The Retail Industry is Changing Dramatically
Customers are changing their buying behavior rapidly, searching for a seamless transition between online and in-store experiences.
Retail infrastructure is undergoing a transformation. As customer experience takes center stage, IT leaders must adapt systems to deliver high availability, data security, and localized intelligence across distributed sites. Edge computing is the cornerstone of this modernization.
This white paper outlines key insights on how edge computing enables retail organizations to modernize their operations, enhance customer experience, simplify IT management, and reduce costs—all while improving security and compliance. Together, our technologies deliver a complete edge solution: scalable, resilient, and built to support mission-critical retail workloads.
The technology strategy for our stores is integral to Casey’s growth by providing flexibility to add new technology that will enhance the experience for our guests and ensure uptime and resiliency for our team members who serve them. Moving to edge compute as our tech foundation allows us to grow and evolve our in-store IT systems at scale.— Sanjeev Satturu, Chief Information Officer, Casey’s
Retail Demands Agile, Always-On IT Infrastructure
Retail has never been more competitive, nor more dependent on technology. The shift toward omnichannel commerce and personalized experiences has changed the demands placed on store infrastructure. As more operations move toward automation, real-time data, and dynamic decision-making, IT must be flexible, fast, and frictionless. In this environment, outdated infrastructure is more than an inconvenience; it’s a strategic liability.
The Shift Toward Customer Experience
Customer experience has overtaken price and product as the key brand differentiator. Shoppers expect every interaction, whether digital or in-store, to be fast, personalized, and frictionless. This shift is redefining how retailers think about their technology investments.
New technologies, such as IoT and edge computing, help retailers support these demands with flexible, secure, and resilient infrastructure. As the industry prioritizes customer experience, the pressure is on IT teams to deliver real-time responsiveness, localized intelligence, and enterprise-grade reliability across every location. This is no longer just a differentiator; it’s essential for staying competitive in a saturated market.
Omnichannel Demands & Infrastructure Gaps
Retailers must now navigate a landscape where customer loyalty is cultivated not just through product quality but through the quality of the overall shopping experience. From online platforms to brick-and-mortar stores, every facet of the retail journey must be synchronized, consistent, and responsive to the evolving expectations of today’s digitally empowered shoppers.
This shift has placed intense pressure on store infrastructure. Shoppers expect to browse online, check local inventory, redeem loyalty rewards in-store, and return items across channels, all without friction. That seamless omnichannel experience requires real-time data synchronization, secure and resilient transaction processing, and localized decision-making at every touchpoint.
Unfortunately, many retail environments still rely on outdated or siloed systems that struggle to support this level of integration. Infrastructure gaps—such as poor connectivity, latency issues, or a lack of processing power at the store level—can undermine the customer experience, resulting in delays, failed transactions, or inconsistent service across locations. These gaps not only frustrate customers but also erode brand trust and reduce lifetime value.
Meeting these omnichannel demands means modernizing infrastructure to support high-availability, low-latency applications, and secure, decentralized computing capabilities that traditional cloud or legacy systems alone can’t deliver. This is where edge computing becomes essential: enabling localized performance while maintaining centralized control, ensuring a seamless experience no matter where or how a customer chooses to shop.
IT as a Strategic Enabler
Retailers can no longer view IT as just an operational cost center. Instead, infrastructure must be a strategic enabler of in-store engagement, operational agility, and customer personalization. Whether rolling out new loyalty applications or real-time video analytics, the success of these initiatives hinges on robust, edge-ready architecture. IT leaders are increasingly tasked with enabling innovation without increasing complexity or cost.
Modern infrastructure empowers retail IT teams to proactively support business objectives by reducing downtime, enabling faster deployments, and enhancing customer-facing services. In this model, IT becomes a driver of competitive advantage.
We got rid of all [of the] chaotic infrastructure in the stores, provided a template for ALL stores, [and are] able to manage all stores from one PC... [We’ve been able to] consolidate the number of vendors and contracts and drive better economics. We created a Store-as-a-Service for ourselves and our franchisees.— Rolf Vanden Eynde, Manager Network & Network Security, Technology Strategy, and Innovation, Ahold Delhaize
The Role of Edge Computing in Retail Innovation
Edge computing has emerged as a critical component of modern IT strategy. It is especially important for retail, where speed, responsiveness, and local autonomy are essential. Unlike centralized data centers or cloud models, edge computing enables retailers to process data, make decisions, and deliver services at the store level—right where they’re needed most.
