Red Hat's E-Commerce Suite contains all the tools necessary to quickly and easily allow companies to open an online store for their products or services. Large enterprises may find the Suite's capabilities much too limited for their purposes, but for smaller organisations or in-house stores, the E-Commerce Suite is well-conceived, robust and easy to implement.
The package includes a full version of Red Hat Linux 7.1--and the Suite cannot be installed on top of an existing Linux installation, so you'll need to start the installation process by first installing Red Hat Linux. Red Hat has one of the easiest installation routines of any distribution, and we found the installation of the operating system was as painless as Linux can be. The installation routine correctly identified all hardware on the first try, and included all the necessary drivers on the installation disc.
The other components included in the package are Red Hat Interchange 4.8, CommerceLauncher (a Web-based configuration tool), Secure Apache Web Server (which supports 128-bit encryption), Red Hat Database (which is powered by PostgreSQL), and Red Hat Network Software Manager. Altogether, the package's listed priced is $2,995 in the US, and the software's Australian distributor, Everything Linux, says that its price will match those of US-based distributors.
Installing and configuring the suite
Once you've installed Red Hat Linux, the E-Commerce Suite installs simply, almost like a Windows application--pop in the disc, mount it, click on install, and the installation routine takes over. You enter the name of your server, a password for the PostgreSQL database, along with a user name and password for the Interchange root user (to be used with the Administration Tool). Finally, you enter your email address; this allows the completed installation to send you a confirmation that the package installed successfully. The confirmation email also contains the URL for the configuration tool, CommerceLauncher.
CommerceLauncher is completely browser-based. It functions like a wizard to walk you through all the elements required to get your E-Commerce site functioning (though you must still register with a third party for an SSL key). It also has a handy demo mode, so you can practice the steps involved in the configuration process before you actually commit to the individual decisions you must make. Such decisions include things like whether or not to show sale prices or wholesale prices for items, your preferred shipping method, which credit cards you accept, and so on. There's also a sophisticated routine for determining sales tax liability, based on your address and the address of your warehouse.
But there are other choices to make and tasks to be done as well, such as loading the database of your products, and digital photos of the products, not to mention the aesthetic choices as to how your site's pages will look and what colours and backgrounds are to be used. Fortunately, CommerceLauncher guides you through this process with extreme ease. It even features a number of templates for the aesthetically challenged, so the end result will be sure to look professionally produced.
Just how easy is CommerceLauncher? The idea behind the installation methodology is that once a system administrator has performed the Linux and E-Commerce Suite installations, a non-technical site manager can proceed with product configuration. Our experience with the product would support that assertion.
Functionality
Interchange, the base application, supplies site management tools such as user management and management of the suite's other components (Interchange's administration tool can installed on a separate server for maximum security, if desired). It also provides catalogue management, such as differential pricing, cross-linking among catalogue items and complex discounting rules. Tools for order management, content management and customer relationship management (CRM) are also provided.
For example, Interchange's order management tools include support for purchase orders, split shipping, product returns and more. The content management tools permit less-technical users to create new templates and Web pages (and edit existing ones), and to manage uploads and downloads to the site. Personalisation and email alerts for promotions and coupons are just two of the CRM tools. The Merchandising module allows for affinity promotions, cross-selling and quantity pricing. There are additional tools for reporting and integration with external databases, such as those running on Oracle, DB2 or MySQL engines.
Bottom line
Red Hat's package is a slick, well thought out and comprehensive solution that's well worth your consideration. And with the assistance of a solution provider, it's almost impossible not to achieve the e-commerce solution you seek. In the US Red Hat intends to extend this product by offering a turnkey, managed and hosted e-commerce suite in the coming months. Though intended to sweeten the pot for smaller enterprises, some larger enterprises may like idea of outsourcing their e-commerce headaches as well.
Red Hat E-Commerce Suite
Company: Red Hat
Price: To be advised
Distributor: Everything Linux
Phone: (02) 9712 1799
Software requirements and specs:
- Platform(s): Intel
- Processor: Pentium III-700
- RAM: 512MB
- Disk space: A single 9GB SCSI hard drive
- CD-ROM required: Yes
- Downloadable full version: No
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