Dell Technologies is expanding its edge portfolio with a number of solutions aimed at helping retail generate more value from their data.
Edge technologies have improved retail customer experiences in recent years through solutions such as curbside pickup and frictionless checkouts.
A recent study commissioned by Dell and conducted by 451 Research found this growth will continue with 77% of retailers expecting to increase edge deployments significantly in the next two years.
Dell believes that without a holistic approach, widely dispersed technologies will lead to complex and siloed solutions that drive up IT management costs.
“Retailers are increasingly relying on IT technologies and data at the edge to offer more personalised and intelligent customer experiences that drive better business outcomes, dramatically accelerating the need for retailers to bring together siloed technologies,” said Gil Shneorson, senior vice president of edge solutions at Dell Technologies.
“We’re helping retailers easily consolidate these technologies so they can analyse data where it’s created, make faster decisions and deliver positive experiences for in-store shoppers and employees.”
The first of three announced or enhanced solutions, Dell Validated Design for Retail Edge simplifies edge retail infrastructure onto a single stack for efficient deployment, management, and support.
Integrated with VMware’s Edge Compute Stack, the solution provides a single management view of edge IT across all locations to track system health, build applications, and help scale to additional sites. It will be available globally in June 2022.
Second is a new Dell Technologies Customer Solution Centers Innovation Labs opening in Round Rock, Texas later this year. Already established in Limerick, Ireland and Singapore, these collaboration hubs help customers test edge technologies and design proof-of-concept solutions for retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and other verticals.
Finally, Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies 4.0, a scalable open-source network operating system is being extended across data centres and to the edge on April 28.
With network switches that can connect across multiple sites, the solution can manage and monitor the edge across familiar data centre tools. The new solution aims to streamline operations, providing greater flexibility and disaster recovery capabilities.
Speaking on the need for edge solutions for retail, Dave McCarthy, research vice president for cloud and edge infrastructure services at IDC, said: “Retailers have one chance to deliver a positive in-store experience, and they have to balance this with helping to ensure the right inventory, health of their employees and customers, security of the store and more.
“Dell’s edge solutions can help retailers of all sizes gain faster, easy access to real-time insights that help make stores work in more intelligent ways to deliver better customer experiences.”
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