What is Edge Computing?
While edge computing isn’t a new concept, it has become increasingly important for almost every kind of organization. The central idea involves placing computing capabilities closer to where data is created and used, rather than in the data center.
This is accomplished by performing one or more components of application delivery on local devices, where computing, storage, and service delivery are performed onsite for immediate availability.
Edge computing addresses the unique requirements of emerging technologies in retail by providing a decentralized computing model that enhances performance, reliability, security, and flexibility. It unburdens networks, reduces cloud dependencies, and enhances responsiveness for critical applications, such as point-of-sale and inventory management.
Why Edge Computing Is Critical for Retail Performance
The dramatic growth of connected devices—cameras, sensors, digital signage, and IoT appliances—has transformed the landscape. Traditional cloud and centralized data centers are ill-equipped to handle the volume, latency, and immediacy of data that retail organizations now require. Edge computing brings the responsiveness of on-premises IT with the manageability of cloud-native tools.
This architectural shift reduces latency, conserves bandwidth, improves availability, and enhances compliance by allowing sensitive data to stay within local infrastructure.
For retailers, this means faster checkout times, smarter in-store interactions, localized promotions, and proactive inventory management, all without overloading networks or introducing additional points of failure.
The Limitations of Legacy Infrastructure
Despite major advances in retail technologies, many store environments still rely on traditional hardware stacks. These are often composed of separate point-of-sale terminals, servers, security devices, and networking appliances. These fragmented systems require constant maintenance, are challenging to scale, and often lack the agility necessary to support modern use cases. Before exploring the benefits of edge computing, it’s important to understand the constraints of legacy infrastructure models.
Legacy systems, developed over years or even decades, were often designed to meet the needs of a different era and struggle to adapt to the demands of today’s dynamic retail landscape. Fragmented data silos, disparate software applications, and inflexible architectures hinder agility and innovation, impeding retailers’ ability to respond swiftly to changing market trends and consumer preferences.
Disconnected point solutions create operational bottlenecks, leaving IT teams overwhelmed. Every store location might require a different hardware configuration, unique troubleshooting steps, and custom software updates, all of which erode efficiency.
Adding operational functions to the retail digital estate in the form of single-purpose appliances can lead to a complex network of elements that can grow to the point of unmanageability. The result is not only inefficiency but increased cybersecurity risk.
Each new device introduces its own software stack, support contract, and potential attack surface. Without centralized orchestration or automation, updates and patches may be delayed or skipped entirely, leading to compliance gaps or vulnerability exposures.
As retailers expand to more locations and diversify their service offerings (e.g., BOPIS, mobile POS, drive-thru kiosks), the burden on legacy infrastructure becomes unsustainable. Distributed operations require infrastructure that is resilient, lightweight, and secure by design.
It’s not just large national chains that feel the pressure. Even regional brands with dozens of stores often face significant IT scaling challenges. Traditional architectures can’t keep up with the need to centrally manage hundreds of endpoints, each with unique configurations, networking rules, and compliance requirements.
Edge computing offers a powerful alternative—one that allows retail organizations to deliver consistent services across all locations without central bottlenecks or duplicated infrastructure.
What Edge Computing Makes Possible
Edge computing enables a new class of capabilities for retail IT, prioritizing resilience, cost efficiency, security, and operational insight. Unlike older architectures that depend on external networks and centralized resources, edge solutions bring the power of the data center to each individual store. This allows retailers to deploy and manage critical services directly at the edge, while still benefiting from centralized control and automation.
Operational Resilience
High-velocity retail requires continuous system availability. A popular implementation for edge workloads is transparently accepting purchase transactions during periods when network connections to the authorization hosts are unavailable. “Store and forward” technology caches transactions locally and then synchronizes them offsite when connectivity is reestablished. This is increasingly a standard feature of POS systems, but when combined with emerging consumer support technologies — such as order-in-store, buy-online-pickup-in-store, and ship-from-store — it adds importance to the ability to operate when connections are not available.
