acquisitions in the commerce solutions space over
the past two years, keeping bankers, lawyers, and, indeed, analysts busy. Old alliances have been
torn apart, new portolios ormed, and old sales arguments recongured.
In the past ew years alone, IBM has acquired Sterling Commerce, Coremetrics, and Unica (among
others), proceeding to “blue-wash” the oerings and embark on an aggressive product development
and marketing initiative it terms “Smarter Commerce.” Oracle has acquired Art echnology Group
(AG), Endeca, RightNow echnologies, and FatWire Solutions (again, among others) and sought
to rationalize the product portolio and sales team organization as well as clariy the marketing and
partner messages. Micros-Retail bought Fry Multimedia, integrating the OCP product into Micros
and splitting o Fry as a design shop. RedPrairie acquired Escalate Retail and began to invest in
the Blue Martini product and “clienteling” in-store solutions while shedding some o the product
baggage. eBay acquired GSI Commerce and gained a controlling interest in Intershop while alsoacquiring the remaining portion o Magento that it did not already own. CDC Soware bought
relatively little-known commerce solution ruition and has struggled to re-energize it. And lastly,
we saw Demandware execute an initial public oering, rendering its soware-as-a-service (SaaS)
business model and product strategy open or all to scrutinize and evaluate. Phew!
Tere may not be many signicant independent players le in the market, but we can expect
partnering and potential changes o control to be ongoing orces as payments providers, content
management system vendors, enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors, and point-o-sale (POS)
vendors all react to the changing dynamics in their industry — especially the overwhelming need to
be multichannel, multitouchpoint, agile commerce solutions.8 We will also see many startups orm,
SMB players move upmarket, emerging market solutions gain worldwide interest, and many pointsolutions added to the rosters o the commerce solutions providers.
B2C CoMMeRCe suiTe eValuaTion oVeRVieW
o assess how well the B2C commerce suite vendors meet the evolving needs o the market and to
determine how the vendors stack up against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and
weaknesses o top B2C commerce platorm vendors across a range o business and technology criteria.
T Fc o or B2C Cmmrc st Frrtr Wv
Our Forrester Wave evaluation ocuses on the requirements and needs o the direct-to-consumer
online retail business. We have principally ocused on products that enable:
■ Direct-to-consumer commerce shopping and customer experiences.Tese capabilities include
■ Multitouchpoint and site management, content management, and business optimization.
Tese tools include product content management, web content management (WCM), online
marketing, analytics and testing, security, order management, and customer service.
■ Te common integration needs o online retailers. Tese include integration to ERP systems,
merchandise planning systems, content management systems, customer service and customer
relationship management (CRM) systems, inventory management systems, nance and
accounting management systems, and business intelligence (BI) solutions.
hw W hv evv or evt o B2C Cmmrc st
We have taken a hard look at the requirements o our B2C commerce clients to understand how this
year’s evaluation needed to evolve, driven by the nature o the many inquiries and projects where
we support clients directly in their commerce technology selection projects. We made a number o changes that have aected the criteria, scoring, and weighting within the Forrester Wave since our
evaluation o B2C commerce platorms in Q4 2010, including:
■ An increased emphasis on order management. While we increased the number o order
management criteria in our Q4 2010 B2C eCommerce platorm evaluation, we have urther
emphasized this capability in the criteria and their weighting in this evaluation. Tis is driven by
the increased complexity o clients’ B2C ulllment scenarios, leveraging multiple ulllment
centers, drop-ship vendors, participation in marketplaces, and use o physical retail stores as both
pickup points and ulllment locations. Increasingly, clients are looking to solve all direct orders
via the commerce system, including the Web, phone, and mobile, as well as to support orders
initiated or ullled in stores. And that solution must also span multiple sites and geographies.While existing ERP systems and warehouse management systems may have capabilities in these
areas, B2C companies are increasingly looking or third-party systems that specialize in order
management to meet these needs. Pairing these systems with commerce platorms is
advantageous, given that the platorms increasingly power multiple customer touchpoints.
