Yes, the Rustan's Group, specifically Shopwise, was the first major
retailer in the Philippines to deploy a Linux based POS. Just wanted to
share the project details in this forum:
The project started around 2003, Ian Sison and Jijo Sevilla of QSR were
able to make our fully functioning Qt based GUI POS run on a Siemens 486
machine with only 32MB RAM. They meticulously removed all unwanted
packages and squeezed the required ones. The POS devices (scanner,
printer, customer display) did not use drivers. Pure C code was written
instead, to interact with the devices directly via serial port.
Berkeley DB was used as the POS terminal database due to its small
footprint and lightning fast access. The store server database used was
PostgreSQL. DRBD, which has been a reliable piece of technology up to
now, was used to provide server mirroring. One of my favorite features
was the customized FAI server which allowed store personnel to
automatically install or upgrade POS terminals without any Linux
knowledge. With new store openings, we would simply bootup all machines
(usually 20 and up), smoke a cigarette and after smoking, the entire
store would be ready to sell to customers.
A year later, all Shopwise and Royal Duty Free stores were migrated to
Linux (9 branches, 250+ POS terminals and 18 servers). Needless to say,
Shopwise started reaping the benefits of open source, but it wasn't
until 2006 that OSS really became a lifesaver for the group's I.T.
department. At the time, Shopwise was assigned to integrate systems
with Rustans Supermaket. Integration meant replacing all existing
hardware and software systems of all 28 Rustan Supermarket stores (300+
POS terminals, 40+ servers, leased-lines, routers etc...) within a span
of two weeks. Without the investment in OSS, the migration would have
taken at least ten times longer and cost a lot more. Let me quantify:
1) Cost savings on OS, anti-virus licensing would have been 3 to 5
million PHP
2) Cost savings on RDBMS licensing: at least 5 million PHP
3) Cost savings on server mirroring: at least 1 million PHP
4) Cost saving on Linux training (benefit of FAI): at least 300K PHP
5) Cost savings on purchase of POS/Server hardware (benefit of minimal
linux distro/tightly written POS software in C/C++): 3 to 4 million PHP
since low-end Celeron POS terminals were purchased and most stores
initially used clone PC servers.
Cost savings was definitely significant but the OSS promise also made
the migration possible. Without OSS, budgeting, negotiating and
purchasing all software pieces would have caused major delays on the
project. It was even possible for some items not to be approved in the
budgeting process alone, such as anti-virus and server mirroring had we
not been using OSS. At the end of the day, the "freedom" to do whatever
you could with OSS technologies, without external dependencies, also
became a critical success factor in implementing the ideal solution for
the project.
Orlando Andico wrote:
Doesn't get often in the news but Rustans Supermarket has been using a
Debian-based POS from Carlos Yu's CYWareInc (a member of this forum)
for at least the past five years... PostgreSQL back-end.
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 1:46 PM, Ariz Jacinto <[email protected]> wrote:
FTA:
http://technology.inquirer.net/infotech/infotech/view/20090416-199780/RP-retailer-goes-for-Linux-based-system
"....Puregold has ordered more than 2,000 licenses of TPLinux software
[Linux-based point-of-sale or POS system], according to Paderborn,
Germany-based Wincor Nixdorf, which sells niche solutions for banks
and retail firms.
“We wanted to cut the cost of buying anti-virus licenses and save on
the cost of the license of (Microsoft) Windows per POS,” said Ruel
Magat, Puregold’s IT Manager...."
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