High ROI comes from the orchestration of new services and workloads, but the real justification lies in avoiding lost sales due to the inability to operate during outages. According to industry estimates, downtime in the convenience retail sector can cost approximately $700 per hour, factoring in lost sales, labor costs, and operational disruption, making even a short outage costly both in terms of revenue and customer relationships.
Edge platforms enable systems to function even when cloud or network connections fail. For example, store-and-forward transaction technology allows uninterrupted payments during outages. Localized content caching ensures digital signage keeps running, and edge-based loyalty apps maintain customer engagement even during disruptions.
In addition, many edge platforms include automated failover and self-healing capabilities, which allow applications to restart or migrate in the event of hardware or software failure. This enhances service continuity and minimizes the need for on-site troubleshooting.
Security and Compliance
As retailers increasingly adopt IoT devices and intelligent in-store technologies, the risk of cyber threats continues to grow. These connected systems can expand the attack surface, making it essential for organizations to reassess their security strategies and strengthen defenses at the edge. Safeguarding sensitive customer and operational data is no longer optional; it’s foundational to maintaining trust and business continuity.
Edge-based infrastructure plays a vital role in modern retail security. Built-in capabilities such as vulnerability scanning, integrated firewall workloads, and local threat detection help identify and contain potential breaches before they can impact the broader network. By processing threat intelligence and enforcing security policies at the edge, retailers can minimize their exposure and respond more quickly to emerging risks.
Centralized orchestration ensures a consistent security posture across all locations, regardless of scale. Role-based access, automated patching, and remote policy enforcement reduce the burden on IT teams, particularly when supporting hundreds of geographically dispersed sites.
Importantly, these capabilities also simplify compliance with PCI DSS and other data protection regulations. By isolating sensitive workloads and minimizing data movement, edge strategies reduce compliance scope, streamline audits, and make it easier to demonstrate control across the enterprise.
Remote Site Management
Managing IT infrastructure across dozens or hundreds of retail locations, without on-site IT staff, requires an intelligent, centralized approach. That’s where an integrated edge platform built for distributed environments becomes essential.
With centralized management, organizations can remotely monitor system health, track uptime, deploy software updates, and respond to issues in real time, all from a single interface. Built-in automation and self-healing capabilities reduce the need for manual intervention, while role-based access controls, alerting, and proactive monitoring ensure IT teams maintain complete visibility and control across all store locations.
Whether supporting 10 sites or 1,000, this approach allows retailers to scale confidently, reduce operational overhead, and maintain high availability at every location, even when resources are lean and environments are highly dispersed.
Cost Optimization
Edge computing helps avoid the bandwidth and storage costs associated with cloud dependency. According to Acumera, edge-based vulnerability scanning alone can pay back in as little as two months by reducing bandwidth consumption, licensing fees, and compliance risks.
Organizations can also reduce the cost of deploying and managing IT at scale. With hyperconverged infrastructure and workload orchestration, what once took days can now be accomplished in minutes—with fewer human resources.
Accelerated Deployment Cycles
Edge infrastructure streamlines rollout of new services. With centralized orchestration tools, updates to thousands of devices across hundreds of locations can be done remotely. This supports rapid experimentation and innovation at the edge without significant IT burden.
By minimizing the number of hardware types and software variations in use, edge platforms reduce time spent on configuration, testing, and support. This standardization supports version control, rollback, and change management processes aligned with enterprise best practices.
Scale Computing just makes our processes easier. We were able to consolidate a number of services into a single provider and device, which helped reduce time troubleshooting and locating the right support team. From an operational standpoint, it informs us of issues in near real-time and for anything networking-related, we always know where to go. We’re not having to deal with four different vendors.— Zerrick Pearson, CIO, Five Guys Enterprises
Edge Computing Use Cases Transforming Retail
Edge computing unlocks a wide range of opportunities for retailers. It supports not only core operations but also advanced capabilities, such as video analytics, AR experiences, and personalized marketing. Whether implemented in a single location or across thousands of sites, these use cases demonstrate the unique value edge brings to day-to-day operations and customer engagement.
