Feature Guide Elastic Path Cortex. Version 6.5.1

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1 Feature Guide Elastic Path Cortex Version (toll-free within North America) (outside North America)

2 API-centric commerce that s scalable, secure, and futureproof Elastic Path Cortex is a revolutionary software solution that allows enterprises to quickly and cost-effectively bring the advanced capabilities of the Elastic Path Commerce Engine to any customer experience, on any device or platform. Using patent-pending technology to simplify integrations, Cortex empowers companies to build compelling product experiences, leverage new business models, and extend their reach to emerging touchpoints. For enterprises that need to monetize digital goods and content across multiple web stores, mobile apps, social networks, games, or cloud services, Cortex delivers unbeatable convenience, manageability, and cost savings. Elastic Path Cortex brings advanced selling to any platform, device, or application. Cortex uses patent-pending dynamic linking technology to discover and assemble resources from multiple business platforms into one consistent interface. Data and services from enterprise applications like Commerce Engine, OpenText CEM, Adobe Experience Manager, and others are mapped to Cortex using a lightweight schema. Once abstracted, these resources from any source are linked together to generate Cortex Business APIs that securely project your unified services to the world. Elastic Path Cortex Feature Guide 2

3 To succeed in today s API economy enterprises have to monetize digital goods and content in creative and disruptive ways, across multiple web stores, mobile apps, social networks, games, cloud services, and specialized devices. Cortex was designed to help enterprises accomplish these objectives, by making it easier to add advanced selling capabilities to any customer experience in a sustainable, cost-effective way. Features of Cortex streamline the creation of scalable digital products that span multiple touchpoints, and eliminate the overhead of learning, building, and maintaining conventional integrations with enterprise software: Patent-pending resource linking and data interchange technology simplifies the design implementation, and upkeep of commerce integrations by providing developers with a simple way to transact without directly manipulating enterprise business logic and data. Exclusive resource prefetching and bundling technology improves performance and reduces API payload size to help ensure responsive client applications and a great customer experience. Independent, loosely-coupled commerce resources such as items, prices, and customer profiles can be dynamically configured and arranged within Elastic Path Cortex to support an incredible range of business models and use cases. Operations available through Elastic Path Cortex are automatically scaled to match the capabilities, performance, and functional requirements of each touchpoint, improving overall efficiency and security. Unlike conventional APIs, Elastic Path Cortex provides intrinsic security by routing transactions through a central authorization service instead of directly exposing enterprise business logic to outside applications. Coupled with the advanced selling capabilities of Commerce Engine, Cortex delivers unbeatable convenience, manageability, and cost savings for innovative enterprises that are building the next generation of digital product experiences and cloud services. Elastic Path Cortex Feature Guide 3

4 The Elastic Path Cortex Difference Cortex is the industry s first smart application interface. It dynamically translates complex ecommerce operations into a simple, lightweight format that is easy to integrate with other software, making it the best and most efficient way to deliver a consistent and scalable digital product experience across a wide range of customer touchpoints. Instead of directly exposing enterprise business logic and data to external systems like a conventional API, Cortex uses patent-pending technology to transform ecommerce requests and responses into simple forms that developers can use in web stores, apps, social networks, content management systems, and other software applications. This reduces implementation time, enhances security, and improves performance. Most importantly, Cortex empowers enterprises to create disruptive, revenue-generating products and services by substantially lowering the effort and cost of bringing advanced selling into every customer experience. Elastic Path Cortex Cortex completely isolates the ecommerce software from the design and operation of customer touchpoints. Instead of directly manipulating enterprise business objects within client applications, developers simply request an appropriate form from Cortex, fill it in, and post it back to perform complex ecommerce operations. Exclusive, patent-pending interface technology handles everything from authentication to resource fetching and linking, allowing your resources to focus on innovation and revenue generation. Elastic Path Cortex Feature Guide 4

