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Advantages and Risks of Networking Operating Systems NOS help connect people at a much faster and more organized rate than pen and paper- even email. But with this, there are threats that can come with this convenience. It is important to know the precautionary measures to take and when done properly, how with risk, can come reward. But if measures are not taken properly, the reward can be greatly sacrificed by data being stolen, information being taken and destruction of digital property. We learned that the server can communicate a lot of data to individuals at different locations at once and how this becomes a very big advantage and allows for an increase of productivity. There are also more ways to communicate data with technology as the intrAnet. This allows for a company to use their network to communicate messages between their devices. But when the inter-network is mixed with the internet, the security can become compromised.

This article shows the difference between computer software and hardware. Software and hardware are interdependent to ensure the computer's operation. Both are indispensable. The article first compares software and hardware, then explains the software and hardware separately, and finally points out a few key differences.

This is a great article that brings out the difference between hardware and software in computer systems. The author points out that both hardware and software are vital components in any electronic, computing, and digital device and that they are interdependent. However, there are distinct differences between the two. While software describes instructions that a computer uses to carry out operations, such as programming software and application software, hardware describes a physical device that carries out tasks based on the instructions provided by the software. Besides, hardware is tangible while software is intangible.

(1 of 3) POSUSA had originally published an article in 2017 about the definition of Point-of-Sale (POS) and a guide to understanding POS more in depth. This article was updated in May of 2021 to represent the ongoing challenges in the hospitality industry due to COVID-19. The article begins by defining a POS transaction as "what takes place between a merchant and a customer when a product or service is purchased, commonly using a point of sale system to complete the transaction." The original idea of a POS system was that of a cash register, but what is in the system make up today is far more complex. A POS system and a POS terminal are one in the same, as the terminal is the physical piece of equipment that processes the information for the POS. The system is composed of many different components as with any piece of technology. "The hardware components bundle will typically include a POS terminal, receipt printer, credit card reader, cash drawer, barcode scanner, kitchen or bar printer (for restaurants), and possibly even an on-site computer server for older legacy systems." These systems continue to make advancements that evolve with the times and can keep up efficiently with the business they are working with.

(2 of 3) The article continues on to discuss the many different types of POS systems and how they can be used for different types of businesses. The restaurant POS system, for example, is the most complex POS system and is the most commonly seen system in the industry. Through the restaurant POS, a business can have a restaurant management system, which helps them run the business efficiently through features such as recipe costing, customer management, reporting, and many other features discussed. Bar, nightclub, retail, small business, salon, and spa POS systems all have very similar features, but are catered to each businesses specific operational need. Cloud-based and mobile POS systems are also discussed in the article as a way to store all POS information in the cloud. The advantages of mPOS were discussed in depth as this can be accessed through an application, making mobility much easier in our ever-advancing technological world.

(3 of 3) The article also provided an introduction of how POS systems work, as a basic understanding is necessary when considering purchasing a system. Through understanding how the POS system works, we see that a POS transaction is "simply any transaction that occurs within a business." POS payment is "when a customer and merchant exchange products or services completing a POS transaction aka point of sale purchase," which can sometimes be referred to as point of purchase, or POP. Finally, the article discusses how POS systems have played a role during the pandemic. While online POS systems have been used for many years to keep businesses on their feet, during the current state of the world this has become even more necessary. The article discusses how important it is to keep the payment process simple, yet secure so that the business may rely on this as a way to make income and customers can enjoy a seamless experience. This article does a very good job of explaining in-depth what a POS system is and how it is relevant to every line of business in the hospitality industry. As online sales continue to grow and as the state of the world remains uncertain, POS system popularity will only continue to rise and advance to create the best possible experience for both the businesses and consumers involved.

This article covers a study performed to determine the digital maturity of events. The research conducted reveals that the majority of industry professionals are aware of technology in events. The study ultimately finds that events have a low digital maturity, but high potential for advancement. The article also addresses the limitations of the study performs and agrees that additional research should be performed to determine the relevance of technology in the events industry while acknowledging that digital engagement is not necessary or conducive to every type of event.

