Pervasive Retailing™ Framework

An explosion of consumer-facing devices, in and out of the store, is starting to create a pervasive retailing possibility – where consumers will increasingly expect personalized interaction on the device of their choice, anywhere, any time and every time. These new technologies create new demand and opportunities for retailers to not only reach the consumer at each of these different touch points, but to also leverage the data from these touch points to improve the operations of their store and enterprise.

Realizing interoperability among numerous real-time devices and applications from multiple vendors can be a complex and daunting task, especially when integrating legacy systems. Extending legacy systems, increasing real-time interaction rates, and ensuring interoperability between discrete functions across the retail operation require a dynamic infrastructure and system architecture.

Fujitsu has developed the Pervasive Retailing Framework (PRF) to enable companies to minimize the time, cost and risk of creating real-time interoperability between disparate applications and devices that support a multitude of retailing interactions. The picture below is summary of the classes of applications and devices that fall within the scope of the PRF.

The Pervasive Retailing Framework (PRF) provides the essential applications for running the store – the GlobalSTORE application set – and includes the infrastructure to integrate the GlobalSTORE application set with other applications in the store, or in the enterprise, or on the web into the current retail environment with minimum disruption to the ongoing operation. GlobalSTORE is architected to exploit the benefits of simplicity and scalability offered by the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in the Pervasive Retailing Framework. The framework itself is open and can be used to integrate applications and functions from other vendors. It allows multiple functions in the store and across the enterprise to work together at a granular level in real-time, in such a way that does not require invasive surgery to existing systems.

If a company desires to leverage a legacy or third-party POS application, they can deploy selected elements of Fujitsu's Pervasive Retailing Tools (PRTs). PRTs include each of the components of the framework, which are available discretely. PRTs allow Fujitsu to quickly extend and integrate a wide range of applications – from Fujitsu and others – across multi-vendor retail technology environments. This same tools can be used to extend the life of legacy store systems by adding new functionality with less risk and at a much lower cost.

Fujitsu’s Pervasive Retailing SOA is the open infrastructure built on the Microsoft’s .NET Framework, the programming model for building XML Web services and applications that makes the Pervasive Retailing Framework possible. It includes dynamic messaging and services to separate the functions, data and screen formats associated with interoperability in the store – including interaction with other service-oriented platforms.