The retail edge – where customers and retailers come face to face - has been badly served by an IT industry that has left too many retailers hamstrung by ill-fitting technology.
The truth is ANY solution that is not purpose built for the retail edge is not fit for purpose – it cannot deliver the high availability, low risk, automation and innovation that retailers need to compete in an omni-channel world.
Instead, many retailers find themselves forced to work around technology that dramatically impacts operational cost, reduces their ability to roll out and support new services, and limits the flexibility with which new customer experiences can be offered in store.
The market is looking at retail edge computing all INSIDE OUT.
Retailers could take data center technology and try and force fit it to the edge. But this creates unnecessary complexity, wastes compute and storage capacity, and requires expensive datacenter level support services in branch. What’s more, because datacenter solutions don’t have management capability designed for a distributed edge environment, security, compliance and control can be a real burden.
Retailers could put together and then continuously update a bill of parts to meet ever changing edge requirements. But this can lead to escalating costs and risk as retailers are forced to support legacy systems – and consumes valuable IT resource in constant “keep it running” activity, rather than addressing key business requirements.
Retailers could move to a cloud only environment. But many modern customer-impacting applications need to run locally in real time using local data. As a result, cloud only environments can create real latency and unreliability issues.
The WINNERS of this new game will deliver a superior experience, more services and faster innovation to the FRONT LINES
...or get left behind.
The retail edge is only going to get more important. It will become the powerhouse of innovation and competitive advantage as retailers seek new ways to increase operational efficiency and deliver new customer experiences, all of which requires genuine agility in deploying in-store applications.
It’s time to rethink the retail edge – to establish a lasting platform where innovative applications and services are tested and launched at the edge, which drives down operational costs, and which better manages risk.
It’s time to make the retail edge your source of competitive advantage in an era where superior customer experience is a must-have.
See How it Works
Only Zynstra is reinventing edge infrastructure for retail. Our Intelligent Infrastructure is purpose-built for the retail edge. It leverages intelligent automation to transform the way thousands of distributed and virtualized edge-scale servers are managed.
You can run all the applications required at the edge without the reliability or latency concerns that arise from public cloud solutions. Our continuous intelligent automation drives innovation that can be deployed at will, and results in accelerated value to your business.
All at a fraction of the cost of the ill-fitting solutions of the past.
We recently hosted an event for senior executives within the retail industry, in which our panelists discussed The Future of Retail.