■ An increased emphasis on site, product, and web content management.Product content
management and WCM capabilities are not new requirements or most commerce platorms, but
the stakes and the solutions have continued to increase as the sources o product content —
editorial, vendor-supplied, syndicated, and user-generated — have grown. Businesses are
increasingly seeking tools to improve workow and efciency, as well as tools that allow them to
leverage a variety o content across touchpoints and user experiences. Tis desire or greater
control over the customer experience — minimizing the need or developer or I intervention
or every change — is a common reason why businesses are looking to migrate rom homegrown
solutions or their existing rst- or second-generation commerce solutions. Te growth o
branded sites, ash sale sites, and globalization as well as the ongoing ocus on SEO continue to
be key drivers or improved content and site management tools.
■ A ocus on global multichannel and multitouchpoint product strategy. When evaluating
the strength o a vendor’s product strategy, we looked or a number o leading-edge strategic
capabilities that we expect to become increasingly important. Tese include “ront-end”
capabilities such as multichannel/multitouchpoint site management capabilities, mobile
commerce, and in-store and call center solutions. We also included “back-end” suite
integration across critical modules or merchandising, site and content management, and order
management. We also looked at the accelerator or “starter store” (reerence application) that the
solutions provide, and we examined support or multiple ownership and operating models, such
as on-premises, managed/hosted, and SaaS solutions with multiple remuneration models, such
as license, revenue share, and utilization. We also looked at how well these vendors understand
their clients and their clients’ business problems and how they work to build and rene their
product strategy as a result.
or evt Cvr a R o st T — Frm lc T ss
In this evaluation, Forrester ocused on the leading commerce platorms or direct-to-consumer
online retailing — or B2C commerce. Evaluated solutions include a variety o delivery models and
the vendors that oer their solutions across these delivery models, including:
■ On-premises licensed soware platorms. Tese applications can be implemented and run in-
house by internal I resources, or they may be supported via various outsourcing models on a
client’s behal. ypically, these platorms will oer the most exibility over time. Oen, systems
integrators (SIs) or commerce services providers (CSPs) implement and support these solutions.9
■ Hosted/managed platorms. Close cousins o licensed soware applications, the vendors thatoer hosted/managed platorms typically implement and run applications on behal o a client,
reducing the internal I resources required to a bare minimum. A ew hosted/managed
application vendors also allow clients to install and run applications internally via a license model.
■ SaaS platorms. SaaS solutions rely on a multi-instance application, where many clients use
the same technology and hosting environment. Tese solutions typically cost less to run, oer
the benets o shared development and support, and may be implemented more efciently or
clients. Downsides in the past have been a lack o exibility and control and a sense that the
development needs o an individual client may be subject to the needs o the vendor or its larger
clients. Tis concern appears to be lessening as SaaS solutions continue to mature.
hw T Crtr ar orz
Aer examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we
developed a comprehensive set o evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 75 criteria,
content, and site content management; B2C eCommerce eatures; marketing tools; customer
account management; customer service; order management; reporting and analytics; security;
community and social commerce; globalization/internationalization; and proessional services.
■ Strategy. We compared the strategies o each company with the needs o commerce executives,
industry trends, and Forrester’s orward-looking vision o the commerce market to assess how
well each vendor is positioned or uture success. We examined each vendor’s product road map;
planned B2C enhancements; target market and B2C ocus; key technology partners and channel
strategy; commerce service providers; and cost o ownership.
■ Market presence. Many rms support online businesses with technology orphaned by vendors
that struggled to be protable or have gone out o business. eBusiness and I executives
must look or vendors with a strong and stable installed base, steady growth, and a network
o partners and resellers. o determine the current market presence or our evaluation, we
combined inormation about each vendor’s installed base, new customers, revenue, revenue
growth, and the nancial resources to support the strategy and product development.
T B2C Cmmrc st ar T Bt o T Bt
Forrester included 10 vendors in this assessment: Demandware, Digital River, hybris, IBM,Intershop, Magento, Micros-Retail, Oracle (AG), RedPrairie, and SAP.10 While we considered
including a large number o companies oering commerce solutions or this assessment, each o the
vendors we included has (see Figure 2):
■ A signicant ocus on — and market presence in — enterprise B2C commerce solutions.
Although many o the vendors included in this assessment serve clients in other market
segments — such as business-to-business (B2B), business-to-government (B2G), and business-
to-employee (B2E) — each has a ocused product oering or its established B2C commerce
customer base as well as an ongoing to commitment to B2C commerce clients.
