Samsung Solid-State Drives Enable Ultra-Reliable Point of Sale Terminals for Restaurants and Bars

Revention, Inc., a maker of high-performance point of sale (POS) terminals for the restaurant industry, decided in 2009 to switch from hard disk drives (HDDs) to solid-state drives (SSDs) to differentiate its terminals from competing products. Samsung SSDs dramatically improved the reliability of Revention’s POS terminals.

1. CASE STUDY: REVENTION, INC.
Samsung Solid-State Drives Enable
Ultra-Reliable Point of Sale Terminals
for Restaurants and Bars
OVERVIEW
Customer Need
Revention, Inc., a maker of high-performance
point of sale (POS) terminals for the restaurant
industry, decided in 2009 to switch from hard
disk drives (HDDs) to solid-state drives (SSDs)
to differentiate its terminals from competing
products. But its initial experience with other
manufacturers’ SSDs resulted in unacceptable
failure rates.
Samsung Solution
After extensive testing, Revention selected
Samsung’s 470 Series SSDs for use in its
R2310 POS terminals. They proved so
successful that the company upgraded to
Samsung’s newer 830 Series SSDs in 2011.
And when Revention introduced its next-
generation R3310 POS terminals in 2013, it
again chose Samsung SSDs, selecting the
new 840 Series SSDs as standard equipment.
Results
Samsung SSDs dramatically improved the
reliability of Revention’s POS terminals.
Previously, up to 25 percent of other suppliers’
SSDs failed, often during initial assembly.
Since switching to Samsung SSDs, however,
Revention’s SSD failure problem has virtually
disappeared, while customers’ complaints
have become almost non-existent.

2. 2
THE CUSTOMER
Revention, Inc.
Revention, Inc., a maker of high-
performance point of sale (POS)
terminals, has been riding the growth
wave in restaurant technology.
Founded in 2003, the Houston, TX-
based company has grown rapidly to
nearly $16 million in annual sales. Its
intuitive, easy-to-use software and
high-performance POS terminals
provide a complete restaurant-
management solution, which has
attracted a loyal following among
multi-unit chains and independent
pizzeria operators. Now, the privately
held company is expanding its product
offerings to serve the fast casual and
quick-service restaurant markets, as
well as bars and nightclubs.
Revention is known for its customer-
friendly, yet technologically advanced
POS terminals, which allow restaurant
staff to create and print guest
checks, relay orders to kitchens for
preparation, and process credit cards
while simultaneously tracking sales,
labor and inventory data in real time.
Smaller restaurants may require only
one or two terminals, while larger
operations with multiple ordering
locations may require a dozen or more.
Jeff Doyle, Revention’s CEO and
founder, says his company tries to
differentiate itself from competitors
by being the first to offer the latest
technologies. “We like to challenge
our competitors by keeping the
standards of technology and
expectations at a high level,” says
Doyle. “If there’s a better component
that’s available, we’ll go to
production with that component.”
Six years ago, Revention was one
of the first restaurant POS terminal
suppliers to offer biometric fingerprint-
recognition scanners to identify
users. It was also an early adopter of
integrated payment card readers and
high-resolution touch screen displays.
So when the cost of solid-state storage
fell to affordable levels, Doyle says,
“doing the same thing with SSDs was a
natural move for us.”
SSDs are making increasing inroads into
the mainstream data storage market
primarily because of their impressive
speed and reliability. By using NAND
flash memory chips, rather than spinning
magnetic disks, to store and retrieve data,
SSDs allow computer users to boot their
systems, load software applications and
copy and transfer files much faster than
with conventional HDDs. And because
they have no moving parts, SSDs also are
far more resistant to shock, vibration and
accidental physical damage than HDDs,
while using significantly less energy.
Revention was primarily seeking better
performance in 2009 when it began
equipping its POS terminals with SSDs
from two manufacturers. Yet even though
the performance benefit of some of those
drives was immediately noticeable, a
disturbing number of these early SSDs
simply didn’t work. “The biggest problem
we were having was SSDs that were DOA
(dead on arrival),” says Doyle. “We’d get the
drive, put it in place and it was just dead
out of the box.”
Although most of these failures were
remedied before the drives reached the
company’s customers, Revention also
received occasional reports of power
irregularities corrupting data stored on
the SSDs.
Doyle says his company installed more
than 3,000 SSDs from its initial suppliers
in its early generations of SSD-equipped
POS terminals. During that period it
increased the drives’ capacity from 8 to 16
gigabytes (GB), then to 32, as SSD prices
steadily declined. But with failure rates
as high as 25 percent for some batches
of drives, their unreliability was simply
unacceptable. Even after Revention’s
suppliers attempted to make corrective
changes, Doyle says, “we were still seeing
up to 7 percent fail rates.”
Clearly, it was time to switch SSD suppliers.
First, however, Revention spent several
months reviewing nearly every SSD on the
market before deciding where to source
its new drives. “We had every model bench
tested, and put them inside of our units.
We actually did quite a rigorous test,”
says Doyle.
The company also asked some of its key
restaurant customers to field-test the
most promising SSDs in their highest-
volume POS workstations, without
disclosing which drives they were
receiving. “They let all their employees
use it, and when their hands-on reports
came back,” he says, “Samsung’s SSDs
blew everyone else out of the water.”
THE CUSTOMER NEED
Better Performance and Reliability

