Microsoft Windows Server System
Customer Solution Case Study
Restaurant Chain Upgrades Systems and Cuts
2,000 Servers Using Virtual Machines
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Hospitality
Customer Profile
Jack in the Box, Inc., of San Diego,
California, operates and franchises nearly
2,000 Jack in the Box and more than 160
Qdoba Mexican Grill restaurants in 33
states. It employs nearly 46,000 people.
Business Situation
Jack in the Box wanted to upgrade its
restaurant systems to reduce maintenance
costs but couldn’t disrupt older business
management and point-of-sale applications
running on Microsoft® Windows NT®
version 4.0.
Solution
The company implemented Microsoft
Virtual Server 2005 and Microsoft
Windows ServerTM 2003 in restaurants to
run critical applications on Windows NTbased virtual machines.
Benefits
 Rapid Windows NT migration
 Hardware costs reduced by 50 percent
 Maintenance costs reduced
 Faster access to business data
“Using Virtual Server 2005, we can immediately
upgrade our restaurant hardware … to take
advantage of higher performance, reliability, and
management features while running older
applications on Windows NT.”
Brian Yates, Director of Business Systems Restaurant POS and Platform Development, Jack in the
Box
Jack in the Box, one of the best-known fast-food chains in the
United States, recently determined that it needed to upgrade the
technology it used in nearly 2,000 restaurants. Rather than
launching a massive code rewrite, Jack in the Box decided to host
the older applications and operating system on virtual machines
using Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005. The company has long-term
plans to base the applications on the Microsoft .NET Framework,
and to run them on the Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2003 operating
system. Currently, however, the use of Virtual Server 2005 makes it
possible for Jack in the Box to immediately migrate old applications
to new hardware while also reducing restaurant servers by 50
percent and reducing server maintenance costs.
Situation
Founded in 1951, Jack in the Box operates
and franchises two U.S. restaurant chains—
Jack in the Box and Qdoba Mexican Grill—in
33 states. The company also operates more
than two dozen proprietary Quick Stuff
convenience stores—each includes a gas
station and is developed adjacent to a Jack in
the Box restaurant. Jack in the Box is among
the most popular quick-serve hamburger
chains in the United States, with more than
2,000 restaurants and a half-billion guests
annually.
With the company’s attention focused on a
multifaceted growth strategy and a
comprehensive initiative to reinvent the Jack
in the Box brand, it had fallen behind on
maintaining back-office technology in its
restaurants. One server in each of its nearly
2,000 restaurants runs a point-of-sales (POS)
application from Progressive Software on the
Microsoft® Windows NT® Server operating
system version 4.0; a second computer runs
19 back-office applications—such as
inventory management, staff scheduling, and
payroll. The back-office applications use a
variety of databases—Microsoft SQL ServerTM
version 7.0, SQL Server Desktop Edition, and
Microsoft FoxPro® database development
system.
“We wanted to knit our restaurant back-office
applications more closely together for greater
information exchange and analysis,” says
Brian Yates, Director of Business Systems
Restaurant POS and Platform Development
for Jack in the Box.
The old restaurant computers were also
costing a great deal to manage and support.
“As we opened new restaurants, the older
applications wouldn’t run easily on newer
hardware,” Yates says. “The older machines
and operating systems were difficult to
manage due to their inability to take
advantage of modern management tools, and
they were difficult to patch and protect
against security vulnerabilities.”
Updating the 4,000 remote computers
involved sending upgrades to restaurants and
spending a considerable amount of time
following up. A simple operating system or
application update took up to 11 weeks to
implement and was a time drain on IT staff.
Jack in the Box set out to redesign and
upgrade its restaurant systems to decrease
operational costs and give the company
better access to daily business data. The
company could not, however, rewrite the 19
back-office applications and upgrade its
computers and operating systems in 2,000
restaurants overnight.
Solution
Because Microsoft is a key technology
vendor, Jack in the Box looked to Microsoft
for help in bringing its restaurant systems up
to date. The local Microsoft account team
recommended upgrading Jack in the Box
restaurant back-office systems to the
Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2003 operating
system and eventually basing the back-office
applications on the Microsoft .NET
Framework. An integral component of the
Microsoft Windows® operating system, the
.NET Framework provides a programming
model and runtime for Web services, Web
applications, and smart client applications.