■ A protable or stable business with at least $20 million in revenues and client momentum.
o ensure that the vendors we evaluated will remain viable in this evolving market, Forrester
limited its analysis to companies that have the resources and momentum to sustain themselves
through variable market conditions. Each o these companies has a minimum o $20 million in
annual commerce solution product sales, is protable or indicates it is approaching protability,
and has at least 50 existing clients as well as positive sales momentum.
■ Te ability to support enterprise-class commerce clients across multiple B2C verticals.
Forrester denes enterprise-class commerce as websites transacting more than $100 million in
online sales annually. Many clients o the assessed vendors may be transacting less than this, but
these solutions are running one or more sites at this level and have demonstrated this capability
across clients in multiple B2C verticals. Vendors that primarily serve clients in one specic
vertical, such as soware or media, were not included in this report.11
Forrester did not include companies in this assessment with a primary ocus in other related market
segments, such as:
■ B2B-ocused solutions with limited current B2C commerce capabilities.We may consider
companies like BigMachines, Igniy, Insite Soware, NetSuite, and Oracle’s Siebel in the uture
as their B2C commerce capabilities evolve, but they do not have a mature B2C-ocused solution
today. We may evaluate these, as well as many o the companies represented in this B2Ccommerce suite evaluation, in upcoming research ocused on B2B commerce. Past research is
also available or B2B commerce solutions.12
■ Solutions ocused on small and medium-size businesses (SMBs). Tis includes solutions rom
companies such as Amazon.com (Webstore by Amazon), eBay (ProStores), Shopiy, Volusion,
and Yahoo (Yahoo Merchant Solutions), which tend to serve clients operating with less than $10
million in annual online revenues. However, we have written research on these and many other
SMB commerce solutions in North America and Europe.13
■ Full-service solutions aimed at providing a suite o capabilities or commerce companies.
We have written separate research on and an overview o the capabilities o ull-service solutionslike Amazon, eCommera, GSI Commerce, ModusLink Global Solutions, OneStop, PFSweb, and
Speed FC.14
■ Digital- or media-ocused solutions. Tese providers ocus their solutions on media, soware,
online subscriptions, and other virtual or digital goods. We have written separate research on
vendors that specialize in the unique requirements o selling digital goods, including asknet,
Avangate, BlueSnap’s Plimus, cleverbridge, and Elastic Path Soware.15 Digital River, a provider
included in the current B2C commerce suite evaluation, also oers solutions or this market.
Figure 2 Evaluated Vendors: Vendor Inormation And Selection Criteria
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
Vendor
Demandware
Digital River
hybris
IBM
Intershop
Magento
Micros-Retail
RedPrairie
SAP
Product version
evaluated
SaaS
SaaS
4.7
7.0
7.0
1.11
4.0
2012.1
WCEM 2.0
Vendor selection criteria
The vendor’s product was generally available at the time of data collection, with at least three referencesavailable for contact.
The vendor has a focused product oering for, an established customer base in, and an ongoingcommitment to B2C commerce.
The vendor generates at least $20 million in annual eCommerce platform software and services sales, isprotable, and has at least 50 clients with positive sales momentum.
The vendor demonstrates the ability to support enterprise-class direct-to-consumer businesses with salesof more than $100 million per year with the product evaluated.
B2C CoMMeRCe suiTes haVe eVolVed suBsTanTially
Since our last evaluation in 2010, we have seen the welcome evolution o many commerce platorms
and solution suites. Tis evolution is driven in part by solution providers’ ocus on changing clientrequirements, as well as by the signicant merger and acquisition activity over the past two years.
Since our earlier detailed evaluation, we have seen dramatic improvements and advances rom many
o the evaluated solution providers as well as across the market as a whole. As a group, these systems
are poised to support their clients as they increasingly move into multichannel and multitouchpoint
commerce and support the next generation o customer shopping and research touchpoints.
However, our evaluation also highlights very important dierentiators and models this year.
