The three Foodstuffs grocery cooperatives are to use a Microsoft .Net application developed by systems integrator Axon to manage content across their websites.
As well as being used by Foodstuffs corporate, Axon’s recently developed .Net-based Cade content management system will be in operation at Foodstuffs’ Auckland, Wellington and South Island cooperatives and their wholesale divisions, Toops, Trents and Gilmours, as well as Four Square, New World and Pak ‘N Save stores and the Pams brand.
Cade allows content from one “access store” to be updated across all the websites. Foodstuffs also uses Axon’s SupplyNet e-procurement system.
According to Axon’s general manager of e-business, Scott Green, Cade is New Zealand’s first shrink-wrapped application based on Microsoft’s .Net web services platform. Cade is pitched at users who want a solution priced “two price tiers” below Vignette or one below Microsoft Content Management Server, Green says. An ASP version of Cade that will be hosted by Axon and rented on a monthly basis has been developed, though the price has yet to be set.
The development of Cade began three years ago with Axon’s internal development of a content management system to support its Quality Direct online procurement service.
Axon is now planning to put portions of Cade, such as the HTML editor and the website importer, on the UDDI (universal description, discovery and integration) directory — a “Yellow Pages” of web services that can be used by other developers.
Axon used the beta of Visual Studio.Net, Microsoft’s “toolbox” for building web services which launched last week, to build Cade as part of Microsoft’s early adopter programme.