INDUSTRY

Over Half of World's Top Retailers Look to Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS), the Solaris Operating System to Better Manage Inventories, Reduce Costs: Sun Microsystems announced a host of retail customers are using Sun's Java CAPS technology now in production to better align technology with Web services and deliver improved quality of service to customers during the busy 2007 holiday season. By helping Harrods, Karstadt and others move to a service-oriented architecture (SOA), Sun is enabling better inventory management and significant bottom-line savings through greater business efficiency. "As retailers gear up for a busy holiday season, they'll need to better align technology with business processes to radically improve the way they manage product inventories and deliver service to shoppers," said Dale Ferrario, vice president, business integration and SOA engineering. "Over half of the world's top retail and e-tailers look to Sun Java CAPS technology for competitive advantages and improved quality of service through movement toward service-oriented architecture." Harrods, Karstadt and Other Top Retailers Use Sun's Business Integration Solutions Sun is an industry leader in helping retail customers move toward complete, integrated and secure end-to-end SOA solutions. Today over half of the world's top 20 retailers use Sun products, representing a significant percentage of Sun's overall revenue. Based on open standards, Sun's SOA solutions allow customers to reuse, enhance and extend existing IT assets. Harrods, Karstadt and other leading retail and e-tailers look to Sun for open, secure SOA solutions based on Java CAPS technologies. Harrods Prestigious high-end UK retailer with over 1,000 cash registers and up to 350,000 visitors a day, Harrods needed a way to share services across channels, improve the accuracy of customer records and enable cross-selling and discounts to customers. The leading retailer worked with Sun to implement a "Single View Customer" project that includes the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and other components in the Java CAPS platform. This move toward an enterprise SOA allows a single view of the customer, upsells and cross-promotion to appropriate audiences and the convergence of customer data silos, resulting in an overall increase in customer loyalty. Karstadt Warenhaus GmbH / ITELLIUM With 132 stores and 37,000 employees, Karstadt Warenhaus GmbH, the main subsidiary of the KarstadtQuelle Group, is Europe's largest department store chain. ITELLIUM Systems and Services GmbH is a 670-employee IT service provider for the retail industry and a subsidiary of Karstadt. The new store system of Karstadt Warenhaus GmbH and both existing and new back office systems for inventory control, logistics and finance were integrated via the Sun SeeBeyond eGate component of Java CAPS which provides a gateway for the loosely connected systems. "The successful implementation of the STORE gateway in transaction oriented architecture enables a near real-time processing of sales data in central processes and is therefore an essential requirement for flexible opening hours in stores," says Michael Wilkop, Managing Consultant Technology and Integration at ITELLIUM. "The store gateway enables the use of central (address management systems) and decentral (inventory) SOA services in any application or application-wide processes." For information on Sun's completely integrated, secure, end-to-end SOA solutions, please see its Web site.