EPSON to demonstrate new retail POS standard at RISCON; further underscores leadership in open architecture retail systems

Business Wire, Sept 18, 1995

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 18, 1995--EPSON, a founding member along with Microsoft of a standards consortium point-of-sale (POS) device interconnect, will be demonstrating the capabilities of OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) for Point-of-Sale (OPOS) at the RISCON show this week.

The OPOS standard will ease the way for software developers to design off-the-shelf applications for the retail POS market.

"EPSON has led the way in open architecture systems for the POS market with both our TM printers and our IT intelligent terminals," said Bud Weist, business unit director, EPSON. "Our work with Microsoft, AT&T GIS and PSI to develop a POS device interconnect standard is part of our commitment to the retail market."

As the POS market has begun to shift away from proprietary systems toward open architecture systems such as the IT from EPSON, the need for some type of device interconnect standard has become critical. OLE for POS (OPOS) is intended to create an open device driver architecture that will allow easier integration of POS hardware components and systems.

The move toward open architecture systems has created a need for standardization. Currently, software developers must write drivers and interconnect codes for many different devices which makes software development an extremely time-consuming and difficult task. They must become intimately familiar with the requirements of dozens of manufacturers and write separate code bases to run customized applications using different peripherals.

OPOS is based on the object linking and embedding (OLE) control environment and simplifies programming by defining the various POS peripheral classes and the associated OLE custom controls. Using this "programming" architecture enables software developers to use currently available Rapid Application Development tools such as Visual Basic 4.0, Visual FoxPro, Visual C and PowerBuilder.

The OPOS standard is compatible with operating systems that use 32-bit architecture. It has currently been adapted to run under Windows NT and Windows 95 environments, but can also run under OS/2 and UNIX when OLE support is adopted. The standard is programming-language independent and defines a binary standard for component interoperability.

Additionally, it allows status and error reporting, inter-component communication within the same processing space, communication across processing space and dynamic component loading.

What all this amounts to is the ability for software developers to easily write device independent applications as has been done in the personal computer industry. Conceptually, this means that retailers will be able to choose from a wide variety of off-the-shelf applications.

More importantly perhaps is the ability to take advantage of open architecture systems such as the IT from EPSON that provide the computing and processing power to handle the data-intensive requirements of today's retail market.

"The adoption of OLE for Retail POS will create the ability for retailers to quickly integrate new devices without major modifications or creating a new application," said Weist. "This means that they will be able to have a POS system that can be upgraded to accommodate new requirements such as multimedia or wireless communication as the retailer grows."

EPSON offers an extensive array of technology products including ink jet, laser and dot matrix printers, scanners, portable and desktop computers and, for the OEM market, a variety of components and electronic devices.

Founded in 1975, Epson America Inc. is an affiliate of Seiko Epson Corp., a global manufacturer and supplier of high-quality technology products that meet customer demands for increased functionality, compactness, systems integration and energy efficiency. Epson America has headquarters in Torrance, Calif. -0-

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CONTACT: EPSON

Susie Mitchell, 310/782-5174, 310/782-5179 (fax)

or

Base One Marketing

Julie O'Brien, 310/792-1877