Our evaluation uncovered a diverse and complex market in which (see Figure 3):
■ IBM, hybris, Oracle, and Demandware lead the pack. IBM, hybris, and Oracle oer strong
eCommerce capabilities, the ability to support multiple touchpoints and multichannelrequirements, and strong or very strong business management tools. IBM has the lead in order
management capabilities with its Sterling Commerce solution, whereas hybris and Oracle have
less mature solutions in this area. Demandware oers a SaaS solution with strong multisite
and eective merchandising tools, but its order management solution is nascent and aimed at
smaller and less complex clients at this stage. IBM, hybris, and Oracle oer traditional soware
application licensing models but have also worked to add exibility that utilizes third-party
hosted/managed or SaaS models.16
■ Micros-Retail, Intershop, RedPrairie, and Digital River ofer compelling solutions. Each
o these vendors oers strong eCommerce capabilities, with varying multitouchpoint and
multichannel capabilities. Each oers strong to moderately strong eCommerce eatures and
moderately eective business management tools, but the vendors vary considerably in areas
such as product catalog management, WCM, order management, and support or globalization/
Tis evaluation o the enterprise B2C commerce suite market is intended to be a starting point only.
We encourage readers to view the detailed product evaluations and adapt the criteria weightings to
t their individual needs through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool. We also
encourage clients to review the research on other solutions types and segments and to leverage theirinquiry access to learn more beore beginning a selection process.
Leaders in our B2C commerce suite evaluation include:
■ IBM. IBM’s WebSphere Commerce represents a highly exible and scalable enterprise B2C
eCommerce solution; it shows signicant adoption within the top tier o eCommerce retailers and
continued successul growth. Te suite is strengthened through the added capabilities o IBM’s
Sterling Commerce OMS solution along with the Coremetrics and Unica product integrations.
Te IBM solution combines a rich set o eCommerce capabilities with a exible service-oriented
architecture (SOA) and integration capability, enabling the product to be extended and
customized. However, clients have reported concerns over the total cost o ownership, as IBM’s
solutions are less contemporary and use ewer open source elements and conventions that today’s
developers are able to learn quickly. Business user tools such as the IBM Management Center haveevolved, although they are no longer industry-leading, necessitating urther investment by IBM.
IBM has a very strong product strategy ocused on core product enhancements as well as the
building out o a comprehensive suite o multichannel capabilities. A soon-to-be-released SaaS
oering combining WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Commerce in a cloud-based ormat will
be a compelling option or clients that may otherwise be drawn to Demandware.
■ hybris. As a solution, hybris has continued to mature over the past two years — and gained
market share quickly as a result. Specically, hybris has made signicant improvements to its
product’s site management tools, content management tools, and order management capabilities.
While hybris severed its relationship with Endeca (which was acquired by Oracle), the company
acquired iCongo in a creative deal that made iCongo’s key investors the lead ownership groupo hybris.17 aking advantage o the team and solution experience at iCongo, hybris turned to
redevelop an OMS solution and hosted oering. Its progress in these areas is notable or an
enterprise soware solution, illustrating the contemporary nature o the hybris architecture.
Te key dierentiators o hybris remain strong product content management tools, catalog
management, enterprise integration, and globalization/internationalization capabilities. Its
eCommerce eatures have also matured notably, and there is a well-dened ability to extend the
product and customize it to develop dierentiated eCommerce sites across a variety o verticals.
Tis remains a young company growing very quickly, which continues to raise questions o the
potential or over-commitment to clients by either hybris or its partners, which are adding and
scaling their hybris-trained teams exceptionally quickly.
■ Oracle. Oracle declined to participate in this evaluation directly; however, Oracle’s AG continues
to be a leader in B2C eCommerce platorm solutions. A number o actors have led to a perceived
loss in position among the best-o-breed solution providers. First and oremost was the acquisition
o AG by Oracle. Customers are eager to understand how Oracle is tting AG into its overall
Oracle soware and solution oerings, which is only now beginning to be communicated. A series
o related acquisitions — such as RightNow, FatWire, and, most notably, Endeca — has
complicated matters. Despite that, AG combines a strong and well-rounded eCommerce eature
set with an array o targeting, personalization, and customer interaction tools. Oracle’s unique
dierentiator at this point is the opportunity to combine AG and Endeca, adding search-drivencustomer experience management to a commerce platorm oering — something that Oracle is
just beginning to execute. However, Oracle’s order management solutions — eBusiness suite, Siebel,
and Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO) — are not as strong or B2C multichannel
applications. Te biggest question or prospective Oracle customers at this point is its vision or
AG, Endeca, RightNow, and Fusion DOO as an integrated commerce solution oering.
