Isn’t everyone a little bit confused by the cloud? The HITEC educational session on cloud computing made the cloud a bit clearer to its audience a couple of weeks ago. Infor’s Javier Buzzalino, senior vice president of development, was a featured panelist at this highly attended HITEC super session. The session included an overview on the cloud, advice on choosing a cloud vendor, a look at the architecture of the cloud, and a lesson on cloud security.

Though geared toward the hospitality industry, the presentation included numerous tips for anyone curious about the cloud. As the leader of our research and development team, Buzzalino gave the audience an in-depth look at application architecture for the cloud, moving applications into the cloud, potential issues, and common practices within cloud computing.

A highlight of Buzzalino’s presentation was his overview of cloud architecture, during which he explained that the cloud has four tiers: the client tier or browser, and the back-end tiers—HTML, business, and database. Buzzalino also went over multi-tenant cloud space at length, explaining the benefits as well as the governance that should be in place to protect all members. In addition, he addressed concerns and issues with the cloud, including security. Buzzalino’s examples made the abstract concept of the cloud seem simple and easy to understand. Check out the presentation for yourself.

To view a recording of the presentation, please click here.

For more information about Infor10 CloudSuite, please click here. For more information on HITEC and HFTP, please visit http://www.hftp.org/HITEC.

Does your company have plans to deploy solutions in the cloud? What questions do you have about cloud computing? I welcome your thoughts and questions.

Posted by David Purcell, Director, Product Management, Hospitality, SoftBrands, an Infor Affiliate

Infor-SoftBrands was proud to sponsor HITEC again this year. The opening session on social media marketing with Randi Zuckerberg served as a great kickoff, with social media becoming more and more relevant to how we do business. Did you download the HITEC app to your smart phone while you were there?

HITEC is not only the biggest hotel technology event of the year, but also the biggest networking event— what better place to learn how to leverage social media more effectively. We used mobile and crowd sourcing to generate new ideas—an interesting concept. And we learned how to use various tools to keep guests and hoteliers engaged all year-round.

To keep the forum content fresh, we offered educational sessions covering hot topics in the hospitality industry today. Some sessions you just had to see and hear in person. But if you missed ours, here’s a recap:

• The Cloud Computing Panel—Javier Buzzalino discussed some relevant topics such as the benefits of multi-tiered architectures, the impact of multi-tenancy on scalability, and the impact that the NoSQL movement has for the cloud. The Q&A format with real-world examples seemed to resonate with the entire audience. I’m proud to share Glenn Gruber’s comment in his Tnooz article “…you couldn’t help but leave the presentation feeling impressed by the technical leadership of the Infor team and confident that they’re providing a true enterprise-class solution.”
• “Doing Business Your Way—For Profit”—David Purcell held an education session on why it’s important to remember that no matter what benefits technology can prove, we all need to be doing things that make more money. The session highlighted some new strategies for doing that and refreshed us on what we already know.

Each time I attend HITEC, I’m reminded that it is such a perfect gathering to see old  friends, catch up on what’s new, and build new relationships. I was so busy and talked to so many people that I nearly lost my voice—a small price to pay.

We hope you had a chance to stop by our booth. We staffed it with many product experts to show how our technology can help you realize profit and guest-service goals.  I hope to see you all next year.

Did you attend HITEC this year? What was your favorite part? Please leave your comments here.

Posted by Alan E. Young, Vice President, Global Marketing, Infor-SoftBrands

2011 Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC)

June 21-23, 2011                                                                                                                         Austin Convention Center, Austin, TX

If you’ve ever attended HITEC in the past, or plan to attend next week, you know that it’s the world’s largest and most outstanding hospitality technology event. All in one place, you can find: peer networking, education, the latest technologies, and the opportunity to connect with industry vendors.

We want to help you to achieve the most optimal experience next week, so we’re proud to announce that in addition to product demonstrations conducted in the SoftBrands booth, #201, company executives will host a Technology Showcase session focused on a profit-centric approach to technology implementation and will participate in a panel discussion around Cloud Computing.

