The short answer is that we are the IT experts, and we take full responsibility for everything related to IT, from operations to the software applications, so our clients can focus on what they do best: sales and customer follow-up.

The slightly longer answer is that operations and hosting can be very complex for many people. We have been professionally involved in server operations for over 25 years and could, in practice, establish our own company specializing solely in hosting operations.

Having control over the entire «loop», from power generators to client applications and UX elements, gives us and our clients an enormous advantage, as we can quickly identify any issues and optimize the entire solution.

What most don’t know is that using global hosting solutions like Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure is neither easy nor cheap.

For instance, AWS consists of hundreds of services, where you need to figure out which to use, and then you need to learn them and build your services around them.

We have been doing server and infrastructure hosting since the early 90s, running some of the most mission-critical systems in the Nordics, with billions of euros handled over the last decades.

If we were to run Flow Retail with the global suppliers, the prices on our platform would also need to be increased, as running in these systems is anything but cheap.

With that said, once per year we sit down and decide whether we shall keep things as-is or move things into the “external cloud.”

It is also worth mentioning Flow Retail POS is built for the cloud, and that Enterprise clients have the option to run their Flow Retail instance with any of the cloud providers or in their local infrastructure.

Flow Retail basically only requires Linux servers, PostgreSQL, and the ability to run Go (which they all do).

The standard uptime guarantee is 99.9%, which equals around two hours of potential downtime per quarter.

Actual uptime for the last five years has been close to 100%.

We deploy new features weekly, with 100% uptime, and simply hot-reload/refresh the new features in the clients.

Yes, if you use our Flow Retail Enterprise suite (typically for retail stores with 200+ stores), you can host the full platform within your own infrastructure.

We will still be in charge of the general maintenance and updates of the Flow Retail software; however, your IT staff will be responsible for everything related to servers and infrastructure.

Nope.

We have an extreme focus on using standardized and rock-solid components for the full tech stack.

We rely on Linux as our operating system, primarily using Ubuntu Server, with some Debian as well.

For the database we rely on PostgreSQL.

We use HP servers with enterprise-grade stability, like the ProLiant DL-360 Gen10.

We use SAN for storage, mainly the HP Nimble.

We develop everything in-house, and we develop all core functionality in Go, with Flutter/Dart being used on all the clients.

We use Git/GitHub for version control and to handle all deployments.

We are open-source advocates and always strive to use open-source-based solutions wherever possible, and practically 100% of all components we use are open-source.

You do.

Each client owns their data 100%, and all data can relatively easily be extracted, either through the APIs or via a custom job from our team.

Let’s hope you will never need to do that.

Questions are good 🙂 It shows that you are truly engaged.

Send them to sales@flowretail.no and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.