Business Tech
Retail needs ‘resilience-as-a-service’ this festive season
Infrastructure stability can be make-or-break during the busiest time of the year, writes DEAN WOLSON, GM of Lenovo Southern Africa.
The festive season is a golden quarter for retailers, but in regions like South Africa, where power instability is a reality, the threat of downtime looms large. Even brief outages can lead to significant revenue loss and operational chaos. The solution requires building a resilient, intelligent infrastructure that ensures business continuity and enhances customer experience, no matter the circumstances. This is where edge computing becomes a retailer’s most valuable player.
The challenge: Downtime is not an option
For retailers, every moment of uptime counts. When the power goes out, traditional point-of-sale (POS) systems fail, in-store analytics go dark, and the seamless customer journey grinds to a halt. According to industry models, the cost of downtime can run into thousands of rands per hour, a figure that skyrockets during peak trading periods. With the festive rush approaching, retailers cannot afford to be unprepared. They need a strategy that moves beyond reactive fixes to proactive resilience.
Power-efficient, always-on operations
Modern retail demands compute power at the source, in the store, where transactions happen and data is generated. Lenovo’s ThinkEdge portfolio, featuring the power-efficient SE350 and SE450 servers, is engineered for these demanding environments. Built to withstand the realities of branch locations, including fluctuating power, these devices provide the in-store computing necessary to run critical applications locally.
This “offline-first” approach means that even if the connection to the central network is lost, your POS systems continue to operate seamlessly. Transactions are processed, inventory is managed, and the customer experience remains uninterrupted. With remote management capabilities, IT teams can monitor and control these devices from anywhere, ensuring that even unmanned stores remain fully operational.
From raw data to retail intelligence with edge analytics
Resilience is only half the story. Real magic happens when you use edge computing to unlock new insights. By keeping data at the store, retailers can run sophisticated analytics like computer vision and video analytics in real-time.
Imagine optimising store layouts that analyse foot traffic patterns to understand how customers navigate your store and optimise product placement.
Reducing queue times by automatically detecting long queues and alerting staff to open additional checkouts. Or personalising your experiences by using anonymised data to understand customer demographics and preferences, enabling targeted promotions.
Running these analytics at the edge dramatically reduces latency, providing instant insights that would be impossible with a cloud-only model. Secure, reliable branch connectivity is ensured through SD-WAN, which intelligently routes traffic and protects sensitive data.
Introducing Resilience-as-a-Service
Modernising hundreds of stores can seem daunting, especially with tight budgets. This is why Resilience-as-a-Service was introduced through the TruScale offering. This flexible, subscription-based model eliminates heavy upfront capital expenditure and provides a scalable path to modernisation.
With TruScale, retailers get quick install kits that are standardised, pre-configured edge solutions that can be rolled out rapidly across all branches. SLA-backed uptime that is guaranteed performance and reliability, backed by world-class support. And scalable rollouts, that ensure you pay for what you use and scale your infrastructure as your business grows, ensuring a predictable operational expense.
A festive season built on uptime
The time to prepare is now. By implementing a standardised edge stack, retailers can accelerate their modernisation journey, drastically reduce recovery times, and build a network of stores that are intelligent.
The first step is to assess your risk. Quantify the potential cost of downtime for your specific business to build a compelling investment case. Next, standardise your edge by adopting a consistent, power-efficient edge hardware stack like the Lenovo ThinkEdge SE350/SE450.
Then, embrace “as-a-service” through a flexible model like Lenovo TruScale to accelerate deployment without the upfront cost. Finally, unlock the potential of edge analytics by using in-store compute to power real-time insights that optimise operations and drive revenue growth.
