Ruby Tuesday Implements MICROS Table Management Solution

RUBY TUESDAY IMPLEMENTS MICROS TABLE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION THROUGHOUT ENTERPRISE TO ENHANCE GUEST EXPERIENCE

RUBY TUESDAY IMPLEMENTS MICROS TABLE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION THROUGHOUT ENTERPRISE TO ENHANCE GUEST EXPERIENCE

Leading casual dining chain selects fully-integrated solution to improve overall customer dining experience

Columbia, MD – March 20, 2012—MICROS Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCRS), a leading provider of information technology solutions for the hospitality and retail industries, is pleased to announce that Ruby Tuesday, Inc. has implemented the MICROS Table Management System (TMS), across 750+ locations.  A fully-integrated component of the MICROS Restaurant Enterprise Solution (RES) point-of-sale software solution, MICROS TMS provides visibility to all aspects of the guest dining experience allowing  Ruby Tuesday complete control from the moment the first guest is greeted until the last diner is seated.

The MICROS TMS delivers a user-friendly way of managing reservations, customer preferences, seating capacity, wait list management, and special requests, all while easing tedious restaurant management tasks, thus allowing more time to focus on the guest.  As guests arrive, the host at Ruby Tuesday is able to immediately increase guest satisfaction by providing accurate and consistent wait times.  The MICROS TMS allows Ruby Tuesday to increase its control of the guest experience by automatically opening a guest check once the table is seated.  An additional feature designed to improve diner satisfaction is an alert system that notifies managers when critical service points are not met, such as a table that is not greeted or a food and beverage order that is not delivered in a timely manner.  With more efficient table utilization and dining room capacity management, Ruby Tuesday is also able to increase revenue with additional table turns. 

“Our goal is to provide the best casual dining experience possible and adding the MICROS TMS to our technology solution set has given us the necessary tools to improve our operations and customer service,” stated Nick Ibrahim, SVP and CTO, Ruby Tuesday, Inc.  “An essential component that we sought was the ability to have our team members manage the guest’s dining experience.  We are pleased to have a completely-integrated solution that allows a guest check to open automatically once a table is seated.”

“The MICROS TMS is 100 percent integrated with the MICROS POS, making it easier to use and available for rapid deployment, and provides additional tools for operators to manage and enhance the overall guest experience,” noted Jeff Pinc, Vice President of MICROS Major Accounts Restaurants.  “We are excited that Ruby Tuesday has implemented the MICROS TMS, making it the largest United States-based chain to fully utilize the solution.”

About Ruby Tuesday, Inc.
Ruby Tuesday, Inc. has Company-owned and/or franchise Ruby Tuesday brand restaurants in 45 states, the District of Columbia, 14 foreign countries, and Guam.  As of November 29, 2011, the company owned and operated 742 Ruby Tuesday restaurants, while domestic and international franchisees (including Hawaii and Guam) operated 43 and 44 Ruby Tuesday restaurants, respectively.  Ruby Tuesday, Inc. is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (Symbol: RT).

About MICROS Systems, Inc.
MICROS Systems, Inc. provides enterprise applications for the hospitality and retail industries worldwide. Over 330,000 MICROS systems are currently installed in table and quick service restaurants, hotels, motels, casinos, leisure and entertainment, and retail operations in more than 180 countries, and on all seven continents. In addition, MICROS provides property management systems, central reservation and customer information solutions under the brand MICROS-Fidelio for more than 26,000 hotels worldwide, as well as point-of-sale, loss prevention, and cross-channel functionality through its MICROS-Retail division for more than 100,000 retail stores worldwide. MICROS stock is traded through NASDAQ under the symbol MCRS.

For more information on MICROS and its advanced information technology solutions for the hospitality industry, please contact Louise Casamento, Vice President of Marketing at (443) 285-8144 or (866) 287-4736. You can also visit the MICROS website atwww.micros.com or send an email to info@micros.com.

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News Release from Symantec - Backup Management

Symantec Announces Global Availability of NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012

NetApp to Resell Symantec’s Replication Director Option to Unify Snapshot and Backup Management

 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – March 13, 2012 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced that Symantec NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012 are now available worldwide to help businesses of any size seamlessly transform and modernize their outdated, complex and resource-intensive backup strategy. Symantec is also announcing an agreement with NetApp to resell the new NetBackup Replication Director option, enabling customers to unify Snapshot and replication management within NetBackup, and remove the cost and risk associated with multiple backup and recovery tools. Replication Director enables organizations to reduce management costs and complexity by recovering and managing backup and replicated snapshots from a single NetBackup management console.

Click to Tweet: Symantec Announces Global Availability of NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012: http://bit.ly/wvbnkd

With the global availability of Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackup 7.5, Symantec is providing customers and partners with a set of best-in-breed solutions that eliminate the problems that have plagued traditional backup in the past – complexity, time and resources required to manage the backup process, and the need for multiple point products to ensure a successful backup and recovery process. A recent Symantec survey of 1,400 IT professionals worldwide further demonstrates the industry-wide need for a newer and faster approach to backup, with 28 percent stating that they have too many backup tools and 72 percent citing their willingness to switch backup products if their speed doubled.

