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Bringing open source into consumer convenience


Johannesburg, 01 Apr 2014

Imagine a world with fewer queues in banking and retail, and more self-service options. Imagine no longer relying on one cubical or terminal for service. Sounds unreal? This world is now a possibility in South Africa thanks to the partnership between LSD and Cashware.

LSD Information Technology has been a major player in the enterprise open source arena for 12 years. LSD has been on the cutting edge of solid and reliable open source solutions for desktop, data centre and application areas, and has provided these solutions to clients.

With the introduction of the Cashware Xspeak technology, there is now a tangible open source solution that the average South African consumer will reap the benefits of, debunking the previous misconception that open source is for SysAdmins and techno-junkies only. Now you and I will be exposed to its power by making our every day interactions in business more convenient.

According to MD of LSD, Sven Lesicnik: "Cashware is modernising customer facing IT infrastructure. LSD sees this as the next step in providing open source solutions higher up the stack and therefore providing more value for customers, which makes us a strategic partner of choice."

Cashware has been around since 1990 and began as a company working with self-service applications, but moved quickly into the ATM environment after noticing the lack of tools in this space. Cashware has focused its business on device connectivity and is a participating member of the European Normalization Committee for the standards of J/XFS.

The company has chosen to partner with LSD on its Xspeak solutions, which are open source and therefore offer no lock-in on proprietary stacks with their hardware and software. This solution is Java based and offers an agile, flexible and easy to deploy solution into the retail and banking industries. The value to the client is that their devices become independent of the previously required hardware such as terminals or PCs.

Clients could now offer the following solutions to consumers:

Banking

* Queue service - This service could allow any teller or bank employee to assist their customers on the go.
* Self-device solutions - This service could enable consumers to utilise their own devices (cellphones, tablets etc.) for basic functionality once they have logged in. For example, print statements in a bank at a common or shared printer. Banks could enable self-service hubs or stations and not rely on staff manned kiosks.

Retail

* In a store, till points need to be reliable and if anything breaks in the system, that till is shut down and another opened in its place. With the Cashware solution, there is no dependency on scanners or credit card machines per teller or till. This allows the cashier to use any card machine or printer should theirs break.
* Price check - This service could allow staff to do mobile price checks and not have to run to an open till for that information.

As Matt Cohen says: "True value is harmony. Products work together to achieve results."

The collaboration between Cashware and LSD is testament to that.

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LSD Information Technology

As IT Ninjas, we want to impact the world by doing IT differently. It's for this reason that we go out of our way to open our clients' worlds by offering a wide choice of open source vendor-neutral solutions that provide a superior and technologically-advanced model for collaboration and working. We pride ourselves on our "funnalism" - our ability to fuse being fun and professional. In addition, there's no charge for awesomeness, so you can always rest assured of amazing service, followed up by incredible quality & on-time delivery. In order to be seen as an employer of choice, we put time, effort & energy into our culture, so that we attract the rock stars of the open source world - people who are committed, excited and passionate about open source, and have been for their entire lives. We are committed to giving back to the communities that have supported us, and work hard to be an active part of building a stable and professional open source community in South Africa. - www.lsd.co.za

Editorial contacts

Mia Andric
Exposure
mia@exposureunlimited.net