Top 5 Oil Service Stocks To Own Right Now

Top 5 Oil Service Stocks To Own Right Now: MICROS Systems Inc (MCRS)

MICROS Systems, Inc. (MICROS), incorporated on September 8, 1977, is a global designer, manufacturer, marketer, and servicer of enterprise information solutions for the global hospitality and retail industries. The Company operates in two segments: the United States/Canada and International. The retail industry consists of retail operations selling directly to consumers, including retailers of clothing, shoes, food, hardware, jewelry, and other specialty items. Its enterprise information solutions consists three areas: hotel information systems, restaurant information systems and retail information systems. In addition to its software enterprise solutions and hardware products, it offers a range of services and other products for its hotel, restaurant and retail information systems. The hotel information systems consist of software, encompassing property based management systems (PMS), related property-specific modules and applications, and central systems, including centr al reservation systems (CRS). The restaurant information systems consist of hardware and software for point-of-sale (POS) and operational applications, a range of back office applications, including inventory, labor and financial management, and centrally hosted enterprise applications. The retail information systems consist of hardware and software encompassing POS, loss prevention, Web commerce applications, business analytics, customer gift cards, electronic payments and enterprise applications. Its retail solutions are provided through its MICROS-Retail group of subsidiaries, which includes Datavantage, CommercialWare, Advance Retail Systems (Mexico), MICROS Retail and Manufacturing Ltd. (United Kingdom), eOne, Fry, Fortech (Italy), MICROS eCommerce EAME (London), and MICROS Retail Austria GmbH. On May 31, 2012, MICROS acquired Torex Retail Holdings, Ltd. of Dun! stable, England (Torex).

Hotel Information Systems

For the hotel and resort industry, the Company develops, distributes, and supports a range of ! hotel software products and services under the OPERA brand name. Its OPERA suite includes PMS, sales and catering, CRS, customer information system, revenue management, sales support, data mining, financial statements, condominium reservations and accounting, golf reservations, spa management, and quality management. It also offers a range for OPERA, which enables guest check-in and check-out, and other interactive features, through a kiosk.

The PMS software provides for hotel room check-in and checkout, reservations, guest accounting, travel agent accounting, and engineering management. The PMS software also interfaces to central reservation systems, to on-line travel services, and to global distribution systems. The OPERA sales and catering software enables hotel sales staff to evaluate, reserve and invoice meetings, banquets and related events for a property. The OPERA CRS software enables hotels to coordinate, process, track, and analyze hotel room reservati ons at a central facility for electronic distribution to the appropriate lodging site. The OPERA revenue management software enables hotels to manage room rates, occupancy, and the mix of business between corporate and transient customers. It also offers an Internet-based hotel reservation service through its myfidelio.net service. This service enables corporations, tourist representation services, and consumers to reserve rooms and manage reservations directly with designated hotels. This service also enables those hotel properties without internal reservation capabilities to outsource to us the maintenance of their connectivity to the global distribution systems and certain alternative distribution systems. The Company offers limited versions of the OPERA property management system called OPERA Xpress, OPERA Lite, and Operetta. As of June 30, 2012, approxim! ately 20,! 200 hotel sites have installed either OPERA, OPERA Xpress PMS, OPERA Lite, or Operetta.

OPERA ru ns on two operating systems: Microsoft Windows (Server and X! P) and IB! M AIX, and uses an Oracle database. It offers hosting services for hotel customers in various data centers globally (including Ashburn and Manassas, Virginia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Frankfurt, Germany, and Singapore) with the OPERA applications accessed through Internet or high speed connections. In addition to OPERA, it supports a range of hotel software products (PMS and other modules) under the Fidelio Version 7.0 brand name. Fidelio Version 7.0 uses the Microsoft Windows graphical user interface and runs on an Oracle database. As of June 30, 2012, approximately 2,875 hotels were using Fidelio Version 7.0. The Company also markets a PMS product in Europe under the brand name Fidelio Version 8. This product uses the Windows operating system with an Oracle database. As of June 30, 2012, the product was installed in over 3,750 hotel sites.

Through the Company's subsidiary Fidelio Cruise, it markets the Ships Property Management System (SPMS) suite of applica tions, which includes a PMS product designed for use by the cruise industry. The SPMS application enables cruise operators to manage passenger, visitor, group, and crew information at various stages from check-in to check-out, invoicing, credit card handling with online functionality, safety and security, and automated check-in with picture taking for passengers, crew, and visitors. The software maintains the count of passengers and staff on-board, as required by international industry regulations. In addition SPMS modules support the operation of on-board health spas, on-board MICROS point-of-sale systems, on-board business centers, on-board medical centers, and on-board casinos, as well as shore excursions. It also markets Fidelio Cruise Crew Management System, which supports the shore side and shipboard crew resource operations for a cruise ship,! and the ! Fidelio Cruise Fleet Management System, which enables fleet-wide data analysis for cruise ship operators. Fidelio Cruis e software is installed on approximately 220 cruise ships.

