With Commerce Server 2009 R2 progressing through its CTP at an expediential rate, I am keen to start looking at deployment scenarios for one of its key features – distributed application services. The R2 release has separated the application tier into WCF-based services, meaning that you will no longer be tied to ASP.NET or SharePoint based front ends for deployment. The to-be released Out-of-the-box functionality will now allow for easier to deploy multi-channel commerce scenarios in most digital platforms, ranging from interactive-TV, kiosks, and smart phones – really anything with an Internet connection.
To help get some tutorial and examples of the ground, I am looking for a project that can make use of this technology that I can use as a tutorial basis and case study for the forthcoming release. So if you are keen to get an e-commerce scenario for a kiosk, multi-touch PC*, Microsoft Surface*, or even something smart like an geographical presence app on a platform such as the I-Phone, and have the hardware but not the know-how, please get in touch as I am keen to help you get your project up and running, and get some good tutorials up and running for this next-generation e-Commerce platform.
*applications will be built in WPF, or Silverlight 3. All technology will be Microsoft based, or in the case of I-Phone apps will be based on Mono.