■ Demandware. Demandware has improved its solution in terms o our evaluation perhaps more
than any other solution rom our previous evaluations. Demandware accomplished this through
signicantly improved site and content management tools; the addition o a still relatively basic
but improving order management and call center solution; the addition o commerce service
providers to support client integrations; and the development o open commerce APIs to extend
the platorm. Demandware’s LINK program remains a dierentiator, along with its developer
portals and customer training. Look or Demandware to continue to improve its business
management tools and the sophistication o its integration capabilities. While it remains
committed to its revenue share model, Demandware appears ready to introduce an alternative
“utilization” model soon, aimed at larger prospective clients and partners.
str prrmr B drt strt Wt sm Wk
Strong Perormers in our B2C commerce solution evaluation include:
■ Micros-Retail. Micros-Retail has completed the integration o the Fry solutions into its
oerings, spitting out the services and products while pulling the Fry OCP commerce solution
into MICROS and turning what was le o Fry into an interactive agency ocused principally
on MICROS customers. While the OCP product remains a very strong eCommerce solution
with key dierentiators in areas such as merchandising and customer targeting, MICROS has
yet to ully integrate its order management and call center solutions with the OCP product so
that it can sell and support these eectively as a suite. It seems the product development traction
was aected by MICROS’ decision to develop a lodgings-industry-ocused product based on
OCP; it also showed some indecisiveness in integrating the Fry product and sales teams with
MICROS. However, MICROS has a signicant opportunity to leverage OCP and its other
commerce oerings in a well-integrated multichannel and multitouchpoint solution with the
right investment. Customers will want to see urther development o a MICROS OCP partner
network as well as improved hosted oerings or MICROS to be ully competitive.
■ Intershop. Intershop has made signicant progress since our last evaluation, although it still
has room to improve beore becoming a best-o-breed solution. Te core improvements in
the Intershop product came rom the joint development work it did with GSI Commerce and
a number o supporting partners. Many o these improvements are in the latest versions o
Intershop and in GSI’s next-generation V11 product, and they will continue to become evident
over time. However, it still needs to deliver improved site and content management tools that
business users can leverage, minimizing the need or ongoing developer and I support. Many
o Intershop’s largest clients have reported improved satisaction with Intershop, but they are
also more reliant than ever on Intershop’s proessional services or support. Intershop has basic
order management and product content management capabilities, but many more sophisticated
customers will require third-party solutions in these areas. While Intershop has beneted
rom the controlling stake that GSI (and now eBay) have taken in the company, there remains
a nagging lack o clarity as to the long-term role that Intershop will play in an eBay or GSI
Commerce solutions oering. Tis lack o clarity will continue to plague Intershop’s customerand partner growth, particularly in North America.
■ RedPrairie. RedPrairie acquired Escalate Retail and its collection o commerce solutions —
including Blue Martini, Ecometry, and GERS Retail Systems. Te company has perormed some
surgical product portolio rationalization and combined these dierent solutions with RedPrairie’s
order management and supply chain solutions. On paper, this combination makes or a dynamic
capability set able to meet the eCommerce, OMS, CRM, and supply chain management
requirements o retailers looking to embrace multichannel retailing across digital touchpoints.
However, RedPrairie’s Blue Martini commerce platorm lags the market-leading solutions in
support or enterprise B2C commerce. RedPrairie has already made a notable investment in its
platorm and integration with other RedPrairie products, and this continued ocus on eCommercebusiness solutions and multichannel eatures will be very important or current and uture clients.
Focus may be a challenge or RedPrairie as it looks to add commerce platorm solutions to its base
supply chain and transportation management oerings, but it has a strong vision and appears
committed to developing solutions or its core retail and grocery markets.
■ Digital River. Digital River is best known or supporting soware clients’ eCommerce needs
with checkout, payment, and digital and physical ulllment needs. But as that market has
plateaued to some degree and new entrants have challenged Digital River’s market dominance,
Digital River has diversied into providing broader B2C commerce capabilities. However, the
solution remains somewhat limited by this heritage and lacks the eatures to compete as a best-
o-breed multichannel and multitouchpoint solution. Digital River will appeal to consumer
electronics and digital goods companies looking or a discrete eCommerce solution paired with
ull-service capabilities such as payments, ulllment, and customer service. Digital River has
some strengths in globalization, payments, and security.
Contenders in our B2C commerce solution evaluation include:
■ SAP. SAP Web Channel Experience Management is a solution long in development by SAP.
