RE: Retail systems

["Mark Villa" <markvilla@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

~~~What systems are running most of the national retailers,
~~~large and small?
~~~Home Depot
~~~Best Buy
~~~Costco/Price Club
~~~Blockbuster
~~~Hollywood Video
~~~etc., etc.

I don't think there is a grocery chain (or any large chain) without IBM
4680's
It has integration with iSeries or mainframe (add on products and native)
It was a great idea, to make POS "different" that DOS or OS/2, so it would
not get unauthorized changes applied.
Those days are gone forever I think....
POS is the most reliable small system-no doubt.
Of course they are designed for redundancy.
We had a midrange in every grocery store to feed the point of sale and pull
results.
It was hard going to AS/400 from S/36 but it skimmed by on the
justification.
Going to a 270 would never happen at these prices for a standard sized store
(new super stores are different)

Pharmacy/meat/floral, lots of "after-thought" departments got windows vendor
solutions and prohibitive cost to integrate.
I see AIX terminals in Home depot I think, Wal-Mart service area.
We spent a fortune rolling out AIX for the wishful "paperless office"
I would have never done it. not my call.
Good box but....why does each store have to get a signoff from the fire
marshal for the 72.5 devices you have to plug in to be compatible with
everybody.
Of course, a lot of this is changing FAST!

Mark in Charleston SC.