Options for retail IT managers broadened last week as
Hewlett-Packard and IBM bolstered their retail products and
services.
HP is hoping to attract retailers with three new services to
help their IT teams design, deploy and manage IT
infrastructure.
HP Retail Agility Services will give retailers on-site break-fix
and maintenance of point of sale systems, whether they are HP or
legacy devices.
A retail media software package - HP Retail Webcasting Platform
- has been developed to create and manage interactive online
training programmes and deliver corporate and product information
to employees and customers. The service can be hosted or managed
internally.
HP is also working with Cyclone Commerce on a radio frequency
identification system to help retail pharmacies avoid counterfeit
medicines. RFID tags and readers are used to track and authenticate
drugs along the supply chain from manufacturer to consumer.
IBM has launched a range of technologies based on its
Bladecenter platform designed to help retailers manage remote store
environments.
IBM Systems Solutions for Retail Stores consolidates all
in-store servers, storage, networking and applications onto a
single physical IBM package with a common management
infrastructure. The system covers software, networking and security
and uses two-way or four-way servers based on Power, Intel or AMD
processors.
Massimo Franzese, consultant at retail consultancy Leadent,
said, "Easy deployment and cost-effective maintenance of the in-
store technology is a main point on the agenda of senior IT
executives."
Franzese said HP had been tailoring its retail products over the
past three years and was able to provide a client infrastructure
based on de facto standards such as Intel processors and Microsoft
operating systems. This made the platform extremely competitive
from a price point of view, he said. And HP's latest releases have
addressed the deficit of software management tools in its
offering.
The difference with IBM, Franzese said, was that it offered a
wider choice of processors, not limiting itself to Intel. It could
also offer a choice of operating systems, including Linux.
The right choice of in-store technology is not driven only by
the ability to fix problems quickly but also by the ease of
software management, said Franzese.
"Rolling out software patches or new functionality is something
to bear in mind before taking a decision only based on low initial
cost of the hardware kit so IT executives and managers should
consider this carefully in addition to what is their strategy in
terms of licensing costs and software standards," he said.