Upgrading Marketing and Retailing System
IBM Korea (www.ibm.com/kr) announced that it has provided GS Retail Convenience Store with its endpoint management software IBM BigFix® to enable the Korea’s leading retail distributor to automate control and management of its POS(point-of-sale) device endpoints in entirety, and thus revamp the retailer’s efforts to expand customer convenience and secure competitiveness.
With the adoption of the solution, GS Retail Convenience Store is now able to reduce the time required for marketing file distribution and software patch updates to within two days from the previous two weeks which were often carried out in unstable and slow internet network environment. The latest adoption is expected not only to increase work efficiency but also to expand revenue by making it possible to deploy more proactive marketing strategies and tactics. IBM BigFix® software, which is currently planned to be applied for GS Retail convenience stores as many as 9,000 and their 20,000-plus POS devices, is expandable to be deployed at as many as 20,000 convenience stores with about 40,000 POS devices in the future. It is further expected to be connected to GS Retail’s asset management system and expanded into security compliance.
IBM BigFix® is a unified endpoint security and management software platform that manages large groups of computers and systems, either virtual or real, such as servers, desktop and laptop computers, smartphone, and tablet computer as well as POS devices, ATM, self-service kiosk and other special devices across highly distributed environments. It provides automated patch management to hundreds of thousands of endpoints for more than 90 operating systems including Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux and Mac and applications regardless of location, connection type and bandwidth.
IBM BigFix® solutions have a lot of experiences particularly in the retail and distribution industry where plenty of requirements and disciplines are demanded to run large-scaled operations. As an example, a major retailer has been centrally controlling, managing and reporting on 27,000 servers across their enterprise with IBM BigFix® since 2013.
“Now that we have a POS system based on IBM BigFix which provides excellent functionality, scalability and stability, we are able to offer a variety of products and services to customers quickly and promptly,” said Kim Nam-hyuk, IT Planning Team Lead, GS Retail. . “I am confident to say with high expectations that the adoption of IBM solution will greatly contribute not only to bringing qualitative growth and enhanced services to each and every of our convenience stores, but also to continuously expanding the number of our stores.”
“IBM BigFix® is an endpoint management platform providing security and control from a single management console, which is made possible by continuously monitoring potential threats to endpoints, including POS devices in use at convenience stores, and ensuring security and compliance with regulations and operating disciplines for all endpoints in and outside company networks,” said Shin Ho-chul, security business unit executive at IBM Korea. He further emphasized, “The latest project with GS Retail will mark a representative case in Korea to automate patch management, remote software deployment and operating system migration, which will eventually save customers difficulties of management and cost.”