Data Center Infrastructure and Cloud Computing Considerations in Retail: Gaining competitive advantage through better understanding retailers' business and IT priorities

2017-03-30
Price :
Published : Mar-2017
No. of Pages : 39

Table of Contents
1. Background: Retailers' Business Challenges 3
2. Data Center Hardware Infrastructure 5
2.1 Servers are the backbone of the core infrastructure 5
2.2 Graphics processing is taking on computing 6
2.3 In-memory computing offers retailers real-time insight 7
2.4 Storage resources challenged by large data volumes 8
2.5 Converged and hyperconverged systems offer easy management 9
3. Network Infrastructure 11
3.1 Ethernet and fiber connections - a question of speed and security 11
3.2 In-store networks and Wi-Fi hotspots gaining importance 12
3.3 Ethernet and WAN buildouts drive demand for switches and routers 12
3.4 Fog computing emerges as pre-analytics moves to the edge 14
4. Cooling and Facilities 16
5. Virtualization and Workload Management 17
5.1 Containers and microservices help to unify data and systems 17
5.2 Workload automation can increase operational efficiency 19
5.3 Access management is essential for compliance 19
5.4 Service level management ensures zero downtimes 20
6. Cloud Considerations 21
6.1 Private cloud - agility within your own base 22
6.2 Software as a Service (SaaS) - the fully hosted approach 23
6.3 Platform as a Service (PaaS) - own software on top of a standard base 23
6.4 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - the bare computing resource 24
6.5 Hybrid and multi-clouds combine the best of all worlds 25
7. Market Size and Vendor Landscape 27
7.1 Server and storage spending forecast 27
7.2 Systems management software forecast 29
7.3 Public cloud services spending forecast 30
7.4 ICT vendors compete for leadership in retail 31
8. Retailer Usage Cases 32
8.1 Mydin - Malaysian supermarket virtualizes its environment 32
8.2 Kind - hearing aid retailer implements flash storage 32
8.3 Kraft Foods Group (Mondelez) creates two dedicated private clouds 33
9. Advice for ICT Vendors and Retailers 34
9.1 Advice for ICT vendors 34
9.2 Advice for retailers 35
10. Appendix 36
10.1 Definitions 36
10.2 Further reading 37
10.3 Contact the author 37
10.4 Contact Us 38

List of Tables
Table 1: Retailers' global spending on Ethernet, WLAN and WAN technology (in US $ millions) 13
Table 2: Retailers' global spending on server and storage hardware (in US $ millions) 28
Table 3: Retailers' global spending on selected systems management software (in US $ millions) 29
Table 4: Retailers' global spending on public cloud services (in US $ millions) 30

List of Figures
Figure 1: Retail IT environments are becoming more complex 3
Figure 2: Ethernet and WAN drive growth in retail switches and routers 13
Figure 3: Fog computing moves analytics to the edge 15
Figure 4: Hypervisor and VM based virtualization vs. container based approach 18
Figure 5: Considerations for retailers in developing their cloud strategies 21
Figure 6: Software as a Service accounts for the majority of cloud spending but platforms are growing faster 30

Filed in: Information Technology
Publisher : GlobalData