5 Coventional Platform and API Versus Elastic Path Cortex Traditional Ecommerce Platform In a traditional monolithic platform, the presentation logic for web stores, mobile apps, and other touchpoints is located within the core ecommerce software. This makes it difficult to develop new or disruptive customer experiences without making expensive, timeconsuming modifications to the platform itself. Conventional Commerce API Conventional ecommerce APIs attempt to streamline development by making enterprise business logic and data available to outside applications. But since these APIs merely expose underlying services, developers must still work directly with the processes and constraints of the ecommerce platform, limiting their creativity and forcing them to add substantial business logic to web stores, apps, games, and other touchpoints. The resulting implementations are often complex, fragile, and costly to maintain, making it hard to economically build new or disruptive customer experiences on an enterprise scale. Elastic Path Cortex Elastic Path Cortex eliminates these challenges by completely isolating the ecommerce software from the design and operation of customer touchpoints. Instead of directly manipulating enterprise business objects within client applications, developers simply request an appropriate form from Cortex, fill it in, and post it back to perform complex ecommerce operations. Exclusive, patent-pending interface technology handles everything from authentication to resource fetching and linking, allowing your resources to focus on innovation and revenue generation. The Cortex mediation layer completely decouples client applications from business platforms, yet enhances their ability to securely retrieve data and perform transactions. This breakthrough approach gives designers, developers, and API consumers the unprecedented freedom they need to create unique digital experiences that engage customers and create business value. Elastic Path Cortex Feature Guide 5

6 Elastic Path Cortex Capabilities and Utilities Dynamic resource linking At the heart of Cortex is a resource-linking operating system that discovers and binds resources from other business platforms into unified services, creating a single point of entry and control for commerce application portfolios. The Cortex microkernel is based on the OSGi framework, which provides secure resource isolation, library segregation, and a nonstop lifecycle. Level 3 REST APIs Unified business services are exposed via secure Cortex Business APIs that conform rigorously to the HATEOAS (Hypertext as the Engine of Application State) constraint and Level 3 of the Richardson Maturity Model. These APIs offer client developers resource and relationship stability in the form of fully discoverable, browsable payloads that require no knowledge of the underlying business logic in order to retrieve data or perform authorized operations. Hypermedia extensions Cortex provides additional hypermedia controls that extend the functionality and usability of Cortex Business APIs far beyond Level 3 REST. These include built-in forms and selectors to drive UI-like state changes directly from the API, workflow controls that reduce the need for business logic within clients, and a robust resource zoom feature that gives developers complete control over denormalization, drastically reducing both the size and frequency of API calls. Intrinsic security Cortex offers complete role- and resource-based access control with user authentication, roles, and permissions. Securing multiple business platforms with Cortex mediation allows you to offer API consumers one hardened point of entry with a single set of authorizations to manage, instead of widely distributing security across separate enterprise applications. Carrier-grade performance Cortex was designed so that our customers from mobile operators to Internet Retailer Top 500 stores could drive some of the world s most demanding applications. In the vast majority of installations, the performance limiting factor will not be resource mediation, but the response time of your underlying systems, because the throughput of Cortex running on just a handful of nodes far exceeds that of most business platforms. Practical utilities To make your job even easier, Cortex comes with great developer tools to foster agility, creativity, and productivity. These include Studio, an interactive REST development environment; Graph, a utility that generates live, visual representations your resource relationships; Health Monitor, an API performance dashboard, and additional utilities to help you create and manage resource schemas. Elastic Path Cortex Feature Guide 6

7 Elastic Path is more than just Cortex Cortex works seamlessly with other Elastic Path products to help your business deliver and monetize the ultimate customer experience. Elastic Path Commerce Engine is a software platform that brings advanced monetization features like bundling, personalized pricing, and omnichannel promotions to every digital experience, from lightweight apps to Internet Retailer Top 500 websites. With features designed to boost engagement, conversion, and customer lifetime value plus a modern architecture built on the world s leading open source technologies Commerce Engine is the best choice for companies seeking to monetize digital touchpoints in unique, compelling, and profitable ways. Elastic Path Subscriptions empowers you to drive recurring revenue now with the only solution that fully integrates enterprise-grade ecommerce with subscription management. Unlike other commerce platforms, Subscriptions manages the entire subscriber lifecycle everything from plan composition to billing, activation, customer care, and analytics. Questions? Elastic Path builds ecommerce software that powers the next generation of digital experience. We help businesses maximize revenue from their goods, services, and content with solutions that empower companies to create outstanding customer experiences that drive engagement and conversion. Elastic Path technology brings this functionality to multiple touchpoints websites, apps, APIs, and more while generating a single view of the customer. Market leaders, including Google, Pearson, Symantec, Time Inc., and Virgin use Elastic Path to drive billions of dollars in digital commerce annually. Please contact us for more information: sales@elasticpath.com or call (800) Read the technical documentation for Commerce Engine: Collaborate with Elastic Path developers and customers in the Grep Developer Community: grep.elasticpath.com Copyright 2013 Elastic Path Software Inc. All rights reserved. Elastic Path, the Elastic Path logo, and Commerce Engine are trademarks or registered trademarks of Elastic Path Software Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.