ECF G5 Integration Capabilities

One of the greatest benefits of using the ECF G5 platform is the available source code.  With that base of code in hand, you don't have to pile on the features we give you.  If you don't have a need for one of the core subsystems of the ECF and want to implement your own, then it's totally feasible.  The ECF gives you choice, flexibility, and customization over multitudes of features you don't want or need.  Here's a practical scenario of how the ECF can be implemented into your grand ecommerce scheme:

1. You already use a great .NET CMS from a company like SiteCore or Ektron. You like the fact that the ECF has a baseline CMS but in this case why worry about it since you have made your investments. Because you want to add the commerce capabilities, you can simply leverage the ECF core subsystems and APIs to implement the biz logic.
2. You are big on social commerce and love the community functionality from Telligent. You want to use the full ECF including CMS and asset management, but you need to adapt the blogs, forums and other capabilities with a unified membership profile/SSO--no problem with the ECF.  You can even cross pollinate UI elements and commerce capabilities from ECF directly into the community server presentation layer.
3. You have an ERP (homegrown, SAP, Dynamics, SAGE, etc.) and you have a bunch of other platforms to integrate into such as CRM, BI, and reporting. You have multiple sales channels, multiple brands, multiple catalogs, and multiple business processes. In short, you're trying to figure out how to pull together an integrated platform with enough flexibility to improve your enterprise flexibility. In this case, the ECF becomes another part of an overall enterprise architecture in which it is used in multiple ways. The best part is that its flexibility allows you to adapt and change aspects of it and re-use in multiple ways.
4. You want to differentiate in your solution space as a systems integrator. You have a vast array of experience in a particular vertical and specialize in a particularly useful bit of functionality that everyone in your vertical needs. The catch is you want to surround that functionality and expertise within the framework of the backend and front end of the ECF.  You can easily add an entire subsystem visually in such a way with ECF G5 that you can plug in a whole new set of functionality so that visually the new capabilities render themselves as part of the interface on both the front and back.

This is only one of many scenarios of how the ECF can integrate with third-party solutions.  The common theme for the ECF is flexibility and customization that makes it even easier to integrate with other systems in your IT infrastructure.