BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services Introduces Vers. 6.0

BEA has released Version 6.0 of its AquaLogic Commerce Services solution, a product designed to help increase online sales, store efficiency and profitability, while providing the flexibility to accommodate growth and help businesses quickly adapt to market changes, the company reports. It adds that the new version simplifies commerce process management, enabling greater revenue opportunities and extends the commerce multiplatform SOA foundation providing increased flexibility.

New features and capabilities of BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services 6.0 include:

* multistore management is made easier with virtual catalogs to simplify store setup and management;
* store revenue enhancement is facilitated by additional support for gift certificates, pre-ordering of products before they are available and taking orders on back-ordered products;
* customer trust and satisfaction can be more easily achieved with additional secure payment integrations;
* simplified order management streamlines order activities and includes enhanced support for returns, exchanges, refunds and split shipments;
* a more responsive Commerce Manager application helps increase productivity and simplifies commerce management for business, call center and order management activities;
* more than 30 new web services have been added to simplify deploying and integrating commerce within a services-based environment;
* supported platforms now include BEA WebLogic Server 10 and BEA WebLogic Portal 10.2;
* enhanced integration with BEA WebLogic Portal includes commerce portlets and integration with the WebLogic Portal virtual content repository, enabling the commerce product catalog items to be used for portal personalization, campaigns and federated searches; and
* improved integration with BEA Workshop simplifies building unified commerce applications that include BEA WebLogic and BEA AquaLogic product family components.

Taylor Corp. to Buy Lillian Vernon

An auction to purchase bankrupt gift cataloger Lillian Vernon Corp. has been won by Taylor Corp., the Mankato, MN-based marketer that owns Current, G. Neil, Paper Direct, and Sa-So catalog titles (with total sales direct sales of about $700 million).

Virginia Beach, VA-based Lillian Vernon, which was purchased by Sun Capital Partners in May 2006, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb. 20. Michael D. Muoio, Lillian Vernon’s CEO, reports that the tentative sale must be approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, DE.