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Striving for Interoperability
The IGT Global Technology & Interoperability Center has
opened its doors to true industry-wide collaboration.
The $10 million, 6,500-square foot facility (with the
ability to expand to 10,000 square feet in later phases) is
located near IGT’s Reno, Nevada campus as a separate
facility. The Center is open to leading original equipment
manufactures (OEMs), strategic partners and
system integrators.
The key objective of the Center is to create an
environment to perform a number of systems tests
such as interoperability load, performance and stress
tests. The Center is also set-up to test the compatibility
of the Gaming Standards Association’s (GSA) protocolbased
products from other manufacturers in a secure,
private setting. This will increase customer satisfaction by
facilitating cooperation among manufacturers to produce
products that evolve with emerging technologies. In
addition, this collaborative approach will ensure that
the Center’s rigorous end-to-end systems testing is
conducted in an environment that closely emulates
customer sites with systems such as hotel management
or point-of-sale, so there are no surprises when products
are brought to market.
“Industry-wide efforts toward interoperability will benefit
all gaming manufacturers and ultimately, our casino
customers and their patrons by helping to ensure all
systems and games work together seamlessly,” says
Mohammad Entezari, IGT’s Director of Software Product
Assurance. “Being a part of Product Assurance, we saw
a few issues being discovered in the field due to lack of a
true life casino test environment or not having a number
of backend hotel system interfaces available to simulate
at IGT. Rather than discovering these issues at the time
of systems install or upgrade, we felt that a solution was
necessary if we were to show our commitment to the
open architecture concept.”
“We discussed the idea of the Center with IGT executives
about eight months ago,” Mohammad says. “We did
some research and discovered the advantages of
implementing a test facility similar to Microsoft and HP
interoperability test labs. We determined that such a
facility will give us the opportunity to be a true leader in
a proactive, collaborative approach to open standards.
This will benefit our customers because it allows more
streamlined work processes with GSA. It will also help
IGT bring products to market at a much faster pace by
instituting GSA certification process for IGT products at
this Center.”
The team has already gauged interest from the gaming
community and is excited about moving forward. In fact,
at this year’s G2E, IGT showcased interoperability of the
sb system with other manufacturers’ machines. Atronic
incorporated the IGT AVP ® technology within their
machine, Novomatic and WMS showcased the Service
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Window, and Paltronics streamed content through to
sb NexGen displays.
“I believe IGT has the solution to bring the industry together
at this facility and successfully test the interoperability of other
gaming manufacturers’ products alongside of IGT product lines
for our customers,” says Mohammad. “It’s the right thing
to do.”
“Global interoperability
means the industry is
working together in
support of the open
network architecture
with customer
satisfaction being their
highest priority.”
Mohammad Entezari, Director of
Software Product Assurance