Retail Assist Offers Merret .NET

Retail-only solutions and service provider, Retail Assist, used Retail Solutions 2008 as the launch pad for the first phase of development of its Merret supply chain solution on the Microsoft .NET platform. “IBM System i has proved to be a great platform for many retailers who use Merret to achieve measurable business benefits,” explained Nigel Illingworth, Product Director at Retail Assist. “By extending Merret’s capabilities into the Microsoft .NET arena, we can give retailers more choice in how they deploy and benefit from the solution, whatever retail model they employ and whatever stage of maturity their business is at. We believe Merret has huge potential to drive better business, and we want to make sure it reaches as wide an audience as possible,” he continued.

For this first phase of development, retailers will continue to utilize the IBM DB2/400 database and batch processes running on IBM Power Systems, whilst all user interfaces and associated program logic run under the .NET framework, and can be undertaken using the familiar and intuitive Windows graphical user interface. This provides a perfect mixture of resilience and scalability on the back-end with clarity and ease of use on the front-end — and all within a low cost of hardware ownership. Alan Morris, MD at Retail Assist, added: “With Merret .NET, we are giving retailers another way to deploy Merret, to improve efficiency and achieve cost savings. Retail Assist is positioned to harness the strengths of both the IBM and Microsoft platforms.” Retailers can purchase Merret .NET as a licensed product or can use it as ‘software as a service’ through Retail Assist’s Managed Solutions programme.

www.retail-assist.com

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