Operational Applications in Retail IT
Operational applications encompass a range of functions essential to the day-to-day operations of a retail establishment. These applications handle tasks such as pricing software (traditionally executed) and product labeling. Operational software transmits price and weight data to scales, facilitates inventory management, and assists in managing security software for the retail location(s).
Operational applications also extend their influence to energy management systems deployed in physical store locations. Given that many retail outlets still rely on conventional heating and air conditioning systems, operational software is often tasked with optimizing energy consumption to minimize costs. Additionally, as concerns surrounding energy usage, loss prevention, and security continue to grow among retailers, operational applications are increasingly relied upon to address these challenges.
Applications Driving Customer Intelligence
Strategic or analytical applications drive customer intelligence. These applications are designed to analyze data, generate insights, and inform strategic decision-making within the retail organization. Unlike operational applications, which focus on day-to-day tasks and operational efficiency, strategic applications delve into broader business objectives and long-term planning.
Strategic applications may include business intelligence (BI) tools, predictive analytics software, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms. These applications gather data from various sources, including sales transactions, customer interactions, market trends, and operational metrics, to provide retailers with actionable insights and strategic recommendations.
Retailers today face the challenge of adapting to the changing landscape of customer behavior, particularly as more shoppers utilize smartphones to browse products in-store before making online purchases. To address this shift, retailers are turning to innovative software applications that drive customer intelligence, bridging the gap between physical and digital shopping experiences.
One such application is location-based beacon technology, which leverages sensors to track a customer's path through a store. This technology provides valuable insights to improve store layout and enhance the in-store experience. It also opens up possibilities for real-time personalized recommendations and promotions, enriching the shopping journey for customers.
Intelligent electronic shelf labels represent yet another innovative application. They enable retailers to track customer selections and drive engagement at the point of decision. Micro digital signage devices strategically placed near products can deliver customized offers based on customer interactions, enhancing product visibility and driving sales.
Consumer applications further augment the retail experience by allowing shoppers to prepare shopping lists at home and receive guidance on efficient product retrieval in-store. Coupled with checkout technologies, retailers can analyze customer shopping behaviors, distinguishing between planned purchases and impulse buys to inform future marketing strategies.
These applications, among others, form an interconnected ecosystem centered on the consumer. By gathering and analyzing customer data, innovative retailers can optimize their pricing strategies, identify growth opportunities, gain deeper insights, and foster more meaningful interactions with their customers. These applications play a critical role in driving innovation, fostering competitiveness, and ultimately shaping the future trajectory of the retail organization.
Workloads That Visualize or Manage IoT Devices
There are hundreds of thousands of locations that store and dispense fuels. These locations are often served by an Internet of Things (IoT) function that has been around for decades: underground storage tank gauging. As refinery and fuel-retail businesses become more data-driven, the need for secure real-time information about inventory levels becomes critical. Additionally, leak detection, water levels, maintenance alarms, and the status of the tanks themselves are critical to environmental compliance and safety.
Polling the underground tank gauge and exporting the data with an edge compute device provides an additional security layer between the local device and the cloud service that is consuming the data. There is also an opportunity for a one-to-many relationship where fuel telematics data is exported to multiple analytics providers. Maintenance and reconfiguration tasks can often be completed remotely, which reduces costly onsite visits, cuts the mean time to repair, and ensures the highest levels of uptime.
Retailers also use IoT sensors to track everything from refrigeration to shelf stock. Edge processing enables real-time decision-making, such as adjusting pricing on perishable goods based on temperature fluctuations or demand.
Additionally, edge-enabled analytics tools can optimize restocking schedules, detect anomalies, and support vendor-managed inventory models—all with near-zero latency and minimal involvement from central servers.
Personalized In-Store Experiences
Emerging edge compute workloads, such as the now-famous Amazon Go stores with Just Walk Out technology, rapidly break the cloud-centered architecture. Just Walk Out relies on the real-time processing of many dozens of video and sensor streams to accurately recognize when items are removed from or replaced on shelves. There is far too much video and sensor data to send off-premises to a remote server farm for processing with any hope of a timely response.
Another retail edge computing workload often discussed is the smart mirror or try-it-on application. Dressing rooms are replaced with video displays in the form of mirrors, allowing consumers to click and try on garments to see how they would look from multiple angles. It’s easy to imagine how transformative this technology would be for the retail shopping experience. It’s equally easy to see why processing for a store with a dozen try-it-on displays is unlikely to occur remotely; there is simply too much data to process in a timely manner.
