iPOS — Point of Sale in the Cloud

To meet the point-of-sale (POS) needs of retailers across Indonesia, konsep.net built a new product called iPOS. iPOS works differently from the POS systems usually on the market. Most are either desktop-based or web-based, and each approach has its own weaknesses.

Desktop POS systems are hard to sync with head office, offer weaker data security, require a complete setup on each machine, and are awkward to update. Web-based POS, on the other hand, depends heavily on an internet connection — both at the point of sale and all the way back to head office. Given the state of internet connectivity in Indonesia at the time, a purely web-based POS simply wasn't the right fit.

So konsep.net built a cloud-based POS, running on Microsoft Azure. With the system we called iPOS, we get the strengths of both desktop and web while minimizing their drawbacks: the parts that need a fast local response stay on the device, while the parts that need distributed, centralized data live in the cloud.

With the cloud (Azure), the risk of downtime from the OS, network, hardware, or operator is greatly reduced — so customers can focus on running their business with peace of mind.

Another advantage: iPOS is offered on a subscription basis, so the upfront investment is small. Customers don't need to buy Microsoft licenses either — they simply subscribe.