STORES Magazine - January 2009 - (Page 49)

“We worked with HP to really get creative, to get the most out of this machine from both a performance and availability perspective,” Ross says. “We sliced it into four different partitions: three are production, and one is a failover partition that can be used in case any of the first three have an issue. The framework is really high performing and a highly available platform for many of our main production database services.” Chico’s did not remove all other equipment from its data center and convert exclusively to HP servers, Ross says, but transitioned to new applications with the technology company. HP technology has allowed Chico’s to grow system capacity by 300 percent in five years without requiring a much larger physical footprint to house it. “We’re up to 500-plus servers and we’ve only grown the square footage in our data center by about 30 percent,” Ross says. “We’ve been able to use current HP technology that is compact, more efficient and requires less power. Support staff requirements are less, and as a result fewer manpower maintenance hours are needed.” Chico’s also is using HP’s BladeSystem “to quickly provision servers for different application needs,” Ross says. “Not only are they high performing and cost effective, but they take up minimal space and use power efficiently so they help contain the overall space and power requirements of the data center.” POS is battle-tested The clothier also uses HP’s point-ofsale hardware in all its stores. “There is nothing more valuable to Chico’s than its customer experience,” says Tate Davis, senior product manager for HP’s POS solution. “They want their customers to have a good experience when they check out, and we want to make sure that the POS solution is battle-tested and works whenever their stores are open.” Chico’s also handles a tremendous amount of transaction data, and uses HP Integrity to translate it into data that business decisions can be made around. According to Davis, Chico’s prefers solutions it can purchase, standardize and deploy for the longest possible time to minimize churn, in terms of supporting their thousand remote stores all over the country. After standardizing with one solution made it easier for Chico’s to manage its POS, the company decided to upgrade from HP’s rp5000 to the rp5700, which includes peripherals like cash drawers, scanners and thermal receipt printers. HP has deployed more than 5,000 checkout lanes with Chico’s. StORES D. Gail Fleenor, a Virginia-based freelance business writer, has nearly 20 years experience in retail and consumer research. Washburn Computer Group Complete Product Service and Repair Kiosks Servers Laptops Touch & non-Touch Displays Scanners Base Units And More! rtif m G v r m r ff Achieving total customer satisfaction is our #1 goal! (800) 285-2914 www.washburngrp.com http://www.washburngrp.com http://www.washburngrp.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - January 2009

STORES Magazine - Jauary 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Mechanical Marvel P&G Invests in Ocado Now I Remember What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Breaking the Monotony Multi-Channel Concept2Watch E-Commerce Analytics Category Management IT Systems In-Store Technology IT Systems Communications Website Strategy Communications SOA Energy Video Surveillance Employee Theft Online Fraud Industry Perspective Loeb Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword End Cap

STORES Magazine - January 2009

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