[Vms.sig-hu] OpenVMS Pearl - OpenVMS in the Press ok for Public Use (fwd)

[Fodor Zsuzsa]

---------- Továbbított levél ----------
Dátum: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 10:22:12 -0400
Feladó: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Címzett: Skonetski, Susan <susan.skonetski at hp.com>
Tárgy: OpenVMS Pearl - OpenVMS in the Press ok for Public Use

Dear Distribution lists,

The following apreared yeasterday.  Many thanks to OpenVMS 
Ambassador
Kevin FitzPatrick for forwarding.

http://www.cxotoday.com/cxo/jsp/index.jsp?
section=News&subsection=Busine
ss&subsection_code=1&file=template1.jsp&storyid=1297

Warm Regards,
Sue

Playwin Gambles With OpenVMS & Cash Cards 
By Amit Tripathi 
Mumbai, August 3, 2004 

 

In order to enable more participation for it's online lottery, Playwin
has taken an added step with the provision of a cash card mode of
registration for participants, with Intrex's ITZ Cash Card. 

Speaking to CXOtoday, Manish Nanda, vice president - operations,
Playwin, said, "We had gone for this initiative close to a year ago to
expand our participation base. This will allow participation from those
who would like to play the game as and when they like without visiting 
a
Playwin retail outlet for the purpose." 

 
ITZ Cash card is a typical scratch card with a concealed number that
needs to be activated either by phone or by keying in the given number
in the card, through Playwin's online facility. 

Playwin's online gaming system is supported by a comprehensive IT
landscape. Elaborating on the existing system, Nanda mentioned, "We 
have
two Compaq Alpha servers in a clustered environment called the Online
Sales Server (OSS) that accept bets from various Point Of Sales (POS) in
the field, and now the cards also, registers them, and send an
acknowledgement to the POS to print a ticket. It also process the
various bet files after the results have been entered to locate the
winners." 

Similarly two Intel based servers are used in a clustered environment to
run Management Information Services (MIS). The MIS servers give
user-friendly screens to view online activities such as sales,
accounting, enter draw results, generate reports etc. 

At the Communication Processing (CP) level five Compaq Alpha servers 
are
used that accept connections from the POS in the field via the
networking equipment and after authentication pass the transaction
request to the OSS. An elaborate disaster recovery facility supplements
the IT landscape that replicates the OSS and the MIS through a Sybase
replication server at the remote site. 

Speaking about the operating systems used, Nanda said, "The 
operating
system on our OSS is OpenVMS. We chose this since Alpha servers
presently support either OpenVMS or True64 Unix. Almost all Lottery
systems in the world use OpenVMS as it is found to be the ideal OS to
handle high transaction based businesses. Also the security controls
offered by OpenVMS are tremendous. The fact is further substantiated 
as
there have been no known virus for OpenVMS neither has there been 
any
incidents of hacking into OpenVMS based systems till date." 

At Playwin, the MIS servers run on Windows 2000 Advanced Server.
Justifying his choice for Windows, Nanda explained, "We have chosen 
this
OS as the MIS database is Sybase and the front end to control the
lottery system is a Power Builder application." 

The security of the lottery records too is elaborately handled. Mentions
Nanda, "All lottery records are stored only in the OSS. These records
are stored in a proprietary binary format as used in many lottery
systems across the world. The overall security is strengthened by the
fact that the entire system is on a private network and is not connected
to any public network." 

Apart from the physical security infrastructure, the company has a
detailed system security provisions in place that includes features like
single login, encryption of traffic on the network, tracking of every
transaction from a terminal.