Restaurant Information Systems

The Company's restaurant systems include POS applications, kitchen product applications, mobile applications, marketing applications, and hardware. Its front-of-house restaurant products operate on either industry standard personal computers (PCs) or terminals that have additional functionality and design appropriate for food service environments. The workstations the Company has designed, and which it markets and sells, are the Workstation 5A and 2015 PC Workstation. It also integrates other hardware devices into its complete product offerings.

Workstation 5A is a PC based POS terminal using Microsoft's Embedded CE 6.0 and POSReady 2009 operating systems. The MICROS 2015 PC Workstation is a POS terminal designed to operate its restaurant applications and other third party PC-based software applications. The product uses Intel chip architecture. It can be configured to accommodate memory and storage requirement s. The product supports Microsoft operating systems and Linux.

The Protege Customer Display System and MICROS Order Confirmation Systems are designed for the quick service restaurant market, and provide information to a restaurant's customers regarding their order. The Protege Customer Display System is connected to a MICROS Workstation. It is a Microsoft Windows CE client equipped with a touchscreen allowing for interactive use. The MICROS Order Confirmation System is also a Microsoft Windows CE client, and provides order detail through a remote 15 inches daylight viewable display. It also markets a product named the Keyboard Workstation 270. This product enables orders to be entered through the MICROS Simphony and 9700 HMS through a workstation with a keyboard interface in lieu of a touchscreen. The Keyboard Workstation is ! used in i! nstitutional food service environments, convention centers, and sports complexes. Through its JTECH subsidiary, it offers pagers , wireless systems, alert software, and related products for! use in r! estaurants, retail, medical, and other environments.

The Company resells various other hardware products, including personal computers, servers, printers, network cards, and other related computer equipment. The Company's restaurant POS software systems are Simphony, the MICROS Restaurant Enterprise Series (3700 POS) system, the MICROS 9700 Hospitality Management System (HMS), Hospitality Solution's Profit Series, and the MICROS e7 Series. These systems provide transaction control for table service, quick service and food service and entertainment venues. Its design architecture enables existing users of MICROS POS products to access third party software applications in conjunction with their existing MICROS POS systems. In addition, MICROS restaurant information system products interface with back office accounting and property management systems, including its hotel PMS products.

The Simphony software solution is designed to be an all-inclusiv e software application for use by table service restaurants, quick service restaurants, and enterprise operations. It is capable of operating at single site venues, such as airport and other travel-related food service concessions, casinos, theme parks, and resorts as well multi-unit quick service and table service restaurant operations. The enterprise Simphony database is supported either by Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle. As of June 30, 2012, MICROS has installed over 9,300 sites with Simphony, and hosts approximately 800 of those sites.

The MICROS 9700 HMS is designed for leisure and entertainment venues, which include resorts, casinos, airport and other travel-related food service concessions, stadiums/arenas, theme parks, table service and quick service restaurants in hotels, and restaurants. The MICROS 3700 POS ! is design! ed for table service and quick service restaurants. It has an open systems architecture using the Microsoft's Windows operating system a nd a Sybase relational database, and can run on standard PCs! or works! tations. It uses a color touch screen with a Microsoft Windows based graphical user interface.

The Company markets a range of back office and operation focused software solutions, which extend beyond point-of-sale. The suite is called the MICROS Restaurant Enterprise Series (RES). The MICROS RES software solutions include point-of-sale transaction control, restaurant operations, data analysis, and communications. The POS software comprises the front-end application for the RES system. The restaurant operations modules include inventory, product forecasting, labor management, financial management, gift cards, customer loyalty and enterprise data management. Other components include Mobile MICROS and MICROS RES Kiosk, which enables customer information and self-ordering on third-party kiosks or directly through the use of smart phones and tablets.

For management of multiple restaurants, MICROS RES includes a range of software products called Enterpri se Management. This suite enables data to be transmitted to a remote site for data collection and analysis. In addition, pricing and menu changes can be made from a remote site and downloaded to specified restaurant locations. It also markets a POS system called MICROS e7. This product runs on the MICROS Workstation 5 and 5A series and uses the Microsoft Windows CE Operating system. The Company markets an Internet-based portal product called mymicros.net. The mymicros.net product posts restaurant transaction POS detail to a centralized data warehouse in near real time. This product enables the customer to view reports and charts for a single site, a group of restaurants, or the entire enterprise from any location that has an Internet connection. In addition, mymicros.net incorporates additional products for inventory man! agement, ! labor scheduling and control, gift cards, loyalty cards and other marketing programs. The mymicros.net software product can either be purchased thro ugh a perpetual use license or by an annual or multi-year so! ftware-as! -a-service (SaaS) subscription contract. It hosts mymicros.net, Simphony, and other hosted POS-related applications in the same data centers where it offers hosting services for its OPERA PMS. As of June 30, 2012, it hosted applications supporting over 29,000 restaurants.

Retail Information Systems

Through the Company's MICROS-Retail group of subsidiaries (MICROS-Retail), it markets retail store software systems, direct commerce solutions and business intelligence applications. The retail store software systems are called Store21 Store Management System (Store21), Tradewind Store Management System (Tradewind) and Xstore Store Management System (Xstore). Store21 is a POS product designed for specialty retailers. The products operate on Microsoft's Windows NT and 2000 and 2003 operating systems and use a Sybase database. Both products can be integrated with the retailer's back office systems, and it also offers additional back office, communicat ions, and reporting modules for use with Tradewind and Store21.