This article has discovered the fact that the event industry was digitally immature. It also introduced a new concept which is called E4.0 into the academic literature. The article is meaningful since it has filled a gap in the literature relating to events and digital maturity and responded to some of the calls for research. The authors were also planning to make further research on E4.0, events, and digital maturity. They have mentioned that the studies on E4.0 itself were also requiring deeper research.

This article analyzes how user-generated ratings have a positive impact on hotels revenue growth. It looks at this through three different methods: one, ratings that the uses provide, two at how those ratings are "distributed over the scale," and three, the number of reviews that hotel receives. The article observes 240 small to mid scale hotels in Italy. Some issues we see come up revolve around the subjectivity of user-generated reviews and how that can positively and negatively affect hotel occupancy and interest. Ultimately, it appears that hotels that already have a high star rating will benefit most from these user-generated ratings because they have a stronger bargaining tool. The other benefactor are small, niche hotels whose increase viability and unique qualities help it in encouraging new tourism and high level experiences.

PMS are designed to create greater efficiency. Both on-premise and a cloud-based systems have similar core functions. The differences are on-premise software must be physically installed on all computers that will require access. The server holds all of the data, which is located on the property. The security of the data and the maintenance of the hardware is the properties responsibility. Cloud software's security is in the hands of the company who owns the software. When it comes to the big differences between the two, it comes down to deployment, technical requirements, cost, and accessibility.

According to article, there is a difference between email marketing and e-marketing. Email marketing directly implies the use of email. E-marketing, on the other hand, can refer to any use of electronic communication, such as websites and online advertisements. E-marketing and email marketing both have their purposes. Email marketing has an advantage in that email lets you bring your message to the customer, while other e-marketing techniques require the customer to find your message. E-marketing can be used to attract new customers and create convenience for existing customers. For instance, e-marketing tools which help create convenience include online bill pay and websites.

Statistically speaking, CIOs don't become CEOs. But it's not because they don't want it. Research shows that nearly half of CIOs aspire to become chief executive, but only four percent actually get there. Much more frequently, CEOs for the world's top companies - about half in fact - come up through C-level financial or operating roles (Vanson Bourne, 2012). Chris Laping, CIO of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (www.redrobin.com), strongly believes this is because technology executives are too often focused on engineering and IT solutions to embrace their most valuable leadership quality: the ability to manage change. Technology leaders, he believes, possess powerful project management skills that can and should be leveraged across the business for even the most non-IT initiatives, with the particular role of being agents for change. Laping's official role at Red Robin is indicative of that practice: he's the company's senior vice president of business transformation and CIO. In that role, he oversees the company's technology, learning and development, enterprise project management and operations services teams. In this exclusive interview with Hospitality Technology, Laping shares how the technology team has taken on a business transformation role at Red Robin, and describes his overall vision for IT leaders. But it's not something CIOs are handed; they have to drive it, says Laping. Driving this change, perhaps, will also help more CIOs chase down their chief-executive dreams. HT: Let's start with some definitions: "business transformation" and "change agents" are pretty heady buzzwords that get tossed around executive boardrooms. What does business transformation really mean? LAPING: If you look at a classic Wikipedia definition of business transformation, it talks about people, process and technology. So when you push change through people, you usually do that through training. If you want to change business performan

Nowadays, people are traveling with more valuables than they used to years ago. As a result, "hotel security measures are now paramount for hoteliers, and selecting the right type of locking system for the property can be a minefield for owners". Mechanical keys and poorly maintained electronic door locks do not offer guests a sense of security. Modern RFiD card systems are becoming the popular technological choice for hoteliers. Biometric locks, which read a fingerprint or face, are reliable and cost-effective, as well. However, they are more of an ideal security solution for offices, back-of-house, or wine stores. Not only are the RFID locks harder to hack, they are cost-effective as well. The lack of physical contact between the card and the lock makes open channels for card insertion unnecessary. The cards do not have a magnetic strip or contain microchips. The card itself only has encrypted non-personal information associated with it. In addition, since there is no contact between the card and lock, "there is no requirement for read head cleaning or replacement of read heads due to wear". As a result, the amount of faulty cards is minimized and guest satisfaction increases.

