GLI
GLI shrinks the world
A
company in GLI’s position could perhaps be forgiven for wanting to keep business relatively complicated for manufacturers and suppliers to the gaming industry. After all, it’s their bread and butter, and if
a company has to re-submit a game for testing, that’s not GLI’s fault. But luckily for the industry, the company doesn’t exactly see things that way and the last couple of years has seen the development of a number of tools that have both shrunk the world from a compliance point of view, and made life a lot easier for all involved. Ian Hughes took some time to explain the benefits of the quite brilliant GLI Link to Casino International, and we left rather impressed…
Casino International: What is GLI Link?
Ian Hughes: At a basic level, GLI Link is nothing
more than connecting multiple GLI labs through a very secure VPN network. It allows all of the labs to be able to have access to all of the systems that we host throughout the world. The majority of the accounting systems are based here in Las Vegas, with some additional systems housed in New Jersey and Colorado. GLI Link allows us to connect games from any of our other labs to those host accounting systems, without the games or the systems having to leave their original labs. In the past, to conduct interoperability testing, games would have to be physically shipped to whichever office had the host accounting system. In some cases that meant going to multiple labs.
CI: Why would you need to see a game in different labs?
IH: Some jurisdictions mandate that you have to
have what’s called interoperability testing; the normal process for a gaming device in terms of getting regulatory approval is it goes through SAS emulation or simulation, which is basically the game connected to a computer and the computer is simulating a system. Some jurisdictions mandate that you test on a live system. That’s because there can be some timings that are a little bit different on a live system.
26 MAY 2010
labs?
IH: The systems are quite expensive and quite large in some cases, so GLI Link helps suppliers be more efficient. We don’t necessarily own all the systems; the systems suppliers provide them to us for system testing, and it’s natural that they would be reluctant to provide multiple expensive systems for things that are not necessarily their submissions. They have no problem supplying us with systems for their submissions, and as long as we don’t interfere with their systems process we can have games connected to it. It’s just a case of being more efficient, rather than anything else. GLI Link enables suppliers to be more efficient, and not having to ship games around the world for interoperability testing saves times and money. For example, we have a couple of games in our Macau lab that are requesting interoperability testing. It’s not mandatory for where they are going, but the suppliers are requesting we connect them to a live system so they know before they get to a live casino environment that their game is going to work. Using GLI Link, the game in our Macau lab is connected to the same interface ports that we use here then the game is connected directly to GLI link which transmits all the information through a secure tunnel to the host accounting system here in Las Vegas. They do their testing in Macau, and they have
access to all the same reports that we have here. They will have a workstation over there that allows them to do all their testing with the system hosted here, and they do the reports over there. It’s the same type of testing we would do here normally, but it gets
Gaming Laboratories International has a clutch of vital tools which are helping bring products to market faster, saving time and money across the board. Casino International got the lowdown from Senior
Director of Engineering Ian Hughes …
Most of the live systems are hosted here in Las
Vegas, that’s where we do the majority of our system testing. So for jurisdictions that mandate interoperability testing, or for manufacturers that want to be ahead of the game and do their own interoperability testing, they want to connect to a live system rather than a virtual system. In the past they would have to physically ship their games to Las Vegas or to wherever that system is being hosted.
CI: Why not just have those facilities in all the
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