"All roads lead to Rome" or possibly Aruba
This month's CEO Corner begins with a thank you to our clients and Partners for taking the time to read my ramblings. I try to make the topics timely, meaningful and appropriate.
There have been many positive changes in our product delivery, product vision, and product quality in the last year. We delivered a new release of Version 8 Retail Pro and announced that we will produce yet one more release for Version 8, with even more enhanced and useful features. We delivered a fantastically enhanced and extremely stable release of our Version 9 Retail Pro product and produced PCI compliant versions of both products long before the stated deadlines for retailers to meet all the PCI compliance issues. We also announced and debuted our next generation family of Retail Pro solutions code named Aruba. Aruba is a completely new and different line of POS/Retail Management solutions that will allow the retailer to choose a centralized, decentralized or SaaS IT architecture (you can read more about Aruba in the Retail Pro Roadmap document available through your certified Retail Pro Business Partner). So, with all these current and future products in the mix, what is the path to the future for retailers using Retail Pro today?
I want to clearly state our intention to execute on a "no client left behind" strategy for assuring that all our clients have a strong and viable product future with Retail Pro. Although the Aruba product is not "Version 10" of Retail Pro (Aruba shares no technological links to previous Retail Pro versions), it is the destination we see all of our clients eventually adopting. In order to be as inclusive as possible we will create data migration paths to Aruba from both Version 8 (the then most current release), Version 9, and likely from other competitive products. This means that a V8 client will not have to move to V9 to eventually be able to adopt the Aruba product. Don't misunderstand me; there are many compelling reasons for V8 users to upgrade to V9 (ask your Business Partner). But, for those V8 clients that do not move to V9 there will be a smooth path created to allow adoption of the Aruba solution. Version 9 clients will continue to enjoy enhancements and new releases even after the Aruba product is delivered to the market, and will have the option of adopting Aruba when it is compelling and appropriate for them to do so. We respect the investment you have made in Retail Pro and going forward we want you to be able to leverage that investment, even as you move to our new technology.
Project Aruba is not the only exciting future technology Retail Pro is bringing to market. Along with our efforts on Aruba, we are investing in an intimately integrated web store with an exciting option of multi-channel marketing. This will allow retailers of all sizes to not only market their inventory on the web, but also to add complementary products to your web store without having to inventory them (the beauty of drop shipping). We are also investing in different tools to allow you the retailer to enhance the customer experience: customer loyalty solutions, paperless receipt solutions, handheld wireless pad devices in lieu of a terminal, and greater flexibility in promotions and gift card programs.
We are thinking about your future.
Sincerely,
Kerry Lemos
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