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User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
Migrating
Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
Planning to migrate WebSphere Commerce
Most businesses treat investments in technology updates and migrations as overhead expenses. Even though you might need to upgrade or migrate to the latest WebSphere Commerce version to take advantage of the technological offering, providing a business justification to do so requires outlining the business benefits, strategy, and migration plan.
Creating a migration plan
Migrating to a new version of WebSphere Commerce impacts several aspects of your business. Review the resources that are provided to help create your migration plan.

User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
- Planning
  Creating a custom implementation of a WebSphere Commerce store requires a significant amount of planning. From gathering client needs, to deploying the live solution, much work is needed to successfully deploy a custom client store. Use the resources in here to help you plan every phase of store creation.
- Installing
  Review the following sections for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
  - Planning to migrate WebSphere Commerce
    Most businesses treat investments in technology updates and migrations as overhead expenses. Even though you might need to upgrade or migrate to the latest WebSphere Commerce version to take advantage of the technological offering, providing a business justification to do so requires outlining the business benefits, strategy, and migration plan.
    - Overview of a migration project
      A migration project for any live WebSphere Commerce site is an activity that must be carefully thought out. There are three main phases to the migration project – the planning phase, the practice phase, and the production migration phase. Each of these phases requires its own skills and resources. Allocating sufficient time for each activity is crucial to ensure that no key tasks are forgotten.
    - Migration diagram
      The following diagram provides a visual representation of your overall migration, including your development and runtime environments (staging and production environments also apply).
    - High-level guideline for a switchover migration
      A switchover migration is the migration from a WebSphere Commerce production environment to an unused WebSphere Commerce environment on the same or different hardware. This process allows for an existing production system to be left in place until the moment that the new environment is ready. Site traffic can then be redirected to the new environment. This sample switchover migration plan can be used as an example to plan and size your own project.
    - Creating a migration plan
      Migrating to a new version of WebSphere Commerce impacts several aspects of your business. Review the resources that are provided to help create your migration plan.
      - Planning and sizing sample template
        This template can be used as a basis for planning and sizing your migration project. Modify the template to reflect your level of customization, site topology, and business requirements.
      - Migration limitations
        While you plan your migration project, be aware of the migration limitations.
    - Migration paths
      WebSphere Commerce has different migration paths, depending on the environment that you are migrating.
  - Migrating WebSphere Commerce Developer
    The following section outlines the high-level steps that must be completed to migrate your WebSphere Commerce Version 7.0 Developer environment to WebSphere Commerce Developer Version 8.0. Migrating WebSphere Commerce Developer includes completing the following steps in order.
  - Migrating WebSphere Commerce
    The following section outlines the available migration paths for moving from WebSphere Commerce Version 7.0 to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0.
- Deploying
  The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
- Operating
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
- Administering
- Tutorials
  WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your WebSphere Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
- Developing
  The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage WebSphere Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
- Troubleshooting

Creating a migration plan

Migrating to a new version of WebSphere Commerce impacts several aspects of your business. Review the resources that are provided to help create your migration plan.

A complete migration plan must consider the following aspects:

New, deprecated, and discontinued functionality in WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0
Upgrades to the application code and WebSphere Commerce servers
Business requirements during the migration phase
Custom application code
Custom scripts, such as build, deployment, and data load scripts
Development environment (including source control management systems)
Build processes
Testing
Upgrading and migrating additional software
Runtime environments
Deployment processes
Education and training
Migration limitations

Review the following sections to help plan the migration of your WebSphere Commerce site: