Virtualized POS
Drive digital transformation of your retail business with
Virtualized POS Terminals.
Accelerate POS performance by 30%
Extend the life of existing POS terminals
Reduce store infrastructure cost
“Virtualization of our key upsell platform is a smart way to reduce the number of devices at customer checkout and deliver a far leaner and efficient IT footprint in the store.
”
Edward Dzadovsky
VP North America IT, Circle K
VP North America IT, Circle K
Virtualized POS enables the Software-Defined Store
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Business Benefits
Increased Return on Investment
- Extends life of existing POS terminals indefinitely
- Supports all existing & future peripheral appliances
- Avoids end of life issues arising from vendor support decisions (e.g. Microsoft)
- Reduces cost of POS hardware on replacement
- Simple to service by using in-store personnel: re-boot POS in under 30 seconds.
Increased Reliability & Reduced Risk
- Removes POS hard drive: highest failing register hardware component
- High availability options to further reduce risk
- No dependence on WAN availability and performance
- Centralized management of all in-store vPOS
- Central control of patches and updates
- PCI compliant solution that encompasses POS hardware and store server.
Enhanced Customer Service
- Improves POS transactional performance by up to 30% (under lab conditions, vPOS out-performed POS terminals in all scenarios)
- Platform for mobile POS tablets for Line (Q) Busting
- Cost effective platform for future applications to enhance customer experience and deliver new lines of business.
What is the economic value of the Software Defined Store?
Virtualized POS Architecture
The requirements of modern edge infrastructure
Zynstra leverages advancements in hyperconvergence, virtualization and software-defined everything.
Purpose-built for today's retail edge:
virtualized, multiple retail workloads & devices – high performance, PCI compliant.
Intelligence at the core:
Configuration, control, governance – at massive scale.
Operational excellence at the edge:
Improved store operations cost to serve.
Full business integrity:
Built for today’s threat landscape.
Completely automated:
Self-directed, self-healing; manage by exception.
Innovation accelerator:
Platform for today’s and tomorrow’s innovation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is POS virtualization?
POS virtualization is moving the combination of a POS application and operating system that runs on dedicated hardware into a virtual machine on a shared infrastructure virtualized server. The POS operating system is often a flavor of Microsoft Windows.
What is a trigger for virtualizing POS?
Many retailers are facing an enforced POS terminal upgrade cycle due to Microsoft Windows End Of Life issues. POSReady 2009 has an EOL in September 2019 while the very popular POSReady7 has an end of life in December 2021. For many existing POS Terminals there is no supported upgrade path to Windows 10 IoT.
Why should I virtualize my POS?
Virtualization of POS can deliver a range of business benefits including simplifying the store IT Bill Of Materials, increased POS performance, reduced IT support costs and enhance IT security.
My POS runs on Microsoft Windows POSReady 2009 or Windows POSREeady7. What can I do?
One option is to upgrade POS terminal hardware to a version that is supported by Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. An even better alternative is to virtualize POS and any other in-store applications and preserve you existing investment until they come to a natural end of life.
My POS Terminals do not support running Windows 10 IoT. What are my options?
Virtualizing POS enables the investment in existing POS terminals because it is possible to run Windows 10 IoT in a modern virtualization environment extending the life of POS applications.
If I virtualize POS, what runs on the POS Terminal?
A small operating system based on a lightweight Linux kernel runs on the POS terminal. This contains two applications: one for enabling a remote desktop so that the user can interact with the virtualized POS application that now runs on the server; a second for securely forwarding peripherals from the POS terminal to the virtualized POS.
Can I integrate the myriad of peripherals connected to my POS terminals with a Virtualized POS?
The simple answer is yes. It is possible to integrate a wide range of USB, serial and GPIO peripherals including Balance, Barcode Scanner, Bluetooth Printer, Camera, Cash Drawer, Check Reader, Coin Dispenser, Coupon Detector, Magnetic Stripe Reader (MSR), Note Acceptor, Note Dispenser, Serial Printer. Other peripherals not mentioned are also possible.
Isn’t it too risky to I put all my POS eggs into the virtualization basket
Zynstra’s virtualization supports an efficient two node high availability cluster. It runs active-active so that workloads can be balanced across nodes so that in the event of one part of the cluster becoming unavailable, half of the workloads are unaffected with the remaining restarting automatically on the working server.
Wouldn’t it be better to migrate POS to the cloud?
Most retailers are not comfortable to directly depend on the availability and performance of a Wide Area Network (WAN) to take payment from customers. This is one of the reasons why most POS applications are still resident in-store.
Is virtualization a mature technology that can be trusted?
Virtualization has been in existence since its inception by IBM in the early 1970’s. Server virtualization on Intel x86 processors became widely available between 2001 and 2003 from a combination of VMware and the Xen project. Virtualization forms the basis of cloud computing (AWS, Azure and Google) and modern enterprise datacenters. It is also the technological basis of virtual desktops. POS is one of the last major enterprise applications that has not been widely virtualized.