News Highlights

• NetBackup 7.5 increases backup speeds up to 100 times, improves the ability to recover and makes it possible to integrate NetApp® Snapshots™ with backup. It also simplifies the search and recovery of files for legal holds.
• Backup Exec 2012 has revolutionized its management console, setting a new standard for intuitive design, reduced complexity across physical and virtual environments, and highly comprehensive disaster recovery. More than 1,000 partners participated in the Backup Exec 2012 Partner Beta program and more than 2,000 customers and partners participated in the First Availability Early Adopters program, allowing them to install the final build prior to the general availability of Backup Exec 2012.
• Symantec also announced an expanded agreement with NetApp to resell NetBackup Replication Director to enable IT administrators to centralize the management of NetBackup and NetApp Snapshots and replication (SnapVault® and SnapMirror®) for faster backup and recovery. The partnership enables NetApp and Symantec to provide customers with a powerful combination of features and benefits delivered by these two technology leaders.
• Symantec is listed as a Champion in Info-Tech Research Group’s “Enterprise Backup Software Vendor Landscape” report, which helps enterprise IT decision-makers identify a short list of vendors for their IT programs depending on their needs. According to the report, “On a relative basis, Symantec maintained the highest Info-Tech Value Score of the vendor group. Vendors were indexed against Symantec’s performance to provide a complete, relative view of their product offerings.”
• Backup Exec 2012 is also VMware Ready Data Protection certified for vSphere 5.0. This certification includes support for new features in vSphere 5.0 including the Hardware Version 8 format of virtual machines, datastore clusters, vSphere Storage DRS, and Storage vMotion.
• Symantec offers an array of delivery models including software, appliance and cloud solutions to seamlessly integrate into any IT infrastructure. In addition to integration with Nirvanix, NetBackup now supports cloud storage from AT&T, Amazon Web Services and Rackspace. The new Backup Exec Cloud DR Option powered by Doyenz, the leading recovery as a service provider – is expected to be available in the first half of FY13 and enable cloud-based application recovery in less than 15 minutes. Symantec’s Backup Exec also includes backup to the cloud through Nirvanix.
• Symantec's SaaS-based backup and recovery service Backup Exec.cloud is also available in the United States, Canada and Europe for purchase directly from Symantec partners or direct from Symantec.
• Symantec is the only leading backup provider to offer converged backup and deduplication appliances that seamlessly support disk, tape, and cloud storage targets and offer a single contact for support. The NetBackup 5220 appliance, introduced in October 2011, recently won an award in the “2011 Backup Hardware of the Year” category from the SearchStorage.com Product of the Year awards, beating out a number of established backup hardware competitors.
• Symantec’s breadth of backup products helps customers realize significant cost savings while better protecting their business information. Symantec is committed to driving out 80 percent of the operating costs associated with backup over the next five years.

Supporting Quotes

• “With Symantec solutions, backup has never been simpler,” confirmed Deepak Mohan, senior vice president, Information Management Group, Symantec. “We are committed to providing businesses with the tools they need to manage their information now and as the explosion in data continues. With NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012, we are leading the way in the fight against complex and time consuming processes and mitigate the risk of data loss.”
• "BackupExec 2012 has become an integral part of our IT infrastructure as it supports our virtualization strategy and allows us to keep six months of data online without having to go to tape— saving us a considerable amount in storage costs,” said Scott Gould, senior network & systems analyst, Gynecologic Oncology Group Statistical & Data Center. “Plus, BackupExec 2012 is extremely easy to use so everyone on our IT staff can set up backups, manage backup policies and perform disaster recoveries, which is ideal for smaller IT departments.”
• “We use Symantec NetBackup to protect more than 800 Exchange databases—over two petabytes of data in seven datacenters, with 99 percent accuracy on backups and 99 percent success rate on recoveries. And we use it for 20 to 30 recoveries a week,” said Jonathan McCormick, COO of leading cloud service provider and hosted Exchange provider, Intermedia. “Symantec NetBackup 7.5 provides us with a single integrated appliance to simplify all of our backup deployment and operations. The confidence we get from Symantec NetBackup is a good feeling.”
• “We have been looking forward to NetBackup 7.5, due to its support for vSphere 5. We’ve been using NetBackup 7’s innovative integration with VMware vSphere for a couple of years, and we have dramatically improved the protection for our rapidly-growing virtual environment by moving the agents “out of the guest” with NetBackup,” said Seth H. Bokelman, senior systems administrator, University of Northern Iowa. “We’re also looking forward to implementing the NetBackup Accelerator technology, as it will make backups much faster on some of our large file servers.”