Te product is implemented in either an on-premises or hosted/managed ashion. Te goal o
the solution is to enable a client with a heavy investment in SAP’s ERP and CRM solutions to
leverage that capability in online commerce. Tereore, areas such as order management and
customer service are inherently intended to leverage the other SAP applications. However, SAP’s
Web Channel Experience Management solution also assumes you will run the digital channels
o CMS solutions, such as SAP’s preerred partner CoreMedia, which notably has little market
presence outside Northern Europe. Tis assumed level o both SAP investment and reliance
on third-party solutions or such central commerce capabilities will limit the appeal o the SAP
solution, though it will be a great t or some. Ultimately, though, many competitive solutions
also integrate deeply with SAP, making SAP Web Channel Experience Management perhaps lessappealing as a standalone solution.
■ Magento. Magento’s growth over the past ew years has been remarkable. apping into a PHP
developer and agency community with a low-cost or ree licensing model and a well-matched set
o solution capabilities or the small online business, Magento has also made inroads in the
midmarket and enterprise market. However, upon close evaluation, Magento still lacks the core
eatures and partner extensions to compete in the enterprise arena, with particular gaps in areas
like CMS, OMS, and customer service eatures. Magento is a strong t or a smaller online
business inside a larger enterprise — such as a smaller brand or emerging market solution — and
will continue to appeal to companies seeking a high degree o customization on the platorm, but
the solution lacks many o the multichannel capabilities required today. Te development o eBay’s X.commerce web services solution — which eBay dubs a “abric” — may enable Magento
to add these eatures through partners more eectively at some point in the uture.
Tr ar M imrtt pr B T W evt hr
Te commerce solutions market is a diverse one, and there are additional solutions that may be
relevant to companies looking or a commerce platorm or services. Tere are numerous platorms
to support companies o dierent sizes, levels o sophistication, geographies, as well as dierent
channels and touchpoints. Some additional solutions to consider include:
■ MarketLive. MarketLive oers an eective product aimed at the midmarket eCommerce
retailer, and it continues to gain momentum in the midmarket specialty retail segment with
a well-priced and well-rounded solution. MarketLive has also improved options or working
with its integration partners or a customer’s own I sta or launching and optimizing a site
post-launch. MarketLive has more than doubled its R&D investment over the past several years
with a ocus on expanded merchant tools, order management, and content management, which
continues to position it well in the midmarket specialty retailer solution segment.
■ GSI Commerce. GSI has been hard at work over the past ew years — together with Intershop
and a number o partners — in developing its next-generation V11 platorm. Te platorm
holds much promise or both GSI and its customers, not to mention GSI’s parent, eBay. For
GSI, the new platorm will be an important departure rom a model in which GSI sta had to
execute almost every change and update to the site on a client’s behal; it will move to one in
which customers will have sel-service business management tools and GSI will be much less
involved day to day. Alongside the Intershop-based commerce platorm, GSI has developed
a Sterling Commerce-based retail OMS and a business intelligence (BI) suite or reporting
capability, both o which may prove to be key dierentiators. However, migrating customers to
this next-generation platorm is a signicant undertaking raught with risks, and impatient and
rustrated customers will add to the challenge.
■ Elastic Path Soware. Elastic Path is an eective eCommerce solution but has some limitations
that reect its specic vertical ocus. Elastic Path now largely ocuses on digital goods andsubscriptions, making it relevant to the media, telecom, and soware industries in particular.
Tese industries have a subset o eCommerce requirements that dier rom those o other B2C
eCommerce verticals, although these are oen very specialized. As a result, areas such as WCM,
product content management, and order management receive much less ocus or require third-
party solutions as well as Elastic Path. Somewhat uniquely, Elastic Path ships source code with
its application and leverages many common open source rameworks and products, enabling
developers to extend and customize the product widely. However, Elastic Path has struggled to
develop partners to support clients, limiting its growth as a commerce solution.
■ Ascentium. Late in 2011, Microso announced that it was dropping its Commerce Server
product; this had been the market leader in the early days o eCommerce but had lagged inour recent evaluations. Ascentium — through its acquisition o Cactus Commerce — became
the beneciary o Microso’s exit rom the commerce solutions market; Microso handed
the Commerce Server product over to Ascentium due to its history o building the product
and technical expertise with it.18 With that transition complete and with customer and partner
support in place, Ascentium is now beginning to invest in the Commerce Server product and is
developing compelling partnerships that will help it attempt to regain relevance as an enterprise
commerce solution. Tis will be a challenge or a product that today resides within an agency
and that may lack the resources needed to innovate and invest, but it is welcome news or a
market in need o Microso-centric enterprise commerce solutions.
