Hey! The folks at Znode are always coming up with ways to showcase the power of the platform.

Right now, as a part of Znode’s Partner program – we’re now offering Development Licenses. With a Development License you receive a license key that will allow you to perform development on Znode for a client proposal.

The suggestion actually came from some of our existing partners who wanted to build out spec sites for prospective clients.

Part of Znode’s strategy is to be the adaptable platform of choice to agency partners and integrators, so rolling out a program like this made perfect sense.

What better way to showcase the power and flexibility of Znode that to have a live site with the client’s branding that you created in a few hours?

We’ve been testing this program for a few weeks and it’s already led to wins for our existing partners. So we’re ready to roll it out to everyone. You must be signed up as a Znode Certified Partner to take advantage of this though…

Not a certified partner yet? Become one! Send us an e-mail at sales@znode.com

Hey bloggers…

If you want to better understand the power of Znode’s new MultiFront edition? Check out Cat5 Commerce --- http://cat5.com/

Cat5 was one of the early adopters of our MultiFront platform. They currently run three online stores, http://tactical.com , http://bdu.com , and http://militaryboots.com –

We met Chad and Drew from Cat5 in Boston at IRCE. They’ve got a unique business model. Start with finding underutilized URL’s and build a business around them. Most people start with the product first – but for Cat5 finding the right internet ‘real estate’ was the hard part – all the product and fulfillment can just come later!

For Cat5, using the multi store capability of Znode MultiFront gave them just what they needed - a solid, adaptable, ASP.net platform that they could build on, spin up online stores quickly and manage them centrally.

They also know how to eat seafood too!

Hey Znode blog followers! Znode now has its very own Facebook page. Finally the faces of Znode are revealed.

Be sure to check out pictures from our team lunch where we celebrated a number of key milestones for the company. You can also see pictures of the fabulous Znode booth as it was showcased at the recent Internet Retailer Trade Show in Boston.

If you look hard enough you may actually be able to see a picture of Dave Chu, our CTO getting well deserved chair massage after a long day of giving Viewpoint demos.

Make sure to become a fan…. We plan to use this channel as another way to share information about the company, Znode products and of course the wonderful (and growing number of) people who work for Znode.

Follow this link to get to it… http://www.facebook.com/pages/Znode/15484708769.

Have you checked out the Znode.com site lately? http://www.znode.com. If not, you are in for a big surprise. Its totally new and improved. And yes... That’s Dave Chu, our CTO featured in the video on the home page!

Not only does the site contain lots of great information about Znode’s exciting two new products, MultiFront and Viewpoint, but also is evidence of our commitment to usable interface design.

Znode worked with faculty members from the Columbus School of Art and Design to create an interface that was not only visually compelling but easy to use. These same concepts were applied to the administrative interfaces of Storefront and Viewpoint.

Beyond the super strong adaptable code base, and solid architecture, usability is something we hear about consistently from our customers. Investing in it is something we’re committed to doing, and we wanted to show that on our own website.

If you’d like a personal walkthrough of the Viewpoint interface to see what I’m talking about – check out the webinar Wed, Jul y 8 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT

Come meet the Znode team in Boston at the Internet Retailer trade show in Boston, June 15th -18th, where we will be exhibiting in booth #439.

Along with showcasing our popular e-commerce Storefront products, we’ll also be launching our new revolutionary product, Viewpoint.

Focused on online marketers, Viewpoint is a powerful, portable selling engine that shortens time-to-sale by creating direct purchase paths through highly personalized views into a product catalog. Viewpoint will be officially released on June 15th, and has been generating a lot of excitement with our existing customers and partners.

Viewpoint will be sold as a SAAS solution that will complement Znode Storefront, or work seamlessly with other e-commerce platforms as well. Its more evidence that Znode is positioning itself to be leader in online commerce.

If you plan to be at the show, please let us know. We would like to meet you!

Dublin, Ohio, 4/2/2009 – Znode Inc, a Central Ohio based eCommerce software company, announced today that Jeff Haskett, will join its executive ranks.

Haskett, 41, was most recently with BMW Group Financial Services where he held the position of General Manager, Application Management Group, with responsibility for technology in the United States and Canada, for the automotive finance company. Haskett was originally brought into the company to launch the eCommerce capabilities for the BMW Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Prior to that, Haskett was an executive with the Columbus office of Accenture where he specialized in technology consulting, business process engineering, and enterprise software implementation.

Haskett also has deep ties to the Columbus technology community where he has been an active member for over ten years. “We are very pleased to have someone of Jeff’s caliber and experience joining the company,” stated Vish Vishwanathan, CEO of Znode. “We are looking forward to him playing an integral part in our aggressive growth strategy”.

Znode was recently awarded a $1.2 million dollar loan from the Ohio Department of Development. “We see this as a definitive step in our intent to retain and grow technology talent in Ohio,” said Vish, “we are looking to Jeff to help continue our commitment to increasing the prominence of Columbus based technology on the national and international stage.”

Founded in 2003, and with over 250 customers in seven countries, Znode Inc. is based in Dublin, Ohio and is a leading provider in extremely adaptable eCommerce software for creative agencies and enterprises.

I wanted to talk about an interesting product that the Znode team has been dilligently working on for the past several months. This product is a e-commerce middleware that uses the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) in Microsoft .NET 3.0. This product will enable rapid integration between Znode Storefront and virtually any back-office or 3rd party system using a highly scalable, enterprise ready architecture.

The Znode Middleware Service will allow access to key storefront functionality such as Order Management, Inventory, Catalog, Content Management and more using a highly structured API that can be easily extended to your specific requirements.

The Middleware services can be hosted on load balanced web servers for scalability - this will reduce the resource requirements on the web servers hosting the storefront UI. WCF has the advantage of being able to expose the services using different types of standards including SOAP, .NET Binary, ATOM, or any future specification. These services also implement security using best practices and allow for a wide range of configurations.

The Znode Middleware Service is expected to be released in early September 2008. Stay tuned!

Customers who applied the Vista SP1 started getting a memory exception during compile. We have issued an emergency patch that fixes this issue.

Please click on this link to download the patch: http://kb.znode.com/node/138

A number of customers have asked when we will begin supporting Visual Studio 2008. Though we dont "officially" support VS 2008 yet, we have verified that Znode Storefront can be safely migrated to Visual Studio 2008.

Note that Visual Studio 2008 allows you to target multiple .NET Frameworks (2.0, 3.0 and 3.5). We recommend that you set all projects to target a .NET 2.0 build till we officially test Znode Storefront on .NET 3.5

Click the link below to download instructions on converting your Znode Storefront project to Visual Studio 2008

We have released a HotFix for Znode Storefront version 4.4 that fixes several issues. One of these issues is an intermittent exception thrown in the Application Start event. Please click the link below to read the details of this update and download the patch.

http://kb.znode.com/KB4401