Xstore is the Company's retail POS software system. It is a full service oriented architecture (SOA) compliant architecture. It runs on the Sun Microsystems Java operating system, and its architecture enables it to be integrated to both Windows and Linux-based back office systems. It can operate on any Java compatible operating system and database. Like Store21 and Tradewind, its predecessor products, Xstore is a front-end POS software system. Xstore is designed to run in a Windows or a Linux environment, while Store21 and Tradewind, as designed, can operate only in a Windows environment.

The Company offers the MICROS-Retail Home Office Business Intelligence Suite for retail stores, which includes loss prevention (market! ed under ! the trade name XBR), customer relationship management, gift cards (marketed under the trade name Relate), and audit control (marketed under the trade name Bal ance). It also offers XBR to its restaurant customers throug! h MICROS ! provided centrally hosted or self-hosted environment. MICROS-Retail also offers in-store mobile solutions with Apple Corporation's iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad systems. These solutions enable the store associate to ring up sales, handle inventory and service customers using the mobile devices. MICROS-Retail offers an eCommerce platform with features, marketed under the trade name Open Commerce Platform, as well as creative and design services to help customers create custom Websites.

MICROS-Retail offers order management and order broker software and services (marketed under the trade names CW Serenade and Locate, respectively), which enable a retailer to manage customer purchase transactions through multiple sources, including a store, the Internet, catalog phone-in orders, call centers, kiosks, and wireless devices. MICROS-Retail develops, supports, and distributes software solutions, which provides for collaborative end-to-end product and supplier lifecycle management and ingredient legal compliance tracking under the names Creations and myCreations. Creations and myCreations customers include accounts, such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, Wm Morrison, Sobeys, H.E. Butt, Metro, Kodak, Bodyshop and Booker.

The Company provides a range of services to its customers, including system installation, operator and manager training, on-site hardware maintenance, customized software development, application software support and credit card software support. During the fiscal year ended June 30, 2012 (fiscal 2012), service revenue constituted approximately 65.6% of its total revenue. Maintenance service contracts include on-site and depot hardware maintenance, application software support, credit card software support, and software hosting. The Company provi! des on-si! te hardware maintenance and software support through a combination of direct and indirect channels. The on-site hardware maintenance is provided to customers using MICR OS POS hardware and software systems. It also operates other! more lim! ited help desk operations, including Fidelio Cruise support desks in Hamburg, Germany and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the JTECH help desk in Boca Raton, Florida, and a help desk in Scottsdale, Arizona for certain legacy POS products. Its corporate customer support center in Columbia, Maryland provides back-up support for its regional centers in Buenos Aires, Singapore, and Galway, and its research and development operation in Naples, Florida, provides support for its hotel software products. The regional support centers also provide back-up support and guidance for local and in-country support providers.

The Company operates data centers in Ashburn and Manassas, Virginia, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Frankfurt, Nottingham, England, and Singapore in conjunction with third-party vendors to serve as hosting centers for customers deploying its hosted and application service products. It offers Website design and portal management services, for the retail industry. These inc lude the development and management a customer's Website for ordering, sales promotion, and marketing. It also offers Web based marketing services to hotels, restaurants and retail companies.

The Company competes with NCR, Panasonic, Par Technology, Sharp, Agilysys, Positouch, Xpient Solutions, Casio, Dell, HP, IBM, Toshiba, Multi-Systems, Newmarket, Northwind, Par Technology, Protel, Softbrands, Pegasus, Trust International/TravelPort, Vantis, Sabre, TravelClick, Epicor, Escalate Retail, JDA Software, Oracle, SAP, DemandWare and eBay.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Vera Yuan]

  On June 23, 2014, MICROS Systems, Inc. (MCRS) announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Oracle Corporation at a premium to the Fund's cost. Fol! lowing th! e news of the announcement, the Fund sold its remaining holdings in MICROS Systems, Inc., believing the acquirer paid a fair price.From Robert Olstein (Trades, Portfolio)'s The Olstein Strategic Opportunities Fund's 2014 Second Quarter Letter to Shareholders.Also check out: Robert Olstein Undervalued Stocks Robert Olstein Top Growth Companies Robert Olstein High Yield stocks, and Stocks that Robert Olstein keeps buying Currently 0.00/512345

  Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes)

• [By Garrett Cook]

  Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) announced its plans to buy Micros Systems (NASDAQ: MCRS) in a $5.3 billion deal.

  The offer price of $68 per share represents a 3.4% premium over Micros' closing price on Friday.

• [By Garrett Cook]

  Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) announced its plans to buy Micros Systems (NASDAQ: MCRS) in a $5.3 billion deal.

  The offer price of $68 per share represents a 3.4% premium over Micros' closing price on Friday.

source from Top Stocks For 2015:http://www.topstocksblog.com/top-5-oil-service-stocks-to-own-right-now-2.html