Long held captive by IT suppliers, retailers expect that a set of Java Point of Sale (JPOS) specifications to be announced in draft form by the National Retail Federation at its show in New York on January 19th will be used to create Java-based checkout software and POS devices including cash registers and bar code readers that interoperate with each other. They hope that JPOS products may be available before the end of this year. For the vendor community JPOS marks the opening of a new front in the battle between the dominant PC model of retail computing championed by Microsoft Corp, and the network computer, supported by Sun Microsystems Inc, IBM Corp and others. NC supporters claim Java- based NC checkout technologies will be cheaper, more interoperable and offer retailers wider technology choices than the PC-based POS model, known as OPOS, from which JPOS is largely derived. Support for OPOS in JPOS means vendors and retailers will be able to write checkout applications that can work on an NC or a PC; NC supporters are betting that lower cost of ownership will attract retailers to use their devices in checkout systems rather than PC kit. POS vendors such as Fujitsu/ICL, Epson, Siemens Nixdorf and twenty or more others have already agreed to support JPOS. Notable absentees from JPOS’ list of supporters are Microsoft, whose OLE-based ActiveStore software architecture supports OPOS, and Hewlett-Packard Co. IBM says JPOS supports the current OPOS 1.2 release and will be extended to support the forthcoming OPOS 1.3. The key difference, IBM claims, is that OPOS is platform (PC) dependent and language independent (although oriented to C++), while JPOS is platform independent and language specific.
Extending Java
The JPOS specification was written by Sun, IBM and NCR Corp with input from leading US retailers such as JC Penney, Home Depot, Kmart and Sears who last year wrote to Sun CEO Scott McNealy asking the company to help Java-tize a fledgling IBM/NCR POS specification project which they had caught wind of. The spec effectively extends Java to support the input/output mechanisms of POS products built by companies supporting the spec. It defines, for instance, what a JPOS printer looks like so an ISV can write an application without a particular print device in mind. Retailers will be able to streamline their IT operations, adding interoperable applications and new devices to new and existing systems. Once the spec has been reviewed and comments and changes accommodated, Sun will incorporate the work into a future version of its JDK Java code. As well as Fujitsu/ICL, Siemens Nixdorf and Epson, some 20 other companies have already endorsed JPOS. Retailers, Sun says, have had enough of buying proprietary POS equipment from single suppliers and are desperate to tool-up in all technology areas for what’s being touted as a revolution in shopping experience that lies around the corner. Above and beyond JPOS retailers want to create a seamless store environment for customers that are buying in person, from kiosks or in the internet, using cash, checks, credit cards, debit cards or loyalty cards, it says. Collecting more information about what customers buy – or leave on the shelves – and services they use will help retailers more effectively target products and services to individual customers. After retailers, Sun says it will take JPOS to the hospitality industries, beginning with hotels and restaurants for use in combination with other Java technologies such as JavaCard smart cards and JavaCommerce APIs. For Sun, retail is another vertical market in which it is pushing Java up against the prevailing Microsoft common object model technologies. Both companies already have products and architectures which address telcos, financial markets and manufacturing as well and other industries.
