Dell announced expanded edge products to help retailers, including the ability to consolidate retail infrastructure and apps for efficient deployment and management of servers and nodes, including in-store cameras and point-of-sale tech.
A new system called Dell Validated Design for Retail Edge gives retailers a single management view of edge IT across stores relying on VMware Edge Compute Stack integration. Work with Deep North real-time video analytics supports AI-based apps to help store managers optimize product placement and track inventory. It can be used to help shoppers avoid busy checkout lines and direct workers to areas of need.
IDC analyst Dave McCarthy said Dell’s edge products can help retailers gain access to real-time data insights to make stores work for better customer experiences. “Retailers have one chance to deliver a positive in-store experience,” he noted.
“Many retailers have a sprawl of technology, built application-by-application on a diverse set of platforms, both within stores and across locations,” added Gil Shneorson, senior vice president of Dell’s edge portfolio and infrastructure solutions group in a blog. “Point of sale solutions, loss prevention cameras and pharmaceutical systems are often on disparate systems using cloud, on-prem and SaaS. They have not been, and in some cases cannot be, integrated or optimized.”
He argued that Dells approach with VMWare will simplify the path intelligent retail relying on hyper-converted VxRail or vSAN Ready Nodes.
The Dell Validated Design for Retail Edge will be available in June.
The company also said its Dell Validated Design for Manufacturing Edge will soon support Digital Performance Management from PTC, a ThingWorx-based approach.
Dell works with nearly 70 of the Fortune 100 companies providing edge hardware and software.
Retail IoT has become a focus of other vendors often associated with the hardware space, including Qualcomm. There is a dramatic acceleration in the need for retailers to bring together silos of technology, Dell said. A survey by 451 Research found 77% of retailers expect to increase edge deployments in the next two years.
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