After a year like no other, marked by shutdowns and physical distancing, retailers are revving up for consumers to head back to physical stores in droves. Shoppers browsing in the aisles may be only hazily aware of the digital transformation that has been shape-shifting retail for years, including Bluetooth-enabled beacons, personalized offers, and salespeople toting digital tablets.
But these changes are accelerating quickly, thanks to mobile applications, robotics, and internet-connected devices that improve the customer experience in the store, monitor operations, boost cybersecurity, and reduce costs.
Today’s shoppers have become accustomed to Amazon-like e-commerce experiences and are demanding more from the brick-and-mortar stores they frequent. From smart shelves and virtual dressing rooms to automated checkout options and staffing analytics, it’s clear that retail’s post-pandemic future will be powered by automated technologies that provide real-time results and meet rising expectations for a seamless shopping experience. In fact, according to research by Global Data, nearly eight out of 10 retailers are moving to an “omnichannel” model, aiming to unite online and offline shopping (see Figure 1).
Today’s shoppers have become accustomed to Amazon-like e-commerce experiences and are demanding more from the brick-and-mortar stores they frequent.To deliver on customer expectations for speed and flexibility, retailers need to bring the applications and the underlying processing and storage closer to where the data is being created. To do this at scale requires edge computing, which can handle applications and workloads for thousands of store locations by running computational power through nearby network and storage equipment, called nodes, rather than risking issues with data transfer speed and bandwidth by uploading all that data directly to the cloud.