Related

• Infographic: What Causes Data Protection C.O.S.T.S. to Increase
• Press Kit: Symantec Delivers Better Backup for All
• Webcast: Better Backup for All
• Webcast: NetBackup 7.5 Technical Deep Dive
• Webcast: What’s new with Backup Exec 2012
• Download Free Backup Exec 2012 Trialware
• SlideShare: Better Backup for All
• Blog Post: Virtual Visibility: Why you need X-Ray Vision to Backup Virtual Machines
• Blog Post: NetApp Storage Efficiency Insights
• Survey: Broken Backup Environments Need New Approach
• Website: Countdown to Better Backup
• Video: Managing and Reducing Costs of Enterprise Data Protection Video featuring Dave Russell, Gartner and Brian Dye, Symantec

Connect with Symantec

• Follow Symantec on Twitter
• Follow NetBackup on Twitter
• Follow BackupExec on Twitter
• Join Symantec on Facebook
• View Symantec’s SlideShare Channel
• Subscribe to Symantec News RSS Feed
• Visit Symantec Connect Business Community

About Storage from Symantec

Symantec helps organizations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, archiving, eDiscovery, backup & recovery solutions.

About Symantec

Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

Start-Up Plans to Disrupt Networking Giants

Excerpt from an article in The New York Times
Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Start-Up Nicira Plans to Disrupt Networking Giants 

By QUENTIN HARDY

SAN FRANCISCO - Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon already turn millions of computers into single clouds of supermachines, managing the flow between personal computers of cat videos, e-mails and the president's recent chat on Google Plus.

Millions more of these computer servers figure out what to sell you while you browse the Web. These global systems work only because of something called virtualization, a kind of software that tricks one server into doing the tasks of several. The cost savings and flexibility revolutionized the data management business, since virtualized machines can run on cheap semiconductors.

High-price networking gear still ties together most data centers, however. Companies pay for it because managing data traffic is tougher than mere computation. Now a small company called Nicira, along with a few other scrappy players, is pursuing what is called software-defined networking, which should cut costs and make equipment more efficient.

A software-defined network, which originated in government spy agencies, is similar to server virtualization, and because of that is quite likely bad news for networking equipment makers like Cisco and Juniper Networks. If proprietary systems can be mixed together and cheap chips used in place of custom semiconductors, prices for the gear would most likely will drop.

Close the Deal Faster

News release from AT&T:


Close The Deal Faster: Interchange Solutions and AT&T Bring Sales Force Software to iPad with New App

SalesNOW App from AT&T Now Available on the App Store, Increasing Sales Team Efficiency for Both Small and Large Businesses

San Francisco, California, January 26, 2012

For salespeople who spend their days on the go, managing deals, customer contacts and activities just got easier. Interchange Solutions and AT&T* are now offering their sales force automation solution as an app for iPad. The SalesNOW App, also available for iPhone, is now available on the App Store.

Showcased for the first time today at MACWORLD 2012, the SalesNOW App from AT&T allows businesses of all sizes to:

• Maximize seller productivity with an award-winning customer relationship management (CRM) solution
• Synchronize all sales activity across iPhone, iPad and web accounts
• Collaborate more effectively with team members

The SalesNOW App from AT&T is an affordable yet robust mobile customer relationship management and sales force automation solution. It gives companies the tools they need to track all aspects of the sales cycle - managing customer contact information, recording details of negotiations and contracts and grouping emails and call logs by customer for easy retrieval.

The Seller’s Perspective

Outdoor Living Brands, a SalesNOW from AT&T customer, is a franchisor that specializes in transforming outdoor spaces into comfortable living environments. Its companies build porches, design landscape lighting, develop pest control methods and more. So, naturally, its sales personnel are often on the move.

“From 22 different solutions that met our basic criteria, and three that met our specific set of criteria, the cost to deploy SalesNOW from AT&T was only a third of the cost of other solutions. Any company that is not looking at this product should immediately put it into the mix and evaluate it. Not only did we choose the right platform – it has more extensibility than we ever imagined,” said Bob Pogue, Director of IT, Outdoor Living Brands.

“Given the growing popularity of tablets for small and large businesses alike, the new SalesNOW App for iPad comes at a perfect time,” said Chris Hill, Vice President, Advanced Mobility Solutions, AT&T Business Solutions. “SalesNOW from AT&T gives mobile sales professionals exactly what they need to manage customer relationships on the go – using a smartphone, a tablet or both.”

“The iPad edition of SalesNOW is our first dedicated tablet version of the application,” said Mark Durst, CEO, Interchange Solutions. “Our customers can integrate SalesNOW from AT&T with existing applications on their iPads and customize the solution to meet their specific needs.”

For more information on the SalesNOW App from AT&T, visit the SalesNOW booth in the Mobile Apps Showcase at MACWORLD or http://go-att.us/SalesNOW.

The SalesNOW App is available for free from the App Store on iPad and iPhone or at www.itunes.com/appstore.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.