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Industry News - November 6th, 2009

 

RETAIL AND TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Motorola Debuts Rugged Handheld Equipped with RFID
Motorola releases a next-generation ruggedized handheld computer, the MC3100, designed for quick and repetitive bar-code scanning for indoor settings such as warehouses and retail stock rooms. The handheld device comes in three form factors including gun grip, a straight shooter or a rotating head.

The rugged handheld includes an accelerometer and an RFID tag to make it easy to find if lost in a large warehouse. The software and acccelerator, which are branded as MAX Sensor, can help businesses use motion sensing applications to help drive down costs. For example, sensor can detect and log when a device is dropped. The MC3100 also supports voice over a wireless LAN.

The MC3100 is the newest addition to Motorola's family of MC3000 devices. The MC3100 runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 or Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Pro. Customers can choose between a 1 dimension laser scanner or a 1D/2D imager for capturing 1D and 2D bar codes. The MC3100 also comes equipped with a keypad and touchscreen inputs.
 

NCR, Evolution Robotics Announce Shrink-Reducing Checkout Solution
NCR and Evolution Robotics Retail announce that ERR's LaneHawk, which helps grocers eliminate most losses from bottom-of-basket shrink, is now available with NCR Advanced Checkout Solution (ACS) software and with the NCR SelfServ Checkout solution.

LaneHawk combines video with object recognition technology to detect and identify items left in the bottom of checkout baskets during checkout. LaneHawk alerts cashiers and automatically enters bottom-of-basket items into the shopper's order, reducing shrink. Since items do not need to be removed from the basket for scanning, checkout speed and shopper service are enhanced while doing away with cashier injuries from lifting heavy items from the bottom of the basket.

NCR SelfServ Checkout gives consumers the option to scan, bag and pay for goods on their own using cash or debit/credit cards. Featuring a user-friendly interface that guides consumers through the checkout process, it is designed to enhance customers' shopping experience, while helping retailers improve operational efficiency.


 

Epson Expands Thermal Printer Line
Epson announces it will deliver a series of new thermal printers to expand its portfolio of transaction printers. These new printers are designed to meet the needs of smaller retailers and food service operators while providing expanded functionality to its traditional, larger retailer customer base.

Over the next two quarters, Epson plans to introduce three new products. These products include a compact, thermal printer with all-front access for use in specialty POS solutions and kiosk applications, an all-inclusive packaged thermal printer for small retail and food service applications, and a-next generation thermal printer designed for customers who require full-featured printing functionality.
 

End-to-End Data Encryption from Hypercom and Heartland Payment Systems
Hypercom and Heartland Payment Systems jointly announce an integrated, high-security payment system with end-to-end encryption. Heartland licenses Hypercom's SmartPayments Server Software products as key components of its host electronic transaction processing platform.

Branded as Heartland Connect Gateway, this software helps enable Hypercom point-of-sale systems to integrate E3 technology which is designed to protect card data from the moment of swipe through transmission to the card brands.

SmartPayments will facilitate Heartland's ability to offer E3 to several markets by providing an infrastructure and support for retail, mobile commerce and an e-commerce virtual terminal solution for card-not-present and card-present transactions including debit. SmartPayments provides the ability to support integrated plug-ins for Microsoft's Retail Management System (RMS) and Intuit's QuickBooks accounting packages.

 
 

Sterling Commerce Solves Stocking Dilemmas with Always in Stock Solution
Sterling Commerce introduces Always in Stock, which combines advanced cross-channel order management with integration capabilities. When a customer is faced with an out-of-stock product, Sterling Always in Stock helps the sales associate or call center agent to find the desired item in the retailer's network and the customer to choose a satisfying fulfillment method.

Sterling Always in Stock is a preconfigured solution that combines modules from Sterling Multi-Channel Selling and Sterling Multi-Channel Fulfillment with a user interface for sales associates and call center agents to optimize the entire "save-the-sale" business process.

The solution utilizes a special order process that also can accommodate "endless aisle" items. Once the transaction is complete, Sterling Always in Stock automatically triggers fulfillment from the designated location and provides complete order status visibility for the customer and the sales associate.

"Our customer satisfaction and loyalty is much improved when we can offer multiple fulfillment options to solve an out-of-stock or make the purchase more convenient," said Chap Achen, director, multi-channel order management, Best Buy, a long-standing Sterling Multi-Channel Fulfillment customer.

Sterling Always in Stock provides the following capabilities:

- A guided, automated save-the-sale process combined with an interface for store associates and call center agents

- Configurable sourcing rules that steer the associate toward the most appropriate fulfillment options, as well as flexible sourcing logic to support advanced cross-channel fulfillment options, such as ship to home, ship to store, store-to-store transfer and hold for alternate-store pickup

- Integration capabilities that provide real-time visibility by integrating with POS, inventory management and warehouse management systems

 
 

Teradata Releases Enterprise Analytics Cloud
Teradata releases the Teradata Enterprise Analytics Cloud which expands analytic needs by leveraging cloud computing technologies. Initial offerings include the Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud, Teradata Express on Amazon EC2, and Teradata Express for VMware Player.

For the business user, public and private clouds provide flexible, self-service for the rapid building of short term analytic data marts, allowing users to pay only for the computing power actually used.

The Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud is designed to enable agile analytics in a Teradata private cloud environment. Business users can create data marts inside their Teradata system within minutes. This eliminates the need to build separate, physical data marts, because the production data can be accessed directly, without data movement or duplication.

Built on the Teradata Database and platforms, the Teradata Agile Analytics Cloud combines advanced workload management, the new Teradata Elastic Mart Builder tool, and a services methodology to enable business users to exploit data marts inside their Teradata System. The Teradata Elastic Mart Builder is a Teradata Viewpoint self-service portlet that helps create data marts for application development. It allows external data to be combined with existing data facilitating the discovery of new insights. The Teradata Elastic Mart Builder is being released as a free tool to be deployed through Teradata Developer Exchange.

Teradata Express Cloud Offerings
The two new Teradata Express cloud offerings are built on Teradata Express, which is a free, non-production version of Teradata Database software intended for developers and evaluation scenarios. The cloud versions of Teradata Express support up to one terabyte of data and are powered by Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.

Teradata Express on Amazon EC2
Teradata Express on Amazon EC2 is available on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). This prepackaged edition is a free developer version of the Teradata Database for use in the Amazon EC2 environment. Customers can launch Teradata Express on Amazon EC2 and begin their collaborative work from any location in the world.

Teradata Express for VMware Player
Teradata Express for VMware Player delivers a fully configured Teradata Database bundled for private cloud analytics. Once VMware software is installed, the Teradata Database can be loaded in minutes. For the Teradata Database, VMware is an important stepping stone towards delivering internal private clouds for developers and information technology operations managers. The value for customers will be the easy creation of Teradata test and development environments with a significant reduction in capital costs from server consolidation.

 

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