As this article mentioned, more and more people pay attention on the issue of hotel security because of the development of modern technology. People began to worry about their safety. For the locking system, we use RFID card systems to ensure the safety. Even though it is lost, we can deactivate it at soon. It also reduce the burden of employees in Front Desk. At the same time, we should observe surrounding environment and learn to protect ourselves. In my opinion, the updating of this locking system is a very good idea to save cost and more efficiently.

This article answers questions that summarize the change in hotel security. The article explains why hotels have taken a new route in locks for the guests, stating that the needs of a secure stay has grown with the changes in the value of goods that each customer brings.  The article concludes with a brief description of how hotel security will evolve over the next 5-10 years.  overall i think this is a good article that explains some of the questions that many people have.

This artical is main talking about a pizza chain use the POS software run on Linux. According to Merrilee Stoll, Director of Information Technology for Pizza Nova, the driving force to replace their former pizza POS system was to improve communications between the various stores and head office, and to take advantage of the cost savings offered by a point of sale system that was able to run on Linux.It could improved theur data reporting functionality. Future plans for Pizza Nova include the utilization of Volanté's wireless POS technology through it's mobile hand held devices.

The M/S Viking Grace was launched in January 2013 and is considered the most environmentally friendly large cruise vessel to have been built. The ship travels between Finland and Sweden as a cruise ferry. The ship is powered by a liquefied natural gas (LNG). The shipbuilder says all emissions into the sea have been eliminated and emissions into the air are now lower than any other cruise passenger ship. Besides the lower emission the M/S Viking Grace also has passenger space that minimizes environmental impact and a new machinery configuration, which saves energy. I think this is significant that the M/S Viking Grace has basically eliminated a good percentage of emissions. I believe the cruise industry, from both luxury liners to cruise ferries, has a considerable amount of work to do to become more environmentally friendly. The use of LNG to power a ship is important for other ferries and cruise lines to look at for the future. Cruise vacations are popular worldwide and saving the sea for future generations is incredibly important. Even though this is just one ship that sails in the Baltic Sea, I think the M/S Viking Grace can have a large positive impact on the region.

This web is about a group named Sothertons  Chartered Accountants. Its major meaning is researching the new hospitality accounting management. They provide experienced accounting services to those in this industry.     It is not like the traditional accounting practices. In this company, everyone in every area, must understand their operation very much. They have some specialist services such as Industry benchmarking and KPI management, working capital management and so on.     They could analyze their competitors when you see clearly relationship between decisions and performance. They could help you to solve the accounting problem and satisfy your business needs. For example, their accounting services could cover many areas like hotel, restaurant, catering and food and wine businesses.     The Sothertons Chartered Accountants have influence for the accounting process and could improve your hospitality business profitability. They have the professional ability to cover clients' profits.

In this article, the author pays attention to the balance between security technology and customers' privacy. Even though we all know that security becomes a big issue nowadays and technology is updating so fast, does it mean too much of them will also be  a good thing for hotels. In today's hotel, you can find monitors everywhere, which makes me feel bad because I feel like being in a jail. Obviously, with the growing treats and terrorism, it is necessary to put those monitors in hotels or even any other public places in order to make people safe. However, compared to being 100% safe, guests in hotels today much prefer privacy. They don't want to be monitored and feel inconvenient. 

Now, many security devices and technologies are widely used in the hospitality industry. Perimeter security is a set of physical security and programmatic security policies that provide levels of protection against remote malicious activity. It can be both noticeable and seemingly invisible and is utilized to keep employees and guests safe. Larger properties like casino, have security system and command center that monitor guests' actions in every corner. However, in the situation of economic depression, hotels have to consider the cost of security measures.