3. As the world’s largest maker of computer
memory chips and the largest global
supplier of consumer SSDs, Samsung
has unrivaled experience with solid-
state storage technology. Samsung is
the only SSD supplier to make its own
SSD memory and controller chips, and
this unique, integrated manufacturing
capability gives it full control of
every component, resulting in high
performance and reliability.
Revention started using Samsung’s 470
Series SSDs in its flagship line of R2310
POS terminals in early 2011 and later that
year switched to Samsung’s newer 830
Series SSDs. The SSDs’ 64 GB capacity
was twice as large as the previous SSDs
used by company, and their speed and
responsiveness drew rave reviews from
customers. “Overall, we’ve seen a major
performance gain. It’s probably twice the
performance that we had on hard drives,”
says Doyle.
But the most notable difference has been
the dramatic improvement in reliability.
Doyle says that out of the roughly 5,000
terminals shipped with Samsung SSDs
through early 2013, only two have
experienced SSD problems. “We’ve had
almost no failure issues with Samsung
SSDs,” he says. “We don’t have many
vendors with a perfect track record, but I
can honestly say that we’ve had a nearly
perfect track record with Samsung.”
The new drives also appear to have
resolved the problem of data losses
caused by power irregularities. “Those
issues have almost completely gone
away,” he says. “Samsung SSDs have
made our issues in the field go to where
they’re almost non-existent.”
QUICK PROFILE
As used by Revention, Inc.
SAMSUNG 840 PRO SERIES
SOLID STATE DRIVES
Form Factor: 2.5-inch
Capacity: Available in 128GB,
256GB & 512GB
Host Interface: Serial ATA
interface of 6.0Gbps; compliant
with ATA/ATAPI-8 Standard
Sequential Read Speed: Up to
540MB/s for 256GB & 512GB
models; up to 530MB/s for
128GB model
Sequential Write Speed: Up
to 520MB/s for 256GB & 512GB
models; up to 390MB/s for
128GB model
Random Read Speed: Up to
100K IOPS for 256GB & 512GB
models; up to 97K IOPS for
128GB model
Random Write Speed: Up to
90K IOPS
Power Consumption: 0.15W
Encryption: AES 256-bit Full
Disk Encryption; Class0 Self
Encryption Drive; user can set
HDD password in BIOS setup
mode
Operating Systems: Windows
Vista or Later
Environmental Specs:
Operating Temperature of 32
o
F
to 140
o
F
Weight: 0.15lb
Warranty: 5 years
THE SAMSUNG SOLUTION
Reliability Soars with New SSDs
3

4. “We’ve had a nearly
perfect track record
with Samsung.”
– Jeff Doyle
President, Revention, Inc.
© 2013 Samsung Electronics America, Inc. All rights reserved. Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. All products,
logos and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Screen images simulated. This case study is for
informational purposes only. Samsung makes no warranties, express or implied, in this case study.
Learn more 1-866-SAM4BIZ | samsung.com/business | @SamsungBizUSA
THE RESULTS
SSDs Allow Fast, Last-Minute Software Updates
Revention used to pre-load SSDs with
its standard software package and
then install the drives in POS terminals
during manufacturing. But this proved
to be too inflexible, frequently requiring
technicians to unbox and reconfigure
systems before shipping to customers.
Now it typically waits until the terminals
are installed at the customers’ premises
before plugging in the SSDs. That
allows the company to wait until the
last possible moment to customize
or make changes to meet customers’
configuration requirements.
Revention uses high-volume imaging
systems to install and configure software
on multiple SSDs at the same time. And
because software can be loaded much
faster onto SSDs than HDDs, the imaging
process now takes far less time than
when the company relied on HDDs. “SSD
imaging time is literally five to eight
times faster than with hard drives,” says
Doyle. “When you’re doing something
30 times a day and you’re shaving off
15 minutes each time, it’s just a major
difference that’s allowed us to flex and
move faster.”
Besides improved productivity, the faster
software installation process has allowed
Revention to avoid buying additional
imaging systems to meet the demands
of its growing business. “We were going
to have to buy more imaging systems,
which was a sizeable investment,” Doyle
says. “But with SSDs, we haven’t had to.”
He says it has been two years now since
the company bought additional imaging
systems, each of which cost about
$10,000.
Doyle concedes that Revention probably
could have saved 15 to 20 percent by
choosing less-expensive SSDs from
other manufacturers. “But they didn’t
come anywhere close to the quality that
we were seeing with Samsung,” he says.
With about 60 percent of his customers
now using terminals equipped with
Samsung SSDs, Doyle says he’s
very pleased with the performance,
productivity and reliability that Samsung
SSDs have brought to his company’s
products. “I don’t think there’s a better
offering out there that would meet our
needs,” he says.
Not surprisingly, when Revention was
developing its next-generation R3310
line of POS terminals for introduction
in early 2013, it again chose Samsung
SSDs – selecting 128GB capacity 840
series SSDs as standard equipment. And
for good measure, the company also has
recently upgraded all of its executives’
laptop computers with Samsung SSDs.
“Obviously, we’re big on performance
here,” Doyle says. “We don’t want to
be one-upped by the competition, so
everything we do is fast. And we feel like
everything we’ve put in place, including
Samsung SSDs, is a part of that.”