Dell Technologies Expands Edge Innovations for Retailers

Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) announces the expansion of its edge solutions to help retailers quickly generate more value and deliver enhanced customer experiences from data generated in retail locations.

From grocery merchandising and curbside pickup to frictionless checkout and loss prevention, retailers have embraced edge technologies to keep pace with industry demands and create better customer experiences. A recent study conducted by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, and commissioned by Dell found this growth will continue with 77% of retailers expecting to increase edge deployments significantly in the next two years¹. However, without a holistic approach, new technologies across wide geographies and locations can lead to complex and siloed solutions that drive up a retailer’s IT management cost.

“Retailers are increasingly relying on IT technologies and data at the edge to offer more personalized 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, Dell Technologies. “We’re helping retailers easily consolidate these technologies so they can analyze data where it’s created, make faster decisions and deliver positive experiences for in-store shoppers and employees.”

“Edge Computing is critical to digital transformation in retail as demand for seamless and safe omnichannel shopping experiences grows. Today, new technologies like AI and ML are fast being adopted across retail operations, and Edge Computing can harness the full benefits of these technologies to ensure shopper satisfaction and loyalty, and drive business benefits. With Dell Technologies’ Edge Solutions, retailers can scale infrastructure, optimize the supply chain, manage employee efficiency, and deliver improved in-store experiences in real-time. Our solutions ensure retailers stay on top of customer trends by simplifying their Edge infrastructure and helping them deliver better shopper experiences. Further, Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies 4.0 streamlines operations, enables greater flexibility, and ensures business continuity and disaster recovery,” said Srinivas Rao, Senior Director, System Engineering, Dell Technologies, India. “We are committed to delivering the best solutions that cater to the needs of our customers and partners, and our new Edge Solutions can help retailers leverage data-driven insights and action for the right edge over the competition.”

New capabilities from Dell bring together edge technologies, so retailers can easily manage and scale their infrastructure from data centers to the edge, and launch in-store and digital AI applications from partners to deliver better in-store experiences.

Simplify the retail edge to improve in-store experiences

 The Dell Validated Design for Retail Edge simplifies and consolidates edge retail infrastructure and applications onto a single infrastructure stack for efficient deployment, management and support. With VMware Edge Compute Stack integration, the solution provides retailers a single management view of edge IT across all retail locations to track system health, build and manage applications at the edge and help securely scale to additional sites. By working with Deep North and its intelligent video analytics platform, the solution supports AI-based applications that help retailers use data insights to improve in-store shopping experiences such as optimizing product placement, preventing product loss, tracking inventory, helping shoppers avoid long checkout lines and diverting employees to where they can be of most assistance in a store.

“We are excited that Deep North’s real-time video analytics platform supports the Dell Validated Design for Retail Edge,” said Rohan Sanil, CEO and co-founder of Deep North. “We look forward to helping retailers leverage AI to gain line-of-sight into the path-to-purchase in-store to identify opportunities to create a better customer experience, improve store operations and drive sales.”

“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,” said Dave McCarthy, Research Vice President, Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Services, IDC. “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.”

Dell continues to introduce additional edge innovations across its infrastructure portfolio to help organizations simplify deployments and capture more value:

• Customers and partners can conceptualize and collaborate on edge technologies and applications in the Dell Technologies Customer Solution Centers Innovation Labs. With a new lab in Round Rock, Texas, the collaboration hubs help customers test existing edge technologies and design custom proof-of-concept solutions that can best manage the unique workload demands of organizations in retail, manufacturing, healthcare and other verticals. For example, retailers can validate and test inventory tracking solutions prior to implementation in store locations for fast and simple edge deployments.
• Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies 4.0, a scalable and agile open sourced-based network operating system, now extends across data centers and to the edge. With network switches that can connect across multiple sites, customers can deploy, manage and monitor their edge with familiar data center tools. The new solution provides streamlined operations, greater flexibility, and expanded business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities. For example, with the seamless networking integration SONiC 4.0 provides, retailers can more easily manage their infrastructure from their data center to retail stores and other edge locations through a single, unified fabric.

Dell’s edge solutions for retailers are the latest additions to Dell’s growing edge portfolio and complement the Dell Validated Design for Manufacturing Edge, which will soon support Digital Performance Management, PTC’s latest ThingWorx based solution. Dell ProDeploy and ProSupport services help retailers accelerate edge deployments and support their environments with more than 60,000 dedicated professionals and partners in more than 170 countries.

Availability

• Dell Validated Design for Retail Edge will be globally available in June 2022.
• Proof-of-concept edge solutions validation and testing in Dell Technologies Customer Solution Centers Innovation Labs are available today in Limerick, Ireland and Singapore and later this year in Round Rock, Texas.
• Enterprise SONiC Distribution by Dell Technologies 4.0 will be globally available on April 28, 2022.
• Dell Validated Design for Manufacturing Edge with PTC, with support for Digital Peformance Management, will be globally available later this year.