We’ll be showcasing this profit-focused suite of solutions:

• Property and Central Reservations Management
• Financial Management
• Performance Management
• Customer Relationship Management
• Workforce Management
• Enterprise Asset Management

Next week, you’ll find our applications are designed to increase profit in all the key departments of a hospitality enterprise, from property to corporate. Plus, you’ll learn how you can benefit from our unique ability to support global hospitality enterprises with our single vendor approach to multi-departmental automation.

We are extremely excited about working with attendees this year to show you how our technology can help you realize profit and guest-service goals.

As always, we want to hear from you—are you attending? What are you looking forward to? Leave your feedback and questions here.

Posted by Alan E. Young, Vice President, Global Marketing, Infor-SoftBrands

During the economic downturn, many families decided that the prudent thing was to downsize their lives by purchasing smaller homes and vehicles, but most importantly, by simplifying their lives. Similarly, hotel companies also downsized, frequently letting staff go, which created additional pressure on remaining staff to hold the company and its underlying technology together.

So, the question is: Is there a way to consolidate technology to reap full benefits without downsizing and eliminating valuable systems?

In most full-service hotels, you may find up to 20 systems on property that track multiple facets of the hotel’s operations, including PMS, POS, PBX, call accounting, door locking, video, sales and catering, accounting, revenue management, asset tracking, incident reporting, and internal Intranet. Then there are “above property” solutions such as central reservation systems, channel management solutions, online distribution Extranets, a brand.com proprietary booking engine, and often even more.

Managing so many disparate systems is a technological nightmare, as each system needs to communicate to another on different levels of complexity. These interface points are a source of much concern to hotels and hotel companies. The hospitality industry has made the technological landscape so incredibly complicated that productivity and go-forward technology strategies have been affected. Even worse, non-integrated systems can negatively affect customer satisfaction, because the staff has to focus on technology rather than the customer. And in hospitality, customer service is—and always will be—king.

A number of industry associations have tried to standardize the integration/interfacing of systems to simplify the technological landscape. While this is a step in the right direction, wouldn’t it be easier just to try and consolidate some of these solutions? The hotel technology community is beginning to grasp this idea, and run with it.

By having a large number of systems above property or in the cloud, hotel companies can stop focusing on technology and infrastructure, and focus instead on guests. The hotel property management system and central reservations system are converging into one system, helping to alleviate many of the technology challenges. We’re also seeing a number of other solutions deployed above property, most notably CRM and revenue management. These systems go hand-in-hand to ensure great customer satisfaction and maximize profitability.

Finally, another area of hotel technology will soon be deployed above property: the financial management system. It just makes sense that all pertinent financial data, along with guest data surrounding a hotel, be easily accessible via a web browser. This will reduce hotels’ technological footprint and allow management to interact with systems no matter where they are located.

The industry is well on its way to “downsizing,” but still has a number of challenges ahead. More to come…

As always, I welcome your comments, thoughts, and ideas.

Posted by Alan E. Young, Vice President, Global Marketing, Infor SoftBrands

There’s long been a perception within the hospitality industry that some of the technology solutions sold to the hotel community don’t live up to their hype. Flashy PowerPoint presentations that promise a product can do everything under the sun, including pour you a cup of coffee, may sway a prospect, but it’s really up to the hotel to conduct its due diligence. You need to choose a provider that provides a competent, flexible product to meet your needs, invests in the future, and is financially stable.

With so much noise in the marketplace, you may not know where to begin or what to look for when you start evaluating solutions. You can’t afford to invest in a solution that may lead you down the path of technological oblivion. Sure it works great today, but it may not be built for tomorrow. As your business needs change, what if the inability to adapt to those changes causes your operations to grind to a halt?

