Hughes Network Systems announced Monday that it has signed an agreement with Denny's to provide DirecWay satellite broadband service to 550 corporate restaurants.
Denny's is one of the first HNS customers to take advantage of HNS' recently announced new standardized service plans.
Denny's selected the HNS solution because it is ideal for today's business applications such as credit processing, portal access, and polling, while providing an easy growth path as newer, more bandwidth-intensive applications are deployed.
Using the standard DirecWay enterprise service plan, Denny's will be able to:
conduct nightly polling at each corporate location;
deliver email to facilitate communications between employees;
give restaurant managers broadband access to the mydennys.com portal
for access to hosted applications and to communicate with employees;
enhance customer service by decreasing wait time in lines with faster
credit authorizations; and
reduce expenses associated with maintaining a dial-up connection at
each restaurant location.
According to Janis Emplit, Denny's chief information officer, after evaluating broadband service options for 12 months, Denny's chose HNS' DirecWay service because of its proven ability to support bandwidth-intensive applications, as well as HNS' reputation as a trusted broadband service provider.
"When searching for a vendor, we knew that we needed a technology that would provide us with ubiquitous broadband coverage and always-on connections," said Emplit. "We also needed the technology to support a large range of applications that could grow as our business grows. DirecWay offered us the growth path we needed.
"We are pleased that Denny's, a highly respected name in family dining, is the first to take advantage of the flexibility and value that HNS' standard service plans offer," said Mike Cook, senior vice president of the North American Division at HNS.
"Offering a solution that will evolve with changing business needs is extremely important to all enterprises. We are pleased that Denny's so quickly saw that value in our offerings."
Denny's began rolling out the HNS technology in July in parallel with a new point-of-sale system at each of its corporate locations. Denny's also plans to make the service available to its franchise locations.
