DATA CENTRES
Open source edge computing is empowering retailers to use cutting edge technologies in the fight for consumer loyalty in a post-COVID world .
WRITTEN BY : HARRY MENEAR
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world into lockdown , brickand-mortar retailers were fighting a bitter war against the rise of ecommerce channels . Now , as economies in Europe , North America and East Asia start to reopen in the wake of months of intensive vaccine rollouts , retailers are looking to throw themselves back into that fight with abandon .
In the face of the ecommerce boom , and in the wake of a brutal year , retailers are increasingly looking to edge computing to support increased adoption of technologies ranging from advanced analytics and artificial intelligence ( AI ), to automation and augmented reality ( AR ) installations . From the growth of micro-stores and autonomous checkout solutions ( a trend which is expected to increase four times over in the next three years ) to deep , granular analysis of customer behaviour and identity , the amount of computing power required by a single retail location is far higher today than it was just a few years ago . As a result , edge computing is quickly replacing centralised cloud architectures as the support structure for these increasingly digitalised operations .
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