AX 2012 for Retail AX to/from POS components changing in new R2 release

In AX 2012 for Retail, there will be significant changes with the R2 release around retail the Retail Transaction Services (RTS) and Store Connect Service. See the following blog post for more information: MSDN Blogs - AX for Retail 2012 R2: Installing the Real-time Service. I'll try to summarize the changes and notes below. This is not around the install, but just general notes.

1. Retail Transaction Service (RTS) is now Commerce Data Exchange: Real-time Service (CDE-RTS)
2. Store Connect (SC) is now Commerce Data Exchange: Synch Service (CDE-SS)
3. CDE-RTS is now an IIS web service instead of a windows service like RTS was
4. Install of R2's CDE-RTS and CDE-SS are very different than RTS and SS. It is more complicated than previous versions of AX for Retail.
5. CDE-RTS should not be on an PROD AOS server (now that it is IIS, it should be on an IIS server)whereas RTS was located on an PROD AOS.
6. In upgrading to AX 2012 for Retail R2, there is backward compatibility with AX 2009 and 2012 for Retail. These will still be RTS windows services on the AOS like before.

There is not much out there in regards to this stuff right now so this is not a comprehensive list. Please add other changes of interest in the comments section. These are just some findings while doing some pre-sales.

One of the biggest features in the new R2 release is Microsoft's push towards Multi-channel sales and the consolidation and management of the components into a centralized location (AX) for a single point of control. Additionally, working in conjunction with SharePoint 2013, there is an awesome customer facing storefront that can be deployed 'out of the box' (OOTB). I'm sure I'll cover this in more detail in a later post as well as the OOTB Facebook integration for authentication.

Here are some other resources that might help you on your AX 2012 for Retail Multi-channel/E-Commerce journey:
technet.microsoft.com: Documentation roadmap for a Microsoft Dynamics AX Retail online store [AX 2012]
technet.microsoft.com: Deploy a Microsoft Dynamics AX Retail online store on a stand-alone server [AX 2012]