In today's world, larger properties have command centers where all video and audio is often under constant watch and review. In an instant, video can be pulled, reviewed and sent to the appropriate authorities. All of this might bring back memories of your most recent visit to a casino, where the "eye in the sky" is watching your every move. While initially you may be conscious of your every move being monitored, eventually you forget there is a camera right above you. With terrorism seemingly a real and growing threat, hotels must find a balance between allowing guests their privacy and having the ability to monitor who is on the property and what actions they may be taking. Today,

In the article "Investing in Hotel Technology- Guest Needs Versus Franchise Demands" it talks about how hotel owners follow brand standards while managing potential conflict with guests and are making sure they are getting their moneys worth on this investment. Technology is a huge part of hotels today, everything is done from the Internet and it even helps employees organize all of their information in an easy, user friendly way. Over the past years many hotel owners have opted to become franchisees of big name industries. "By joining a major hotel chain, these individual owners benefit from the brand association they get from being under such a well-known corporate umbrella, broader consumer recognition, plus access to well-established centralized reservation and booking systems." When hotel owners opt to become franchises of these bigger hotels they also give up their right to make certain decisions for their own hotel. Although this could be a downfall for the owner, "these investments have a negligible impact on the ability of the hotelier to bring in additional revenue," which is something that the hotel needs help with. Overall, when small hotels opt out and decide to become franchisees of big name hotels like the Hilton, it has both its advantages and disadvantages.

The article talks about a integrated cloud computing system developed by HP for the travel and hospitality industry. It will allow a user to book a flight, hotel and car rental all using one system which will then generate a electronic receipt, thus also rendering the operation paperless. Articles like this shows us that we are in a ever changing industry, our adaptation needs  to be immediate if we want to keep our customer happy. Programs like this let us know that our customer can also come from the most unexpected places in the world, because we are not just providing a service like hotel or restaurant, we are serving a much larger  objective for our customer which is 'the need travel" 

This article speaks about combining all aspects of travel and hospitality that guests utilize. For instance, hotel, car rental and flight. This is a really good idea because it makes it easier for the guest to pay for and make travel arrangements.  It also allows for collaboration between the industries which would, as the article says, change the travel and hospitality industry. Creating the system in the cloud makes it easily accessible to all those who would be collaborating. There would be no need to host the server because that would be an extra expense. For this idea to be implemented, serious considerations and development have to be looked at for an internet back up. Should companies accept the Agilaire Passenger Service Solution cloud network, then their success and functionality depends on the constant functioning of the internet.

This article talks about how does the tourism industry had develop in the past years and how connected are all the branches that form part of it. Hotels, Airlines, Car rental, are the basics of this industry. With all the technologies growing faster, these business still complain about a miss conection between them. This is what HP is trying to fix, developing a Agilaire Passenger Service solution to create a foundation on top of which the company is bulduing a new scalable cross-company reservation and billing system that will reside in the cloud. the basic idea is to allow companies in the travel industry to leverage a common transaction processing system built using modern Linux, Java J2EE and service oriented architecture (SOA) technologies wrapped around an easy-to-use interface. Where this gets interesting from a business perspective is that if you can break down the transaction barriers between companies in the travel and hospitality industry. We can see how the cloud is growing and helping industries to be integrate all together

Hotel Reservation Software is making online booking easier. The advantage of Hotel Reservation Software is that it can show rooms availability, it eliminate double booking, and it provides the availability to reserve specific rooms while giving instant confirmation. The software keeps personal information secure, maintain costumer data base and create custom reports. The crucial part of the technology is it security feature and it is user- friendly. Hotel Reservation Software enables communication between all hotel depart, making booking quicker and easier and provide useful financial and customer reports.

The best of both worlds is described in this article using a cloud computing system, PMS and POS are integrated to a user friendly system that helps manage retail, food and beverage and rooms in one. The system maintains pricing structure thru out a group of hotels in real time.

Hotel technology vendors release functionality previously unseen in hotels - enabling better guest service and tighter control hetras, the developer of cloud-based hotel management software, and Vectron, a leading provider of point of sale systems for hospitality and retail, announced today the certified integration of their products. hetras, the developer of cloud-based hotel management software, and Vectron, a leading provider of point of sale systems for hospitality and retail, announced today the certified integration of their products. The new seamless interface between the hetras hotel management system and Vectron's POS provides, in addition to the standard features one has come to expect, a host of highly advanced capabilities long desired, but before today never achieved, in a hotel environment. Some unique features of the interface include: Automatic discounts for loyalty club members at the article level. Front office credit limit detection at the POS with multiple resolution options (e.g. allow charge to room, allow partial charge to room, deny charge to room) Full guest check detail can be sent to PMS enabling detailed folios and statistics in the PMS. POS discounts can be sent to PMS in detail for full tracking of discounts in the PMS or accounting system Extensive handling of house bons (e.g. for hotels staff) between PMS and POS Both charges and payments (e.g. cash or credit card) can be sent from POS to PMS.

