SUSE Manager for Retail 4.2 what’s new?

Manage, Secure, Automate and Comply with the newest version of the SUSE Infrastructure Management Solution for the Retail industry

From Mainframe and HPC Clusters to bare metal servers and VMs down to point of service terminals, kiosks, self-service and reverse-vending system Linux deployments, SUSE Manager for Retail is designed to help you reduce costs, optimize operations, and ensure compliance across your retail IT infrastructure while reducing complexity and regaining control.

Built on SUSE Manager 4.2, we are very pleased to announce SUSE Manager for Retail 4.2, our best-in-class open source infrastructure management, optimized and tailored specifically for the retail industry.

SUSE Manager for Retail 4.2

SUSE Manager for Retail 4.2 delivers best-in-class open source infrastructure management, optimized and tailored specifically for the retail industry. This latest release of SUSE Manager for Retail delivers new enhancements focused on modernizing the POS environment, improving offline operations, reducing complexity and simplifying management:

Modernize POS environments while ensuring reliability and stability with SUSE Linux Enterprise Point-of-Service 15 SP3.

Retailers that are running old POS systems and hardware are not equipped for providing omnichannel and seamless shopping experiences. These customer experiences require POS applications with new capabilities and customer services. They need to deploy store applications that run on secure, reliable and stable platforms to guarantee their environment POS is always up. They also need to retire legacy systems as part of digital transformation. They have to think about new store concepts that provide convenience and exceptional experiences to the customers. Retailers introduce the latest POS hardware such as terminals, self-checkout devices, kiosks, or digital signage in order to transform their store concept and to provide exceptional customer experiences.

With SLES 15 SP3 based POS images, Retailers can deploy the newest POS systems and leverage the latest POS hardware that enables them to create a seamless omnichannel experience to their customers.

These SLES 15 SP3 based images (SLEPOS) will be supported for 7.5 years in order to provide a POS environment that is stable, secure and that gives retailers a competitive advantage by fully exploiting their POS hardware investment.

Enhanced POS environment support with the addition of ARM based POS devices

With SUSE Manager 4.2, we provide predefined configuration templates to help build POS images based on SLES 15 SP3 for ARM.

We are expecting a prevalence of IoT devices in a store environment in the coming years. These could be, for example, Rasp Pi powered digital signages & POS devices. Customers will be able to build SLEPOS images for these devices with predefined templates for ARM that can be distributed to the stores and managed with SUSE Manager for Retail.

Advanced offline operation using SUSE Manager Hub

With SUSE Manager for Retail 4.1 we introduced the “Hub”, a multi-server architecture that allows customers scale to hundreds of thousands of devices. With improvements to the Hub and deployed in a retail environment, we now are able to offer advanced offline operations in the stores, even when connectivity to the central server is lost. For example, offline patch management allows patch runs even when there’s very limited or no connection between the central server and the store during that time.

Branch server offline deployment

When retailers open new stores, their store infrastructure may be deployed before a network is available at the location. If no Internet connection to the Administration Server is available, the Branch server, used in the SUSE Manager for Retail architecture, can be deployed offline.

Streamline customized image creation guide

Every retailer is different and has unique needs about what configuration go on those POS images that go out to their various POS devices. These customizations range from company branding, auto-login of users, auto-starting of POS applications to POS system lockdown and hardening settings. This guide will help retailers customize their POS images according to their needs.

For more information https://www.suse. com/products/suse-manager/