Partner Solution Case Study
/ Fast Development Migration Enhances Point-of-Service Offering and Reduces TCO
Overview
Country or Region:Spain
Industry:IT Consultancy
Customer Profile
Accenture is a leading global consulting and technology company that provides enterprisewide services to top Fortune 500 companies. Its retail practice is recognized for helping retailers to obtain the greatest benefits from their technology infrastructure.
Business Situation
Accenture entered into an agreement with Spanish company “Informática El Corte Inglés” to outsource the marketing, maintenance, and evolution of its retail solution, Avenew Point of Service.
Solution
Accenture engaged Avanade, a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture, to perform a migration from Java to the Microsoft® .NET Framework. It used Avanade’s ACA for .NET.
Benefits
Easily adapted to meet client needs
Total migration time was less than six months
Offers a more user-friendly development environment / “Using .NET–based solutions, retailers can avoid replication and manage the entire business centrally. They canmuch more easily distribute updates directly to target devices or manage desktop PCs remotely.”
Pedro Barsanti, Accenture Retail Partner, Accenture
Global consultingand technology company Accenture was keen to develop a stronger presence in the retail point-of-sale (POS) and store management arena. As part ofits contract with Spanish company “Informática El Corte Inglés,” Accenture chose to migrate its POS application, Avenew Point of Service, to the Microsoft® .NET Framework. It engaged Avanade, a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture, for the migration from the Java–based architecture to the .NET Framework. Avanade used its own ACA for .NET architecture to accelerate conversion, which took less than six months. Since the migration, a more user-friendly development environment means that the Avenew Point of Service solution can be easily adapted to meet specific client needs. Centralized management features make a more compelling proposition for customers, who benefit from significantly reduced total cost of ownership.
Situation
Accenture is a leading global consulting and technology company that provides enterprisewide services to top Fortune 500 companies. Its retail practice is recognized for helping retailers worldwide to achieve their business objectives through innovation.
Accenture has always helped clients obtain the greatest benefits from their technology infrastructure. But while the company has a great deal of experience in back-office processes and technology, it was keen to develop a stronger presence in the retail point-of-sale and store management arena.
In 2003, Accenture signed an agreement with “El Corte Inglés,” a large Spanish-owned department store and retailer. The agreement was for Accenture to work with the technology arm of the organization, “Informática El Corte Inglés,” to outsource the marketing, maintenance, and evolution of Accenture'sretail solution, Avenew Point of Service.
As part of the deal with “Informática El Corte Inglés,” Accenture chose to migrate the Java–based application to the Microsoft® .NET Framework, an integral component of the Microsoft Windows® operating system. Pedro Barsanti, Accenture Retail Partner, Accenture, recalls, “We wanted to bring a retail solution to the market that complemented our existing offerings and meant we could provide an end-to-end value proposition to clients, from store management to point-of-service.”
The project was also aligned with the launch of Microsoft Smarter Retailing™retail technology architecture.Microsoft Smarter Retailing focuses on helping businesses improve how they operate through better access to customer and product information. It aims to give retailers easy access to future retail technologies and build a more affordable IT infrastructure to improve selling opportunities in the store.
“We wanted to offer the Avenew Point of Service solution as a key component of Microsoft Smarter Retailing, so we migrated the solution to the .NET Framework as quickly and cost-effectively as possible,” comments Barsanti.
He adds, “Once migrated to [the] .NET [Framework], the solution would be more adaptable to a centralized environment, which would cut costs for retailers. Accenture would benefit from having a core version of the application that could be adapted to different client requirements with only minor updates. The solution would also be compatible with handheld devices, such as devices running the [Microsoft] Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system or Windows Mobile®[software] powered Pocket PCs, which are in demand in retail environments.”
Solution
Accenture engaged Avanade, a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture worldwide, to perform the migration from the Java 2Enterprise Edition–based architecture to the .NET Framework. To speed the migration, Avanade employed its own ACA for .NET, an architecture built entirely on the Microsoft .NET Framework.
ACA for .NET complements the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 development system by providing an application framework, where developers can quickly build XML–based Web services and applications that scale easily and interoperate with various environments.
“ACA provides all communication infrastructure and common objects, so we built our solution on top of that architecture,” explains Barsanti.
Microsoft.NET connects information, people, systems, and devices through software. Developers can quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected andsecurity-enhanced solutions with Web services. Microsoft .NET–based solutions ensure that businesses can integrate their systems more rapidly and connect with information any time, anywhere.