Te online version o Figure 3 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed
product evaluations and customizable rankings.
dt src u i T Frrtr Wv
Forrester used a combination o our data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses o each
solution:
■ Hands-on scenario-based lab evaluations. Vendors spent one day with a team o analysts who
perormed a hands-on evaluation o the product using a scenario-based testing methodology.
We evaluated each product using the same scenario(s), creating a level playing eld by evaluating every product on the same criteria. Scenarios or this evaluation ocused on routine
commerce management and content tasks. For more on scenario-based evaluation, reer to our
report on the scenario-based commerce technology evaluation process.19
■ Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation
criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where
necessary to gather details o vendor qualications.
■ Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations o their product’s unctionality.
We used ndings rom these product demos to validate details o each vendor’s product
capabilities. Demos or this evaluation ocused on core commerce eatures, dierentiation o theproducts, and the business user tools used to manage client sites.
■ Customer reerence calls. o validate product and vendor qualications, Forrester also
conducted reerence calls with two o each vendor’s current customers.
T Frrtr Wv Mt
We conduct primary research to develop a list o vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated
in this market. From that initial pool o vendors, we then narrow our nal list. We choose these
vendors based on: 1) product t; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate
vendors that have limited customer reerences and products that don’t t the scope o our evaluation.
Aer examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop
the initial evaluation criteria. o evaluate the vendors and their products against our set o criteria, we
gather details o product qualications through a combination o lab evaluations, questionnaires,
demos, and/or discussions with client reerences. We send evaluations to the vendors or their review,
and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view o vendor oerings and strategies.
We set deault weightings to reect our analysis o the needs o large user companies — and/or
other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document — and then score the vendors based
on a clearly dened scale. Tese deault weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we
encourage readers to adapt the weightings to t their individual needs through the Excel-basedtool. Te nal scores generate the graphical depiction o the market based on current oering,
strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product
capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.
endnoTes
1 Comp-store reers to comparable store sales. Tis compares retail sales at stores open or more than one
year and is a metric that’s commonly used to gauge the perormance o retail stores.
2 Source: May 2012 Global eBusiness & Channel Strategy Proessional Online Survey o 66 eBusiness and
channel strategy proessionals.3 Source: Forrester Research Online Retail Forecast, 2012 o 2016 (US) and Forrester Research Online Retail
Forecast, 2011 o 2016 (Western Europe).
4 Interaction ecosystems include the combination o Apple’s iOS, Mac OS, iunes marketplace, and Apple V,
or example. Other interaction ecosystems include: Google’s Android, Chrome OS, Wallet, and Google+;
Microso’s Windows 8, Ofce, Bing, and Xbox; and Facebook. Oen, these ecosystems are combined and
integrated with third-party services to develop innovative opportunities to interact with, sell to, and serve
customers.
5 For more on the Splinternet, see the January 26, 2010, “he Splinternet” report.
6 For more on responsive design, see the July 12, 2012, “Understanding Responsive Design” report.
7 Source: Christine Hauser, “Growth in Retail Sales Slows From Last Year’s Numbers,” Te New York imes,
July 5, 2012 (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/business/economy/retail-sales-ell-short-in-june.html).
8 For a vision o the commerce platorm o the uture, see the October 19, 2011, “he Agile Commerce
Platorm” report.
9 For more on systems integrators and commerce services providers, see the February 24, 2012, “he
Forrester Wave™: Global Commerce Service Providers, Q1 2012” report and see the February 9, 2012, “How
o Select A Commerce Services Provider” report.
10 While Oracle chose not to provide ull inormation or its solution, we placed it in the Forrester Wave based
on our knowledge o Oracle’s solution rom past analysis and publicly available inormation in order to
provide a complete picture o the competitive landscape.
11 For an overview o digital-goods-ocused commerce solutions, see the November 7, 2011, “Market
Overview: Digital Commerce Solutions 2011” report.
12 For an overview o B2B eCommerce platorms, see the December 7, 2009, “Market Overview: B2B