Cloud-Based POS Still a Far reach for Retailers

Since their beginning, the vast majority of POS systems have been implemented on-premise. Traditional POS systems provide various kinds of benefits such as mature system functionality and abilities of greater customization and integration. In the past decade, other software applications, however, have seen a shift to cloud computing that has become one of the fastest growing segments of the IT industry.

Benefits of Traditional POS over cloud POS

Customization and Combination Limitations: Many cloud-based POS systems have notable limitations on interoperability with home-grown applications and integration into existing application portfolios and IT infrastructures. Unlike on-premise and hosted POS, cloud-based POS may not allow extensive customization and complex integration with some third-party services and systems.

Strategic risks: Outsource such a business critical system as POS, companies usually bear an increased strategic risk of high dependency on the service provider. Security and confidentiality are reported to be at risk among the top concerns about cloud-based POS.

Performance Risk: Leaving out pure integration issues, performance risks of cloud-based POS are essentially related to threatened speed and reliability of the network, outage risks and limitations on data transfer.

Compliance Risks: Cloud-based applications often face additional difficulties in complying with data, energy and environmental standards as these regulations are generally designed without regard to peculiarities of cloud computing

Functionality Limitations: Cloud POS is based on not that developed systems as conventional POS and may not be functionally rich enough to “satisfy the back -office needs of businesses in every type of industry”

Subscription Expenses: An explicit part of cloud-based POS additional costs is widely used periodic subscription fees that do not depreciate over time, in contrast to capital investments in traditional POS software

Cloud-based POS generally might be considered as a more suitable option for SMEs than for large businesses but additional quantitative research evidence based on recent cases could also be helpful in getting further insight into the progressive cloud world.