Lenovo forms partnership to offer edge solution for retailers

Retail is a hot space at the moment with an influx of technologies emerging to get on-board the digital transformation train.

Now Lenovo has announced a global partnership with edge computing specialist Scale Computing to offer a joint product based on edge infrastructure for retailers, distributed enterprises, and small to medium-sized businesses.

"In today's global economy, businesses and governments are instrumenting the edge with ever greater intelligence, so the desire for reliable, scalable and agile edge infrastructure solutions continues to grow," says Lenovo Data Center Group vice president and general manager Wilfredo Sotolongo.

Deemed the Scale Computing HC3 Edge Platform on Lenovo Servers, the duo asserts the solution is ideal for highly distributed on-premise environments with multiple locations managed by the enterprise from a central location.

Lenovo's range of servers in conjunction with edge infrastructure software from Scale Computing results in a purportedly simple and self-healing platform built for running applications at the edge or hybrid edge-and-cloud.

The goal, the companies say, is to replace expensive on-premise infrastructure with a modern solution that is optimised for environments where application uptime is critical, yet on-premise IT resources are limited.

"Together with Scale Computing, Lenovo is addressing this market by providing edge infrastructure that has the capacity to run various IT and OT workloads, is space conscious and can be managed at each individual location by generalists," says Sotolongo.

"This reduces the time and budget spent managing technology and allows companies to focus more on growing their business and serving their customers.

Lenovo has provided a use case of the new edge infrastructure solution, with is Ahoild Delhaize, and international food retail group headquartered in the Netherlands. The company operates supermarkets and eCommerce businesses across 35 brands, more than 6,600 stores, 369,000 employees, and 11 countries to serve in excess of 50 million customers every week.

The company wanted to reduce time spent deploying and managing edge IT infrastructure and thus needed a solution that could host traditional and IoT applications on the same hardware.

As they say, the rest is history with the company deploying the Lenovo/Scale solution in 800 stores within Belgium, with further expansion planned next year,

"We extensively evaluated the market and wanted to take the time to ensure any new IT environment could effectively support our applications and future demands. We continually look to deliver exceptional customer service internationally and edge computing has a critical role to play in supporting this," says Ahold Delhaize infrastructure innovation head Rolf Vanden Eynde.

"The Scale Computing HC3 software, in combination with Lenovo servers and switches, delivered the stability, support and simplicity we needed. The solution outclassed competition on total cost of ownership and simplicity.