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Michael Mainguy e26f4d6f24 Added drop 4

2025-07-24 17:28:26 -04:00

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Drop 4 – Edge Workloads That Win Hearts (and Wallets) Series: “Edge Renaissance—putting compute (and the customer) back where they belong.”

☕ Executive espresso (60‑second read)

Move what customers feel. Live inventory badges, instant BOPIS promises, zero‑lag self‑checkout, “we saw you needed help” alerts—these are edge wins, not cloud tricks.
Inference beats bandwidth. Run vision AI and replenishment logic on‑site; sync only insights, not 4K video.
Start with two workloads: one that boosts revenue (conversion, AOV) and one that cuts friction (queue time, NPS). Prove value fast, then expand.

Bottom line: The closet cluster isn’t there for vanity metrics; it’s the engine for customer‑obsessed moments your competitors can’t match at WAN speeds.

1️⃣ The three buckets of edge value

Bucket	Customer moment	KPI it moves	Typical edge workload
Sell faster	PDP shows “2 left—aisle 7” in real time	Conversion %, AOV	Live inventory API, dynamic promos
Serve smarter	Associate gets a “need help?” ping from vision AI	NPS / CSAT, queue length	Vision analytics, foot‑traffic heatmaps
Stay open	WAN dies, kiosks & POS keep humming	Lost sales avoided, uptime	Offline‑capable POS, local auth/caching

2️⃣ Workloads to push down first (and why)

1. Live inventory & BOPIS promises
   • Pain: Cloud round-trips add 100+ ms → stale or missing stock data.
   • Edge fix: Containerized /inventory API next to the ERP sync process.
   • KPI: +X% PDP click‑to-cart, lower cancellations.

2. Vision AI (shrink, planogram, queue detection)
   • Pain: Streaming 4K video to cloud = $$$ + latency.
   • Edge fix: GPU or CPU inference on-node; send events only.
   • KPI: Fewer walkouts, faster line opens, compliance hits.

3. Dynamic pricing / digital signage
   • Pain: Central scheduler pushes daily; no real‑time react.
   • Edge fix: WASM function reads local demand + margin rules.
   • KPI: Margin lift, sell‑through on perishable items.

4. BOPIS / ship-from-store orchestration
   • Pain: Picker waits on distant APIs; SLA slips.
   • Edge fix: Local microservice allocates orders, talks to robots.
   • KPI: SLA hit rate, pick time, labor cost.

5. AR/3D asset serving in-store Wi‑Fi
   • Pain: Heavy textures → slow over WAN/CDN.
   • Edge fix: Cache on Ceph; deliver from 50 feet away.
   • KPI: Engagement time, demo-to-purchase rate.

3️⃣ Customer-first framing for each workload

Customer pain they notice	Edge pattern that fixes it	Tech blocks on Proxmox
“Why is pickup 2 hours away?”	Local promise engine using fresh stock feed	LXC API svc + Ceph queue
“This kiosk is frozen…again”	Offline-first UI + local auth/cache	Nginx cache + SQLite replica
“No associate when I need one”	Vision AI triggers help alerts	CUDA/ROCm container + MQTT
“Page keeps spinning on my phone”	In‑store CDN for JS/images/API	Varnish + WASM workers
“Price on sign ≠ price in app”	Signage & app both hit same local rules engine	Shared container, REST API

4️⃣ How to choose your first two

Create a quick 2×2:

               ↑ Revenue impact
               |
         (A)   |    (B)
               |
Implementation |----------------→ Ease / Speed to deploy
       effort  |
         (C)   |    (D)
               |

A: Big money, easy win → do now
B: Big money, harder → start POC in parallel
C/D: Low money → bundle with others or defer

Most retailers land “/inventory API cache” in A and “vision AI queue detection” in B.

5️⃣ Pattern: inference local, learning central

Train centrally (cloud GPUs, big data lake).
Package model (ONNX/TensorRT) and ship to stores via GitOps.
Infer at the edge (no raw data exfil).
Return features/metrics only for future re‑training.

Same principle works for recommendation engines, fraud checks, demand forecasting.

6️⃣ Guardrails & governance

Version control everything: models, edge functions, Varnish configs—Git is the source of truth.
Secret management: Use Vault/Sealed Secrets; no API keys in containers.
Observability: Batch logs to central Loki/Elastic; alert on drift (latency, miss rates).
Compliance: Keep PII local where possible; roll‑ups only leave the site.

7️⃣ This week’s action list

Baseline latency & KPIs for target workloads (e.g., PDP → add‑to‑cart time, queue length).
Pick 2 workloads: one revenue, one experience. Write a 1‑pager each: pain → edge fix → KPI.
Build thin slices on the pilot cluster:
- /inventory API cache container
- Small Varnish edge function injecting a promo
Instrument results (TTFB, conversion lift, queue minutes, etc.).
Socialize wins with a single chart: “100 ms faster → +X% revenue” or “0 outages during WAN blip.”

Next up ➡️ Drop 5 – Governance at the Edge: Security, Compliance, Resilience

We’ll tackle the scary stuff: patching 500 closets, PCI scope, cert rotation, and what happens when a node dies at 2 AM.

Stay subscribed—your edge is about to get audited.

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