Wal-Mart's new software is a real data cruncher - Comm-Press' data compression software

Discount Store News, May 15, 1995

BENTONVILLE, ARK. -- Long the retail industry leader in the use of technology to drive down costs, Wal-Mart has purchased data Compression software from Comm-Press, Dallas.

Woolworth has been using Comm-Press software for about a year, said company president Gene Lucas, to exchange EDI data with its top 10 vendors and also to compress archive data.

The Comm-Press software compresses data by about 85%, Lucas said, with a similar savings in data transmission costs. In another cost savings, data compression saves backroom operating expenses because the in-house batch processing window stays open for shorter periods, Lucas said.

For starters, Wal-Mart will use data compression for exchanging EDI information with its top 100 trading partners, Lucas said. The same software also could be used to transmit data between Wal-Mart stores and headquarters, he said.

Encryption of data, an increasingly important consideration, is another function of the Comm-Press data, Lucas said, but Wal-Mart, for now, won't be using it.

Indicating the growing importance of encryption, the Voluntary Interindustry Communications Standards Committee (VICS) is undertaking a study to determine whether it is necessary to adopt a standard for encoding information in conjunction with specific applications.

Wal-Mart is famed for its pioneering satellite system linking stores and headquarters, but now it is moving away from that toward the less-costly frame relay method of transmitting data over shared, publicly owned phone lines. Just as the old four-way party line was cheaper than having a private phone line, frame relay spreads the cost of telephone line data transmission among multiple users, a major cost savings over exclusive leased lines.

The Comm-Press software sells for about $80,000 for all six platforms, Lucas said.