Building restaurant systems on a robust Web
services–capable operating system and
programming paradigm would allow Jack in
the Box to easily exchange data between its
restaurant applications, thereby improving
information access and business agility. A
Windows Server 2003 foundation would also
allow Jack in the Box to take advantage of
modern system monitoring, management,
and security tools, thereby lowering
operational costs.
“We estimate that
removing 2,000 devices
in the field will
significantly reduce our
maintenance and
support costs.”
Brian Yates, Director of Business Systems
Restaurant POS and Platform Development,
Jack in the Box
Virtual Machines Allow Staged Migration
It was impractical to consider rewriting all 19
back-office applications at once; that would
be a two- to three-year effort. Jack in the Box
needed a way to move current applications to
a more modern, robust restaurant technology
infrastructure without impacting the
business.
With these challenges in mind, Jack in the
Box turned to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005.
Virtual Server 2005 is a virtual machine
solution designed for Windows Server 2003.
A virtual machine is a server that is
implemented in software and mimics aspects
of a physical server, appearing to users and
applications as a separate physical server. By
implementing Virtual Server 2005, a
company can house several virtual machines
on one physical machine. Multiple virtual
machines can reside on one physical server.
Each virtual machine can run a different
operating system and various applications in
complete isolation from other virtual
machines. By running numerous virtual
machines on one physical server, a company
can increase operational efficiency in
software test and development, application
migration, and server consolidation
scenarios.
“Using Virtual Server 2005, we can
immediately upgrade our restaurant
hardware and operating system software to
take advantage of higher performance,
reliability, and management features while
running older applications on Windows NT,”
Yates says.
As a bonus, the use of Virtual Server 2005
allows Jack in the Box to eliminate one server
per restaurant, consolidating both back-office
applications and the POS application on one
physical computer. The company’s field
server count will be reduced from 4,000 to
2,000 systems.
The remaining server in each restaurant will
be an NCR system running Windows Server
2003, Virtual Server 2005, and two virtual
machines. One virtual machine will run the
19 back-office applications and the other will
run the POS application. The virtual machines
will run Windows NT Server as a guest
operating system running on top of the
Windows Server 2003 host operating system.
To provide restaurant employees with a userfriendly Web interface to all restaurant—and
some corporate—applications, Jack in the Box
IT staff created a Web page that uses the
Virtual Machine Remote Control (VMRC)
ActiveX® control. This allows the two virtual
machines to be visible from a Microsoft
Internet Explorer browser. Employees can
select needed applications without knowing
which virtual machine or operating system
the application is running on.
Virtual Server 2005 gives Jack in the Box a
critical means of upgrading technology
without upsetting ongoing business. It gives
Jack in the Box staff time to base its backoffice applications on the .NET Framework
and eventually host them on Windows Server
2003, taking advantage of its greater
reliability and security.
Fast Migration, Restaurant Setup
Jack in the Box hired Microsoft Consulting
Services (MCS) to assist with its Virtual Server
2005 deployment. MCS created a proof-ofconcept of virtual machine technology in the
Jack in the Box environment and quickly
developed a working prototype. MCS then
conducted extensive integration testing to
ensure the compatibility of Virtual Server
2005 with existing back-office and POS
applications. To provide a comprehensive
plan of action, this included process testing
of designated backup and recovery
procedures.
Comfortable that virtual machine technology
would work well in its restaurant environment, Jack in the Box had MCS create a pilot
deployment as well as all the planning and
development necessary for a systemwide
rollout. MCS designed an architecture for
virtual machine security and a deployment
script by using the Component Object Model
(COM) application programming interface
(API) included with Virtual Server 2005.
“Virtual Server 2005 is
giving us a less
expensive way to run
our business today, as
well as a path to even
greater efficiencies
tomorrow.”
Brian Yates, Director of Business Systems
Restaurant POS and Platform Development,
Jack in the Box
Yates’s staff loads the deployment script onto
a CD and sends it to each restaurant when a
new server is installed. Remote field support
personnel use the CD to create two virtual
machines on the computer. The wizard-driven
installation procedure can be completed in
less than two hours per restaurant. Because
of redundant capabilities built into the POS
application, Jack in the Box doesn’t have to
shut down POS systems to create virtual
machines on the new restaurant computers.
Benefits
The new virtual machine–based restaurant
infrastructure at Jack in the Box has given the
quick-serve chain a way to minimize field
server management and methodically
upgrade restaurant systems. It has also
allowed the company to eliminate 2,000
restaurant servers and the associated costs
and management headaches. By running its
new restaurant systems on Windows Server
2003, the company can take advantage of
newer security and management tools that
ensure a reduction in operational costs. Jack
in the Box anticipates even greater
operational efficiencies and business agility
once they’ve rewritten back-office
applications using the Framework.
