IBM REDP-4372-00 manual Role and importance of IT

Draft Document for Review November 15, 2007 3:27 pm 4372ch01.fm

These peripherals are connected via special connectors and via USB interfaces which may be carrying the standard 5 Volts or powered USB with 12 or 24 Volts.

The system typically runs only one application which is developed and/or tailored specifically to serve the purpose of the system. Under normal operation the end user will only use the application and not think about or have access to the underlying operating system.

By separating the point-of-sales systems from any traditional workstations in a store it is possible to limit the risk of infecting the point-of-sales systems with viruses, worms and other malware. The separation is done using VLANs, routers and/or firewalls depending on the required security level.

The retail environment is highly distributed, especially large retail chains, which may have one or more data centers and a significant number of stores distributed across the country or the world. The IT skills in a store is limited, resulting in a strong focus on standardization and on remote managability.

The typical lifetime of a point-of-sale system is five to seven years, which is somewhat more than a normal office workstation, be it a desktop or a notepad. During the lifetime of a point-of-sale system, the operating system is unlikely to change more than one or two times. Applications may be updated one or two times a year.

1.3 The role and importance of IT

For any store or warehouse, the point-of-sale system is essential for business. This is where goods are exchanged for money. Without the capability to handle these transactions automatically, a significant amount of back-office work is required and some parts of the transactions may not even be possible, such as payments by use of credit cards and printing out receipts.

It’s easy to visualize what happens if a store suddenly has a limited capability of processing sales: The remaining lanes will have growing queues, causing reduced customer satisfaction, and if the situation happens more than once in a quarter, some customers will probably place their business elsewhere.

For this reason, most larger warehouses have several layers of redundancy. First of all, there are usually more lanes than needed except for hollidays and seasonal occasions. Additionally, the network is typically kept isolated from networks used by regular workstations, and made redundant so half the POS systems are connected to one swtich and the other half to another. Application servers should also be set up for high availability, both with respect to independency in an individual store, and with the capability to fail over to a

Chapter 1. Introduction 5