IBM Announces Delivery Of New Integration Platform

ARMONK, NY -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has teamed with Giant Eagle®, Inc. to help the food retailer deliver a unified shopping experience across its network of stores. IBM’s Store Integration Framework has been implemented to ease the integration of in-store applications and technologies as well as other related services Giant Eagle offers customers, including those at GetGo® fuel and convenience store locations.

Giant Eagle, recognized a one of the nation’s largest food retailers and food distributors with approximately $6.2 billion in annual sales, is focused on providing its customers with the best in high quality foods and convenience-oriented departments and services. To help the food retailer continue to adapt and quickly deliver on this objective, IBM Global Business Services retail industry experts teamed with Giant Eagle executives to implement a technology infrastructure which provides a consistent, standard integration architecture for in-store applications.

“Delivering a unified shopping experience for our customers is a top priority for Giant Eagle,” said Russ Ross, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Giant Eagle. “Through the use of open systems and standards we can ensure improved connectivity and reduce the time it takes us to roll out new innovations and promotions. The IBM Store Integration Framework and other supporting technologies have begun to make this possible.”

Working with IBM Business Partner Excentus Corporation, IBM Global Technology Services has deployed IBM’s Store Integration Framework, a store-centric framework which leverages Java™ Platform Enterprise Edition-based architectures as well as an infrastructure built on open standards at Giant Eagle. This retail-optimized infrastructure is being used to connect the company’s GetGo locations, which use Excentus’ fuel pump control and marketing technology, to their central IBM SurePOS™ ACE for 4690 OS software store system. This essentially allows the fuel station and the pump itself to be a virtual point-of-sale device. Leveraging IBM WebSphere Remote Server software, a retail bundle of proven IBM middleware, the food retailer can now easily connect its in-store Giant Eagle Advantage® Card programs.

IBM also deployed the Store Integration Framework to roll out the IBM Personal Shopping Assistant (PSA) solution featuring IBM Business Partner Cuesol’s Cart Companion software and Portable Shopping devices provided by IBM Business Partner Motorola. This innovative technology puts personalized service at the shoppers’ fingertips. Customers at five Giant Eagle stores can automatically scan and bag their own groceries as they shop, only requiring payment at a checkout station. Also, customers can check prices and keep a running total of their carts using the IBM PSA solution.

Today’s announcement builds on a long standing relationship between IBM and Giant Eagle. The food retailer has over 4,000 IBM Point-of-Sale systems deployed across its stores, connected to IBM System x servers, which are backed by worldwide service and support. In addition, intuitive self service solutions are being used -- including the next generation IBM Self Checkout Systems and IBM Anyplace Kiosks -- to provide a satisfying and engaging customer experience. All these technologies have been easily integrated together using IBM Store Integration Framework technologies with services by IBM’s Retail Store Solutions.

About Giant Eagle

Giant Eagle Inc., ranked 32 on Forbes magazine’s largest private corporations list and past recipient of Progressive Grocer’s Retailer of the Year Award and the EPA’s ENERGY STAR Retail Partner of the Year Award, is one of the nation’s largest food retailers and food distributors with approximately $6.2 billion in annual sales. Founded in 1931, Giant Eagle, Inc. has grown to be the number one supermarket retailer in the region with 155 corporate and 72 independently owned and operated supermarkets in addition to more than 120 fuel and convenience stores throughout western Pennsylvania, Ohio, north central West Virginia and Maryland.

For more information about IBM Retail Solutions, go to: www.ibm.com/retail.