Smooth Windows NT Migration
With Virtual Server 2005, Jack in the Box
found a way to smoothly migrate from
outdated Windows NT–based applications to
new hardware without disrupting daily
operations. “Without Virtual Server 2005, we
would have had to stop and rewrite all of our
back-office applications immediately, which
would have been far too time- and laborintensive,” Yates says. “Virtual Server 2005
allows us to slowly migrate one back-office
application at a time to the .NET Framework
and Windows Server 2003. This is a
significant benefit for us.”
In a separate initiative, Jack in the Box is
using the Framework to rewrite and enhance
current Visual FoxPro applications by using
Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003
development system to build more flexible,
interoperable restaurant systems.
Lower Hardware, Maintenance Costs
Using Virtual Server 2005, Jack in the Box
has been able to do away with one server per
restaurant—2,000 system wide. This
eliminates monthly leasing costs for the
hardware as well as the time and money
needed to manage those computers.
“Removing 2,000 devices in the field will
significantly reduce our maintenance and
support costs,” Yates says.
To simplify security policy setting in its
corporate network, Jack in the Box is also
deploying the Active Directory® service, a
central component of Windows Server 2003.
Corporate IT staff can use Group Policy with
Active Directory to manage access to the host
Windows Server 2003 operating system in
each restaurant. “By using Active Directory,
we can automate user, group, and computer
management from one location,” Yates says.
“Active Directory will be a big help in
maintaining a consistent server configuration
in all our restaurants and will allow us to use
specific user IDs for auditing and change
management.”
Faster Access to Business Data
As Jack in the Box bases its back-office
applications on Windows Server 2003 and
the Framework, it will be able to integrate
those applications and analyze the business
from new angles. The tighter integration of
applications will enable near real-time access
to daily business data, which will spur quicker
decision making and improve the ability both
to notice and to correct operational
inefficiencies. Linking previously siloed
operational systems will help Jack in the Box
to better manage its inventory and food and
labor costs.
Jack in the Box plans to replace its many
databases with Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Standard Edition, which will run on each
single restaurant server running Windows
Server 2003—and be shared by the backoffice and POS applications. A common data
repository will make it easier to share data
between back-office applications and to
transfer that data to corporate servers for
more frequent analysis.
“We will use the SQL Server Replication
feature in transferring data to the corporate
servers on a nightly basis, where it will feed
our corporate data warehouse with richer,
more current information,” Yates says. “Both
corporate and restaurant managers will gain
access to timely, accurate, and actionable
information critical to operations in our highly
competitive, low-margin industry.”
The SQL Server database engine will provide
better data to help Jack in the Box get a more
accurate, current view of loss prevention,
cash register over-rings, item cancellations,
labor and performance measurements,
product inventory, sales performance, and
speed of service.
“Virtual Server 2005 is giving us a less
expensive way to run our business today, as
well as a path to even greater efficiencies
tomorrow,” Yates says.
For More Information
Microsoft Windows Server System
For more information about Microsoft
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Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
Microsoft Windows Server SystemTM
integrated server infrastructure software is
designed to support end-to-end solutions
built on Windows Server 2003. It creates an
infrastructure based on integrated
innovation, Microsoft’s holistic approach to
building products and solutions that are
intrinsically designed to work together and
interact seamlessly with other data and
applications across your IT environment. This
allows you to reduce the costs of ongoing
operations; deliver a more secure and
reliable IT infrastructure; and drive valuable
new capabilities for the future growth of your
business.
For more information about Jack in the Box
products and services, call (858) 5712697 or visit the Web site at:
www.jackinthebox.com
For more information about Windows Server
System, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
Software and Services
Microsoft Windows Server System
− Microsoft Windows Server 2003,
Standard Edition
− Microsoft SQL Server 2000
− Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
 Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
 Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
− Microsoft FoxPro
 Services
− Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS)


© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Active Directory, ActiveX, Visual FoxPro, Visual Studio,
Windows, the Windows logo, Windows NT, Windows Server, and
Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or
trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or
other countries. The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective
owners.
Document published September 2004
Technologies
− Active Directory
− Component Object Model
− Microsoft .NET Framework
Hardware

One NCR system with a 2.5-gigahertz CPU,
2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM, and dual 120-GB
hard drives per restaurant