Well, the times are indeed changing, and the advent of cloud-based software will help reduce fears of adopting new technologies. Some of the biggest headaches regarding software implementation have had to do with product scalability. Any number of hotel software solutions will meet your hotel’s feature functionality requirements, but this is only part of the software solution landscape. As hotels grow, acquire other hotels, add guest activities, deal with onward distribution, and position themselves for the onslaught of mobile solutions, it’s paramount that your software provider fully understands the future architecture and technological requirements within the industry to meet the evolving landscape.

As I mentioned earlier, you should also take the financial stability of the company offering cloud-based solutions into account in your selection. The deployment of these solutions should reduce the costs for any hotel climbing on board, but keep in mind there are substantial ramp-up costs for the vendor to put these cloud-based solutions into place, including  hardware, infrastructure, redundancy, and support. Make sure that the company you choose is financially stable so both you and the vendor are successful. Isn’t this what it’s all about?

There will always be flashy presentations and over-promising in order to win your business. But if you’re thorough in your investigation, you should be confident that you made the right choice. Of course, it’s also up to the hotel technology industry as a whole to be transparent about what they currently offer and what they’ll deliver in the future.

Better products and less PowerPoint presentations will make for better business.

Are you looking to implement new technology, but don’t know where to start? What challenges are you facing? I'd like to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment to this post.

Posted by Alan E. Young, Vice President, Global Marketing, Infor SoftBrands

Guest post by Alan E. Young, Vice President, Global Marketing, Infor-SoftBrands

In a tumultuous economic environment, the hotel industry must be aware of all facets of the business. We need to ensure that we keep guests coming through the door, which is our bread and butter, and yet try to maximize our profits. These two areas can at times appear to be in conflict with one another.

Let’s focus on the two areas independently.

With a constant flow of guests into our hotels, we can stay in business. It’s the number of these guests and the ebb and flow of their attraction to our properties that dictates what, where, and how we can spend the revenues we acquire from these guests. Do we focus the money solely on the day-to-day operations of the hotel, or do we look at more strategic initiatives that, in the long run, will help us grow revenues even more effectively?

These are some of the questions that hotel operators and companies have to deal with every day. As occupancy and average daily rate (ADR) fall or rise in the cyclical nature of our business, so do the decisions related to where we spend the revenues that come in through the front door.

It’s increasingly important to ensure that our guests are well taken care of, that they feel special, and that we actually know who they are. The convergence of the hotel landscape into a commodity and the offerings to our guests make it incredibly important to react to their needs. Solutions that enable hotels to be “guest-centric” will always be at the forefront; however, we can’t lose sight of profitability.

Profitability can be a double-edged sword. Sometimes, to maintain or even increase profitability, hotels are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do hotels decrease staff count to increase profits? Do they decrease overall maintenance schedules on the properties? Do they cut back on technology spend? These are all questions that executives in the hotel industry have to deal with every day.

Strategic spend on technology initiatives can increase profitability without cannibalizing your guest satisfaction.

One area to focus on is the tightening of the budgeting and forecasting procedures within your hotels and hotel companies. You can use tools to analyze data rather than just compile it to ensure that you proactively spend time on areas of the business that will increase profitability. Integration with your financial systems to give you immediate access to information along with pertinent informational dashboards helps hotels to react to areas of concern. This ultimately impacts profitability. You need to understand what happens within your property or within a broader enterprise to make better decisions.

Asset management is another area where hotels can proactively impact their profitability. You need to fully understand the maintenance schedule for your hotel property along with timely incident reporting and resolution to ensure that you’re on top of things within your hotel. This will ultimately enhance guest satisfaction while cutting your operational costs. Hotels have to be sure that the systems in place for effectively managing all of their assets are not only reactive, but strategic, giving the hotelier a better opportunity to deal with managing their total property.

There will always be a pull between guest satisfaction and profitability. But you can use systems that enhance both areas today and tomorrow. Look for solution providers that fulfill all areas of your business. They’ll be your partners in the long run.

What plans do you have in place to implement new technologies to help streamline and optimize your property's operations? How do you see an asset managment solution helping your business? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment to this post.