Who is involved in Ucommerce projects?
In order to get to an ideal situation you will have a couple of parties involved, who do what they are best at. A typical Ucommerce solution usually has multiple parties involved.
Ucommerce
Ucommerce provides the commerce building blocks and their default configuration. This saves valuable development time for the client, as it is more about configuration, than developing from scratch. Out-of-the-box there is no frontend store, its custom implemented by the Partner. Ucommerce does provide an Accelerator frontend store, that serves as a sample and a quick start for the Partner.
CMS
The CMS provides powerful content creation features and the shell of the system. Ucommerce platform is currently fully integrated into Umbraco, Sitecore, Kentico and Sitefinity.
Partner
The Partner implements a frontend store that is uniquely tailored to suit the Client's needs, using the CMS content feature and the Ucommerce APIs. Moreover the partner molds the default configuration of the Ucommerce building blocks, to fit the needs of the client. Every commerce project is different and each client has a unique business model. Ucommerce can be changed to fit the clients business model, not the other way around. Thanks to Ucommerce, the partner saves time, has a higher level of quality and can focus on the client's complicated commerce features.
Client/Customer
The back-office UI offers a seamless experience for the user to work with both content and commerce. Everything from sign-in to a single system, to working with content or commerce, is all a click away. When the new commerce ideas appear and clients' business grows, Ucommerce has the potential to be easily changed by the Partner to fit the new business model. Ideally, the client will not be able to tell the difference between the CMS and Ucommerce.