With 360Commerce And IBM, Retailer's Choices Are Wide Open

As retailer's costs continue to rise and profit margins get tighter, retailers are turning to best-of-breed solutions and looking to open source alternatives for their stores and enterprise. Foreseeing this demand, 360Commerce built its retail store and enterprise solutions entirely on Java, incorporated industry standards into the design, and provided retailers with multiple choices for deployment including choosing open source options such as Linux. Responding to the continued trend, IBM recently announced a retail offering that pairs their proven point-of-sale solution with the cost-effective use of Linux. The solution is called the IBM Retail Environment for SUSE LINUX, or IRES. According to 360Commerce, the combination of IBM's strong reputation for dependability and 360Commerce's experience with Linux, retail and IBM's new platform will provide customers with a cost-effective, proven, and reliable solution.

360Commerce has the world's largest install base of Java point-of-sale customers, including solutions that have been deployed on Linux in over 600 stores at KB Toys and are in pilot on Linux at SteinMart. Attendees at the recent NRF tradeshow and convention had the opportunity to see demonstrations of 360Commerce's pure Java solutions running on IBM's IRES platform in the IBM booth, the ARTS booth and in the 360Commerce booth. 360Commerce is currently working with multiple prospects exploring Linux and considering IBM's IRES.

Scott Handy, VP Linux Strategy and Market Development stated, "We are very excited that 360Commerce has committed to the IBM Retail Environment for SUSE LINUX platform. Linux deployments continue to expand beyond infrastructure into industry verticals and this solution validates that Retail ISVs, like 360Commerce, believe that IBM and Novell/SUSE LINUX have the right platform for their applications and customers. The IBM, Novell and 360Commerce combination provides customers with the proven performance and reliability of Linux with industry-leading IBM middleware for Linux and the retail-specific integration delivered by 360Enterprise Central Office. "

"Part of our business philosophy includes embracing standards and open source options to leverage our customer's current technology investments and help them keep down the cost of new and future solutions," said Jerry Rightmer, one of the original founders and CTO of 360Commerce. "We see more and more software vendors attempting to emulate our popular business model, especially with IBM's recent announcement of IRES. We are pleased to have been there from the beginning, both as one of the first store software applications to be deployed on Linux in the retail environment and as a working partner as IBM developed the IRES concept and brought it to fruition.

We feel the all-in-one infrastructure IRES offers is a tremendous addition to retailers' portfolio of choices."

360Commerce, widely known for their freedom-of-choice approach to providing retail software, has been a pioneer in the open source and standards movements. "We have always had an advantage in this market because we have believed from the beginning in a retailer's right to choose the solutions that best fit their needs. This could mean that every application came from us, they used a mix of our applications and those of another vendor, or utilized our industry-leading technology and business components as a basis to develop applications entirely unique to them," said Rightmer. As the first and only provider that built every store system solution they offer, including those used at the point-of-service, the back office and at the enterprise, on one solid, consistent Java platform, 360Commerce has been uniquely positioned to work with some of the most innovative thinkers in retail technology and some of the most successful retail enterprises, resulting in a best practices solution and an unmatched technology offering.

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