POS Software Blog

A couple of vertical markets have managed to perform extremely well during this prolonged economic downturn.  It seems that consumers have continued to spend money on their pets and their kids regardless of the situation.  I suppose it makes sense that people continue to invest in what makes them happy and what brings them the most joy and satisfaction in their lives.  Hence, the pet industry and several industries that focus on children continue to experience growth.

One of these successful markets focused on the kids is the family fun center market.  Some larger franchise chains like Bounce U have continued to build new units across the U.S.  However, most of these family entertainment centers are local start-up entrepreneurs.  These business owners enjoy the satisfaction of serving their communities while earning reasonable profits along the way.  Further, the concept comes with special perks like reasonable hours, a fun and playful atmosphere and far less headaches then running a restaurant or retail establishment.  No late nights.  No returns.  No liquor license required.

In the past few years, quite a bit of buzz has revolved around “the cloud.”  Consequently, quite a bit of confusion exists around “the cloud.”  Cloud computing, affectionately dubbed as “the cloud” is the wave of the future.  It allows end users and business owners to rely less on their own hardware and technology infrastructure.  By definition, “Cloud computing is the delivery of computing and storage capacity ^[1] as a service ^[2] to a community of end-recipients. The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol ^[3] as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams ^[4]. Cloud computing entrusts services with a user's data, software and computation over a network.”  However, like all things technical, cloud computing comes in a few flavors which can create even more confusion on the topic.

In the past few months, I've heard these words more frequently than ever:  "my facility is a bit of a hybrid...what do I do for POS?”  There are a few reasons for this increase in frequency of this question.