Platforms and products
Solution platforms today are expected to utilize state-of-the-art,
standardized operating systems. Some of the decisive factors in selecting
an operating system in the retail trade include:
n
An operating system should provide software administration
mechanisms to help minimize the total cost of ownership
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The flexibility of an operating system for use with different hardware
and peripherals
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Global availability to ensure complete coverage, as well as
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Scalability with regard to user requirements.
In light of these criteria, the Microsoft operating systems have established
themselves in the market, and the Microsoft Windows NT platform is now
positioned as an important technological factor.
However, the growing discussion of operating system scalability, as well as
the demand for continued reduction of the total cost of ownership, have led
to the emergence of other operating systems. The strongest trend has been
to Linux. Regardless of the industry involved, Linux offers itself as an
interesting supplemement to the world of Microsoft.
In view of this trend, Wincor Nixdorf has defined a software strategy that
accommodates both Linux and the popular Microsoft platform:
Microsoft
Wincor Nixdorf currently offers two products for retail customers based on
the Microsoft platform - the successful POSition store solution and the
next-generation Trading Post software.
With POSition, Wincor Nixdorf offers an optimized solution for use in the
self-service food and self-service non-food market segments. It is a flexible
and highly integrative solution. Meeting the needs of its international
clientele, it is based on a client/server architecture with MS-DOS at the POS
terminals and a Windows NT-based server.
Trading Post presents itself as an object-based POS solution which uses
the Microsoft Windows NT operating system throughout. With
standardization concepts for interfacing POS peripherals (OPOS), an
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PLATFORMS AND PRODUCTS
