The following communication was released on April 30, 2007, on behalf of the Board of Directors of Hotel Technology Next Generation and the Executive Committee of the HTNG Gaming Special Interest Group.

HTNG Special Interest Groups (SIGs) - History

In early 2005, HTNG created the concept of “Special Interest Groups” (SIGs), which are essentially focused versions of HTNG that operate within the HTNG organizational structure, but that address areas that are of intense interest to smaller groups of members.  The first Special Interest Group, which was announced in May 2005 and first organized in September 2005, focuses on the Casino Gaming segment of the industry.

Like HTNG itself, HTNG SIGs are governed by senior technology executives from the buyer community.  The HTNG Gaming SIG Executive Committee currently consists of Marshall Andrew, CIO of Station Casinos; Jack Braman, CIO of Las Vegas Sands; Dan Garrow, CIO of Mohegan Sun; Tom Peck, CIO of MGM Mirage; and Tim Stanley, CIO of Harrah’s Entertainment.

HTNG Gaming Special Interest Group

The mission of the HTNG Gaming Special Interest Group is to extend and leverage HTNG's mission into gaming and related hospitality industries.

While the primary focus of the Gaming Special Interest Group is gaming systems, it also addresses, in coordination with other HTNG efforts, the application of systems used by all hotel companies, including gaming companies.

Why a Gaming SIG?

This SIG was formed because, at the time, it was thought that a significant percentage of systems and technology requirements for gaming organizations would be unique; beyond the scope of non-gaming hotel requirements; and might not get the priority to make progress against unique gaming requirements if left within mainstream HTNG workgroups.

Gaming SIG Challenges to Date

The Gaming SIG took a bit longer than envisioned to establish itself, including assembling a governance process and populating its executive committee.  From the outset, the focus of the SIG was on reaching consensus on an initial gaming-specific workgroup.  The initial workgroup most discussed was “standards-oriented server-based gaming systems”.  This topic for a workgroup proved to be a complex and challenging paradigm shift in the way gaming machines are configured, deployed, and managed.  Even with the presence of reasonably mature standards as a starting point, the vision of the future held by operators was seen to be several years in the future because of the potential disruption to existing manufacturers’ business models.  As a result, progress has been much slower than hoped in launching this workgroup.

HTNG Maturation Creates Opportunity

While the Gaming SIG was working through its start-up and maturation challenges, HTNG’s core membership growth was significant.  With this growth came the formation of some new workgroups. 

Also, HTNG made excellent progress within existing workgroups to arrive at specifications for interoperability among a number of hardware and software platforms. 

Finally, during this time, HTNG was able to formalize its interoperability certification program so that as specifications emerged, all vendors could undertake activities to certify their products against these specifications.

These activities are the primary reasons for HTNG’s existence.  And the progress in the past 18 months has been particularly gratifying.

Original Assumptions for Gaming SIG Have Not Held True

As we look at the activities of HTNG in general, and of the Gaming SIG in particular, the Executive Committee of the Gaming SIG and the Board of Directors of HTNG have concluded that at least some of the original assumptions that led to formation of the Gaming SIG have not proved completely valid.  In fact, we have found the opposite in some cases. 

In reality the current five HTNG workgroups cover a large percentage of the requirements for gaming systems interoperability.  With the formation of the sixth workgroup for Payment Systems in 2007, the coverage will be even more effective. 

The Property Web Services workgroup in particular has already undertaken work that will prove valuable to both to general hotel systems and gaming specific systems, that make use of service oriented architectures and the required web services message sets.  As these and other HTNG workgroup specifications evolve, together with G2S standards from the Gaming Standards Association, they can be applied directly to gaming systems to form a foundation, and any incremental messages needed for the gaming market can be developed and vetted within this same context.  We have learned, through the past 18 months of experience with managing a burgeoning membership roster in multiple workgroups, that special interests can be effectively surfaced and managed in the form of teams within each workgroup. 

A great example of this is the six teams within the HTNG In-Room Technology workgroup.  This workgroup has over 60 members.  There are many specialty aspects of In-Room Technology handled in these teams.  The integration of these teams within the overall workgroup as well as the interaction with other HTNG workgroups provides the necessary “glue” for it all to work effectively.  The Architecture workgroup has also made progress on adopting principles and processes that can be applied by all workgroups to ensure effective integration.  All of these things make for a very effective specifications-generating engine.

In addition to the above learnings, there has been an unintended consequence of setting up a separate Gaming SIG and within it, its own workgroups. 

The intended model was that mainstream HTNG workgroups would have gaming company participants for requirements that overlapped with non-gaming hospitality companies.  It also assumed that Gaming SIG workgroups would focus exclusively on gaming-unique interoperability requirements.  It has not worked out that way in practice, however.  Until very recently, the Gaming SIG operator companies, and those vendors who focus almost exclusively on the gaming market, have had few participants in mainstream HTNG workgroups.  At the same time, Gaming SIG workgroups have not been as effectively launched as hoped.  So gaming community members have not had a thriving forum for fleshing out their interoperability requirements and specifications, either for general purpose hotel systems and technology or for gaming specific markets. 

A Different Structure and Process Now Make Sense

With these learnings in mind, the Gaming SIG Executive Committee and the Board of Directors of HTNG agree that a more effective model is needed for gaming-unique requirements to be met, and for the all other hospitality systems and technology requirements to include gaming participation.  The change will be to:

• To discontinue the Gaming SIG;

• To integrate participants from the Gaming SIG into the five existing HTNG workgroups; and

• To create gaming-focused sub-teams as required within these workgroups.

This will allow the gaming community to get an immediate jump-start on requirements that overlap with all hospitality companies.  It will also give the HTNG workgroups the tremendous benefit of much greater gaming community experience and talent.  Finally, it will provide a proven operating structure and process for initiating and managing the unique requirements of gaming within teams of the mainstream HTNG workgroups. 

Principles and Approach to Integrating Gaming SIG into Mainstream HTNG

The following are the principles and approach that HTNG and the Gaming SIG will follow in integrating the Gaming SIG into the mainstream processes and workgroups of HTNG:

• The Gaming SIG Executive Committee will work with the HTNG board and existing workgroup chairs to populate each HTNG workgroup with members from the gaming community.

• Each workgroup will decide if one or more teams are required to deal with gaming-specific requirements.  These gaming-specific teams will be created and populated with gaming community members, both from gaming operating companies and industry partners.

• The Gaming SIG will be disbanded by required vote of the board of HTNG with the support of the Gaming SIG Executive Committee.

• The Gaming SIG membership assessments that have been paid in advance can be credited on a pro-rata basis to the fees that would normally be assessed for participating in HTNG workgroups.

• Once the Gaming SIG assessments already paid have been exhausted by ongoing workgroup activities, each former SIG member will pay a partial year workgroup participation fee to bring the renewal date in line with all existing workgroup participation renewals.

• The transition will be completed prior to June 30, 2007.