While Just Walk Out and try-it-on workloads may seem futuristic, the opportunity for much simpler implementations of this technology is apparent. Retail technology leaders, such as Chick-fil-A and The Gap, have made an early commitment to edge computing as the future of their stores. Critical workloads, including point of sale (POS), loyalty, inventory management, workforce management, and store signage, are finding their place on the edge, delivering strong ROI and high availability of critical store functions.
Consider convenience stores, which may have many gasoline fueling points. With license plate recognition extracted from already available video data streams, combined with local content distribution, highly tailored customer loyalty experiences can be delivered to dispenser-mounted video displays.
License plate recognition is immediately appreciated in a car wash application. When a vehicle with a subscription enters a car wash tunnel, it “just turns on” in a very convenient manner. Due to the large amount of data involved, the license plate recognition workload cannot be efficiently computed anywhere but at the retail premises.
From the perspective of many retailers struggling with technology deployment and management of significantly less complex systems, such workloads may seem beyond consideration. By keeping data and logic at the edge, these experiences remain smooth and responsive—even when bandwidth is constrained. Furthermore, sensitive data never leaves the site, which helps maintain customer trust and brand reputation.
Built for the Retail Edge
Retailers are navigating complex challenges at the edge, including rising customer expectations, expanding store footprints, and increasing demands on infrastructure. To stay competitive, IT leaders need solutions purpose-built for distributed environments: systems that are compact, autonomous, secure, and scalable. That’s exactly what Scale Computing™ delivers.
Flexible Platforms for Modern Retail
Scale Computing offers a portfolio of edge solutions tailored to the needs of multi-site retail operations. Whether the goal is to consolidate infrastructure, simplify orchestration, or enhance visibility at the store level, we provide the building blocks to make it happen.
- SC//Platform™ edge computing solution unifies compute, storage, virtualization, and powerful fleet management into a single, easy-to-manage solution. It’s built to run legacy and modern applications side-by-side, even in low-touch environments, with native container and VM support. Its self-healing design and automated failover reduce the need for on-site intervention. IT teams gain centralized, fleet-wide orchestration, making it easy to deploy, monitor, and manage infrastructure across hundreds or thousands of sites from a single interface. Updates, troubleshooting, and resource allocation can all be handled remotely, dramatically reducing operational overhead.
- SC//Reliant™ edge computing as a service provides a container‑native edge computing solution built to deploy and manage applications where data is created and used. Designed for modern microservices and cloud‑integrated workflows, it delivers low‑latency processing, local resiliency, and the flexibility to run diverse workloads at the edge. With centralized control and automated updates, Reliant Platform simplifies the deployment of new services, ensures consistent performance, and enables rapid innovation without sacrificing reliability or security.
- SC//AcuVigil™ managed network solutions deliver a live, centralized view of network health, complete with drill-down diagnostics, PCI-compliant remote access, and customizable alerts to detect and resolve issues before they disrupt operations. AcuVigil™ streamlines compliance with automated reporting and integrates secure connectivity features, including encrypted remote sessions and WAN failover, to keep multi‑site environments online and protected.
Unlocking Competitive Advantage at the Retail Edge
Every retail environment is unique. That’s why Scale Computing’s edge solutions are designed to be deployed independently or together, depending on your needs. Whether you're focused on infrastructure modernization, regulatory compliance, or operational efficiency, our platforms provide the flexibility to support your edge strategy at scale.
From modernizing infrastructure to enabling next-gen in-store experiences, Scale Computing provides edge solutions that deliver ROI, resilience, and centralized visibility and control.
If you would like to know more about Scale Computing's solutions for retail, please contact us or request a demo.
Our store is an essential resource for the community, providing dairy, services, fuel, and hot and cold foods around the clock. From our World Famous fried chicken to the World’s freshest cup of coffee, our customers need us any time of day. Scale Computing HyperCore™ helps us provide that service the only way we know how: Real Fresh, Real Fast!— Jesse Wolcott, IT Infrastructure Manager, Royal Farms