The Avenew Point of Service solution is a store management system with a cashier component for checkouts. Now built on the .NET Framework, it runs on Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows XP Embedded, which includes the full version of the .NET Framework. This makes it possible for next-generation software applications like Avenew to run on embedded devices.
Avenew Point of Service is also supported by emerging retail systems such as Microsoft Windows Embedded for Point of Service, a retail-specific operating system, which simplifies the setup, deployment, and management of in-store systems.
“Avenew offers offline operation, so if communication with servers is lost, the store can continue to trade. The solution focuses on the point-of-service element with enhanced functionality and management features at the front end,” explains Barsanti.
Overall enhancements to the solution since migration include:
•A service-oriented architecture, which achieves broad-scale interoperability and flexibility to continually adapt technology to new business requirements
•Component distribution for fast development
•Compliance with market standards, such as XML and Web services
•Advanced application and workstation-monitoring features
Benefits
Fast Migration Using .NET–based Architectures
By migrating to the .NET Framework, Accenture is able to incorporate the latest technological advances into Avenew Point of Service. The .NET Framework ensures that code can be reused in different client environments to adapt to varying needs. This way, business applications can be extended to a broader range of retailers and businesses. To take advantage of this, independent software vendors or solution providers with existing investments in Java–based applications can migrate their solutions to the .NET Framework quickly and easily.
For Accenture, the total effort required to migrate its Avenew solution to the .NET Framework was just six months. “The overall effort was not more than around 9,000 developer hours,” points outBarsanti.
User-Friendly Development Environment
The .NET Framework offers a user-friendly development environment and an open architecture to incorporate features based on accepted software development patterns and practices. Avenew can now be easily updated and extended to deliver new functionalities, such as the ability to manage new in-store offers and promotions.
Management of security and access is more transparent, and the solution integrates easily with retail data systems and other in-store solutions, such as point-of-sale devices and retail enterprise resource planning systems, helping to drive more efficient retail businesses.
Centralized Store Management
Applications that employthe.NETFrameworkandoperate on Windows technologies provide all the basic components for retailers to manage their stores in an integrated, centralized way. “A retail manager with a business containing 3,000 points of sale, who is looking to reduce total cost of ownership, will see a big difference between having to maintain each point of sale andinstall updates by sending outa technical team from store to storeversusa centralized management process,” comments Barsanti.
“With .NET–based solutions, retailers can avoid replication and manage the entire business centrally. They can much more easily distribute updates directly to target devices or manage desktop PCs remotely. This kind of automation saves significant time and costs,” he continues
On the operations side, the support costs and response time can be reduced: no additional development is required to trace the application execution errors (for example, withWindows Management Instrumentation [WMI]) and performance.
The .NET Framework also delivers more reliable solutions. “Stores with different applications running on disparate technologies will need to invest a lot of time and money in interfacing between the systems. Microsoft–based technologies are designed to fit together and with other business applications. They not only offer greater performance and continue to evolve over time, but they also benefit from Microsoft support and endorsement,” observes Barsanti.
More Flexible Solutions
The advantages of migrating to the .NET Framework are significant. Fast deployment tools that are available with the .NET Framework minimize the development effort for client-specific retail solutions. Applications can be developed faster by reusing existing code, and new functionalities can be added quickly and easily.
Additional advantages are:
•The architecture provides predefined modules for exception management and security
•The exception management module is homogeneous and allows data export (such as to event log, database, or WMI)
•The frontend allows several flexible configurations: for Windows–basedforms, Web, personal digital assistants, and Smart Phone, for example.
•The back-end is also flexible in terms of components distribution (for example, Web services, remoting, or local) and configuration (such as the use of Aspect Oriented Programming—also known as AOP).
As a result of the migration, Avenew Point of Service meets retailers' requirements.Already, numerous installations have been carried out at client sites throughoutEurope. Barsanti adds,“Businesses with.NET–based solutions in place can spend more time working on productive business tasks and revenue generation and less time on secondary tasks such as updating and managing their technology.”
Microsoft .NET
Microsoft .NET is software that connects people, information, systems, and devices through the use of Web services. Web services are a combination of protocols that enable computers to work together by exchanging messages. Web services are based on the standard protocols of XML, SOAP, and WSDL, which allow them to interoperate across platforms and programming languages.
.NET is integrated across Microsoft products and services, providing the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected, secure solutions with Web services. These solutions provide agile business integration and the promise of information anytime, anywhere, on any device.
For more information about Microsoft .NETand Web services, please visit these Web sites:
msdn.microsoft.com/webservices