Toronto, ON – October 5, 2004 - NRT Technology Corporation is featured in the September 2004 edition of SlotManager, a quarterly supplement to IGWB.
NRT Technology Corporation has signed an agreement with Mandalay Resort Group to provide QuickJack kiosks running on the new System-to-System (S2S) standard. Excerpts have been taken from pages 3 and 4 of the Gaming Standards Association (GSA)'s special feature, The year of delivery.
Standards in action - GSA's open standards set to revolutionize gaming industry
By Robyn Taylor Parets
S2S standards gain ground
With the groundbreaking Best-of-Breed (BOB) standard well under way, GSA is equally enthusiastic about its System-to-System standard, also released in June.
The broad-based S2S protocol essentially plays off BOB and enables applications running on multiple gaming systems within a casino resort to exchange information. For example, S2S allows communication between various casino systems, including slot accounting, security, progressive controllers, and advertising displays. Other key areas of focus include table gaming activities, including player ratings, table game accounting, and slot ticket redemption. S2S also enables gaming systems and nongaming systems -- such as casino management systems, property management systems, and point-of-sale systems -- to effectively communicate. And, like BOB, S2S relies on existing and widely used technology like TCP/IP, XML, and Ethernet.
Manufacturers will benefit from S2S in that it will reduce their costs and engineering time because they will be able to use off-the-shelf technology and components. In addition, they will no longer have to spend countless hours developing code and can instead dedicate time to creating games.
Operators, in turn, will witness reduced costs as streamlined IT staffs focus on using one interface from multiple points of distribution, regardless of the manufacturer or vendor. Lastly, regulators will be able to preview changes and spend less time testing, said Pace.
Several companies are already hoping to implement S2S as quickly as possible. Mandalay, for example, recently invested $1.8 million to roll out NRT Technology Corp. kiosks running on the S2S protocol at all of its 16 properties, said Gregg Solomon, GSA Chairman and Senior Vice President of Operations at Mandalay Resort Group.
Among other functions, these kiosks will allow players to break bills and redeem player points and tickets. Solomon said Mandalay hopes to have the kiosks available by October.
The new NRT kiosks already incorporate XML technology, a predominant part of the S2S language, explained David Nehra, Chairman of the S2S Committee and Division Director of Corporate Information Technology at Mandalay.
This enables the machines to readily communicate between various casino systems, including player tracking and cashless. Therefore, as various system vendors migrate to the S2S standard, Mandalay's kiosks will be ready to go without any need for rewriting code, said Nehra.
