Cloud Deployment with Sitecore

Cloud Deployment with Sitecore

Scale globally, and get close to your customers
If your requirements include being able to rapidly deploy and scale servers to meet ramped-up demand and traffic, whether locally or globally, the Sitecore and Windows Azure solution may be right for you. Scale quickly to satisfy even extreme demands from your customers, regardless of density or location.
Deploy on Demand with a single click, without hardware concerns
Without heavy hardware capital investment or infrastructure planning timetables, you can quickly deploy your public-facing Sitecore websites around the globe with Windows Azure. You’ll quickly gain geographic coverage, optimized response time by distributing your load and minimizing the round trip delays, and redundancy for reliability and disaster-preparedness.
Full Sitecore functionality, added deployment flexibility
The Sitecore CMS Azure Edition is a new optional high-delivery addition to our deployment model,  leveraging the cloud infrastructure.
With the Sitecore CMS Azure Edition, you can deploy to any number of Sitecore Azure content delivery instances hosted at the various Windows Azure™ locations. Your Sitecore editing and core database servers are licensed and maintained on your own premises, behind your own firewall.
This hybrid solution provides a best of both worlds approach- scalability and flexibility near your customers, and the security of your Sitecore editing and database servers at your location. Extend your reach into the cloud under your site administrator's control, all from the same intuitive, award-winning Sitecore user interface used by your team of marketers, content editors and developers.

Sitecore ECommerce Capabilities

Sitecore, one of the players in the has added an e-commerce platform to its product portfolio.

From Web CMS to E-Commerce

The latest addition to the product list of Sitecore – Sitecore E-Commerce is not a surprising product. Actually, the e-commerce platform is built on top of their CMS.
The core functionality comes from the CMS, but it is enhanced with e-commerce specific features.

What's Inside the Sitecore E-Commerce Platform?

The basic online shop functionality includes the following features:

• Product information and order management
• Payment processing and shipping management
• Integration with ERP, customer databases and other back office applications

Sitecore E-Commerce Order Management
In addition to these features, you also need marketing-related functionality, as well as tracking and statistics. Sitecore E-Commerce offers both groups of features, and if you can find the time to study the reports of your online shop's activity, you can get really valuable data about user behavior and the efficiency of your SEO/marketing efforts.


Sitecore E-Commerce Reporting

Here are some of the features related to metrics and statistics:

• Account creation
• Order completion
• Customized checkout
• Email campaigns
• Visitor count
• Average time on site
• Best-selling products
• Conversions (with referring URLs)

All these features make it easy for you to track if your efforts to sell give results or not. In addition to them, there are personalization tools, which allow you to create specific content for special groups.
Up-selling and cross-selling are also possible with Sitecore E-Commerce. The customized checkout allows to keep a detailed history of your customers' purchases.
Sitecore E-Commerce offers mobile functionality as well with Android, iPhone and BlackBerry support that allows you to create mobile-friendly versions of your pages.
You may Find details in This eBrochure :- Sitecore Ecommerce Brochure

Update 5.X to Latest Releases from sitecore 6.X

There are a few extra steps involved in getting your CMS upgraded to the latest Sitecore recommended release. The conversion tool converts your system from a Sitecore 5.x structure to a Sitecore 6.x structure, but it won’t bring you all the way to the top:

The purpose of this tool is to convert Sitecore CMS databases from version 5.3.2 rev.090212 or later to 6.0.2 rev 090507.

Using the conversion tool is the longest step in the upgrade process, so you should plan your content freeze  accordingly (users will not be able to edit content during this stage). The extra steps, which are quicker and easier, are necessary to update Sitecore to the latest available version. Here is an overall map that will lead you to the latest release of Sitecore CMS:
For versions prior to 5.3.0:
Use the Data Migration Module to bring your system up to version 5.3.x.
Click here for more information.
From 5.3.x to 5.3.2 rev 090212:
Here is an example update path starting from Sitecore CMS 5.3.0 rev. 061102. If your version is not listed, see the link below for specific upgrade paths.

• CMS 5.3.0 061102 or later to CMS 5.3.1 070328
• CMS 5.3.1 070328 to 5.3.1 070924
• CMS 5.3.1 070924 to CMS 5.3.1 071114
• CMS 5.3.1 071114 to CMS 5.3.2 090212

Click here for instructions and downloads
From 5.3.2 rev 090212 to 6.0.2 rev 090507
Here is where you use the database conversion tool. This will probably be the longest step in the upgrade process.
Instructions on downloading and using the tool can be found here.
From 6.0.2 rev 090507 to 6.2.x:
1. Upgrade to Sitecore CMS 6.1.0 Update rev.090630 (initial 6.1.0 release)
Instructions for this upgrade can be found here.
2. Upgrade to Sitecore CMS 6.2.0 rev.091012
Instructions for this upgrade can be found here.
3. From here, you can upgrade to the latest release of Sitecore CMS. For a full list of update information and instructions for each version update, visit the following section of SDN:
http://sdn.sitecore.net/Products/Sitecore%20V5/Sitecore%20CMS%206/Update.aspx