Retailers are confused about the pros and cons of thin computing

As IT suppliers take sides over emerging network technologies, retailers struggling to get to grips with thin computing. Chris Field investigates

NETWORK computing seems to have been invented for retailers. As distributed businesses, they are faced with demands from a growing band of users, all with different responsibilities and levels of expertise, and all needing access to enterprise data from a variety of devices.

With loyalty marketing, automated supply chain management, integrated range planning, and in-store customer kiosks and self-scanning, almost everyone in the enterprise needs data and tools.

No surprise, then, that the NC holds strong appeal in the retail community, bringing the promise of improved services for users, faster development times and lower hardware and maintenance costs: a typical NC runs on 7-8 watts, has no moving parts and boasts a life expectancy of 43 years, slashing the total cost of ownership.

As with any recent technology yet to be taken up, these are the days of hyperbole for network computing. Retail-ers can be divided into four camps: those with no opinion, those who are cautious but responsive, those now implementing and those who are hostile.

Users are guided, or misguided, by IT suppliers. Peter Jakob, IBM marketing manager for NC business, admits: ?The industry has not done a great job in educating the market. The message has been unclear and inconsistent.?

The most confusing aspect of network computing for retailers is exactly where in the enterprise it should be implemented. At the point of sale (POS), there is little support. Ed Coupland, marketing and business development manager for managed services at ICL Retail Systems, says: ?We don?t have a view because we are committed to the Microsoft vision. The investment in an NC infrastructure is high and the payback is in the long term. I don?t see a place for network computing in in-store applications because retailers need real power at the point of sale.?

Microsoft bel- ieves that network computing is immature, and that it is too risky to rely on the network, especially in such a hostile environment as POS.

Rob Wills, Microsoft?s retail industry manager, explains: ?If all I want to do is scan and take money, fine. But retailers are adding loyalty, printing, experimenting in multimedia and weighing advan-ces, and consequently need powerful devices at the point of sale.? Yet the company is committed to network computing. Its Zero Administration initiative is a series of network management tools and technologies to lower costs. This is accompanied by NetPC, a low-cost Web browser which performs simple tasks such as price checking.

IBM has responded with the Network Series 300, a range of NCs that will run within a PC network or as a Java virtual machine served by NT Server, AS/400 or S390.

PC suppliers have hardly been caught napping on the issue of total cost of ownership. Unicenter, Tivoli and Control are now addressing the cost of PC ownership by improving network management. It must be concluded, therefore, that the gulf between the PC and the NC is narrowing, making many of the partisan arguments redundant.

What do users think? Most major retailers claim they will maintain a watching brief. Tesco has just committed to spending #30m on powerful Pentium-based POS systems in one of the largest POS contracts ever signed. Ian O?Reilly, IT director at Tesco, says: ?Network computing it is a relatively immature technology. I would need to see it, touch it and feel it first.?

But attitudes change once head office, the call centre or departments are mentioned. Safeway, which benefited from taking the client-server route later than everyone else, is convinced that PCs are not the ideal way to cope with increasing demand from the business for desktop data. The company is making a commitment to network computing, the first major retailer to do so.

Mike Winch, Safeway IT director, explains: ?For us, network computing is cheap, reliable and data available.? The company has already backed up its commitment ? nearly 300 users, including Winch, are now live on NCs (see box).

Boots The Chemist is similarly looking at supporting NCs at point of sale, while in the US, department store chain JC Penney has formed a consortium with NCR and ICL, among others, to create standard drivers for Java POS. IBM claims to be working with international retailers to move them back to the enterprise server (formerly known as the mainframe) and thin-client model.

IBM supports the Safeway view, and Mark Quartermain, European business manager for store solutions, says: ?Retailers are not talking so much about total cost of ownership as how they can run multiple applications across multiple platforms. Microsoft?s ActiveX, is only effective on the Microsoft platform.? Andrew Freeman at retail software group IMS says: ?Windows NT is scalable only up to a point.?

Users are right to be cautious about network computing. Suppliers are moving fast to develop standards for computing, telecoms, smart cards and payments, but they are not ready yet.

The Java Card Forum, for example, has brought together various players, including Gemplus, Schlumberger, Sun and De La Rue, to develop Java standards for smart cards. Standards would enable multifunction cards to be built more cheaply than conventional methods to accommodate payment, mobile phone connection, access, ticketing and loyalty.

The first Java POS applications are being developed and IBM will announce a proof of concept version in May. Meanwhile, retailers and suppliers are publicly saying things about each other that are less than accurate.

Sun Microsystem?s Java market development manager, Andy Bush, has had to state: ?We are not trying to get rid of the PC.? But he does suggest that the next generation of retail hardware will take advantage of Java.

He lists some examples: ?Consumers could have a domestic NC for home shopping, while in the store inexpensive NC-based kiosks could be running Web-based applications. Retailers could be using mobile POS devices that include scanners and telephones.?

As the infighting continues, network computing is redefined almost weekly. The response from retailers in the meantime may be to steer clear and cling to their Pcs.

IMS Two heads are better than one

Software house IMS has discovered a way to reduce the cost of Windows NT Workstation-based POS. Retailers can run the same application on two different POS screens or keyboards from a single NT workstation. This effectively halves the total cost of hardware ownership. IMS? CeNTric software exploits the multi-tasking capabilities of Windows and fools it into thinking it is running two windows on one screen instead of two windows on two screens.

Retailers have not adopted Windows NT at the point of sale because of the high cost of buying hardware to run it on. IMS claims that this will accelerate the use of NT, already big in the back office, at the point of sale. The drawback is a loss of performance but, as most POS applications are not computer intensive and are rarely working continuously, two-head computing may be an ideal solution, particularly for fast-food outlets and manufacturing process control.

Safeway: Happy to network

Typical of its reaction to other emerging technologies such as self-scanning and, at the time, DB2, Safeway wanted to be an early adopter of network computing following presentations by its core IT supplier IBM.

It is currently writing a trading system for its buyers that is based exclusively on network computing. Total cost of ownership has not been the main priority, according to Gary Arthurs, director of IT programme management. He explains: ?We believe that we can build a high-quality and resilient system more quickly and use TCP/IP to communicate with a host of devices, not just NCs.?

Safeway anticipates that it will use the NC approach for in-store kiosks and is investigating using Java to communicate with its mainframe DB2 database, the platform for its data warehouse. The company also has no reservations about using network computing at the point of sale and expects it to make a real difference in serving the customer.

Home Depot: Speaking out for Java

The world?s largest DIY retail chain, Home Depot in the US, has chosen Java technology as part of wireless supplier Telxon?s plan to create a network of mobile and wireless devices to handle inventory, store deliveries and in-store pricing.

Mike Anderson, Home Depot?s director of applications development, chose Telxon?s pen-based terminal with a view to improving customer service. He says: ?The ease of implementation and lower support costs associated with Java make it the appropriate language in which to develop applications.?