DATA CENTRES
“ As the COVID-19 pandemic impacted store closures , retailers have had to improve their use of technologies at the edge ”
OCP PROJECT
To find out more about the evolving relationship between retail and edge computing - as well as how open sourced hardware is further accelerating edge adoption in the industry - I caught up with several experts from the Open Compute Project , including Steve Helvie , VP of Channel Development ; Archna Haylock , Community Director , and Rajeev Sharma , Director of Software .
“ There is no doubt , the shopping experience has changed , especially in the last couple
years . Retailers have had to grow and change with the increased options for online and digital shopping ,” the experts from the OCP explain . “ As the COVID-19 pandemic impacted store closures , retailers have had to improve their use of technologies at the edge .”
The OCP is actively helping to drive this evolution of the edge-retail relationship . In April , US retailer Target joined the OCP as a platinum member , with the company ’ s CIO , Mike McNamara illustrating the sheer scope of edge infrastructure that a big box brand like Target oversees . “ We ' ve got 2,000 stores and each is a mini data centre ,” he said .
The OCP ’ s experts agree that Target ' s exploration of open source hardware to support its edge computing needs is “ a big indicator of how different industries are converging with similar requirements . Cloud
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