Rackspace updates its Private Cloud system which is more accessible, powerful, and secure. It plans to deliver two versions of this system-enterprise with installation fee and private for free. All of the most updated applications are involved in this system such as KVM hypervisor, Opscode Chef, Image Service, and more. The only missing application is openstack storage, which will be available next season. Compared with previous version or other comparable products, new Private Cloud is more accessible, powerful, and secure. For example, new users can install this software within seven steps no matter what system they have. Then they can share more than 2000 applications from rackspace, most of which are free for individual clients. In my opinion, the most innovative output of this update is the hybrid cloud model. It allows an enterprise to manage both public and private resources based on a single platform. Moreover, it is quite convenient for them to move VMs between that multi-based clouds. We can make a positive forecast that this application will be more mature after getting connected with OpenStack Storage. Thus, it is a good alternative for both individual and enterprise users seeking for secure network environment.

This article basically talks about how much technology has changed and what directors of softwares predict technology will be in the near future. The article informs how the Peachtree Plaza hotel like many other hotels replaced the keys to all the rooms with electronic key cards. Which increased security for the guest and cost saving. Hospitality consultants agreed that in the future mobile phones will be the way to open guest room doors and will probably occur through infrared or wirelesss access to rooms. Neil Roodyn the director of software developers informed that he predicts that in the future people will be sitting around touch sensitive table top computer in lobbies where they can searchfor places to go in the area and make their own restaurant reservations. Neil predicts this can also influence more communication and interaction between guest. My thoughts on this article is that the younger generation is far more technology oriented and feel more comfortable with working all these new gadgets, but for the baby boomers and older crowd have the want and need of having that human interaction. Technology seems a bit to advanced for them. The more technology advances the less human interaction will occur. I think that technology advancement is great for everyone, but human interaction needs to remain for those that are not very technology savy.

This is an informative article, and I also understand Mary's opinion. Over decades, technology has rapidly advanced and it seems to be quite hard to catch up with all the new technology released quickly. For example, I stayed in a hotel called Aria, one of the newly built hotels in Las Vegas, and the hotel is equipped with state-of-the-art room technology (not just room but all over the hotel). To get into a room, unlike other hotels, I just put a room key on a sensor instead of inserting a key; as well as, I just touched a button right next to the door for privacy instead of putting the "Do not Disturb" card on a door knob. This is not something really huge, however this is how hotels are technologically changing. As a person studying Hospitality Management, the change was very impressive, but at the same time, it was intimidating. Obviously, our parents generation should have harder time to use new technology and/or to get used it than I do. I totally agree that there should be a balance between technology advancement and human interation.

I agree with Mary regarding baby boomers may not be as quick to adapt to the advancement of technology, however what is noticeable in resort hotels is that more people are taking family vacation and the kids are the ones driving the technology. It will therefore just be a matter of time where the use of technology within hotels will be just like a regular lifestyle activity.

This article is starting from an agreement made between Travelclick which is a leading provider of profitable revenue generating solutions for hoteliers and Castle Resorts & Hotels on GDS connectivity and IDS distribution. The Castle Resorts will use Travelclick's central reservation system (CRS) to distribute inventory to thousands of travel agents on the Global Distribution System (GDS). Because of the alliance between the two organizations, Castle Resorts has become the largest iHotelier customer in Hawaii. The president of Castle Resorts believes that Teavelclick's GDS connectivity solutions will help them achieve a higher level of performance and allow them to connect with travel agents instantaneously and seamlessly to further potential guests. From this article, I fully realize how important the GDS system is and what it could do for hospitality industry. It is just like providing a closer link between hotels and potential guests by connecting with travel agents.