Tesco checks out .Net

Supermarket group Tesco is pioneering Microsoft's .Net technology as the basis of a new system aimed at giving shop staff better access to pricing and stock information.

Expected to go live in July, the system will allow staff using PDAs to check stock availability from anywhere in the store.

The PDAs will communicate over a wireless network and will be able to access Tesco's main corporate systems.

Project manager Guy Davies explained that the company had specifically chosen to use .Net as "part of the move from being a largely mainframe-based core systems shop to having a much more flexible systems operating and development environment.

"We wanted to move to a system that [could be] fully integrated and took into account all our existing platforms. We are confident .Net will allow us to do that."

The system is being built by IBM's Microsoft practice, following a successful prototype that ran last November in Tesco's Hemel Hempstead store.

IBM's Tony Richards said that several Pocket PC-based PDAs had been tried out, and that the choice had come down to Symbol or Casio's Cassiopeia. The chosen device will be fitted with a bar-code reader and a printer, allowing the user generate new pricing labels on the spot.

The PDAs will run over an 11Mbps 802.11b wireless network in the store, and will communicate via a 128Kb dedicated line to Tesco's central intranet web servers. This will then allow access to stock and pricing data held on various legacy systems.

IBM is writing the system in Visual Studio .Net. "We wanted to avoid any low-level code for the project if we possibly could. And we have more or less managed that," said Richards. He admitted that IBM had prepared a fallback position in case .Net did not work, but this had not been needed.

"The main challenge is to maintain the kind of performance you expect with a local system while moving across to what is essentially a centralised set-up," he explained. "We think we are in advance of most people in doing systems of this kind."

Davies maintained that the new system will improve customer service at Tesco, and should eventually allow users not only to see what products are in the warehouse or on order, but where products are in the supply chain. Voice over IP could also be added at a later stage, he said.

"Our strategy is to provide staff with the information they need to do their job at the time they need to do it," he stressed. "It means that all the functions that currently take place in a back office can now take place on the shop floor."

Of the decision to use .Net, which is still a largely untried technology, Davies said: "We wanted to back the biggest horse in the race, I guess. It is safe to say that both Microsoft and ourselves are very keen for this to succeed."