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Drop 6 – Roadmap & ROI: Your First 90 Stores Series capstone: “Edge Renaissance—putting compute (and the customer) back where they belong.”

☕ Executive espresso (60‑second read)

  • Three phases, ninety stores, one playbook. Pilot (≤5), Prove (≤30), Scale (≤90).
  • ROI is real—and fast. 100 ms faster + higher uptime → +$X M revenue; hardware amortizes in ~18 months.
  • Govern once, repeat everywhere. Immutable builds, GitOps, patch waves. Treat each store like a tiny region.
  • Message to the board: “We’re not reinventing—just putting compute back where customers are.”

1️⃣ The 0‑5‑30‑90 rollout map

PHASE 0: Prep (4–6 weeks)
Goal: Tooling, golden images, KPIs defined
Outputs: Git repo, CI/CD, BOM finalized, latency baseline

PHASE 1: Pilot 5 (6–8 weeks)
Goal: Prove CX & $ impact with 2 workloads (e.g., /inventory API + image cache)
KPIs: TTFB ↓100 ms, conversion ↑≥5%, no POS downtime during WAN blips
Deliverables: Exec brief, ops runbooks, security sign‑off

PHASE 2: Prove 30 (8–12 weeks)
Goal: Add 2–3 more edge workloads (vision AI, promos), test patch waves
KPIs: Cache hit ≥90%, alert MTTR <15 min, patch drift ≤N‑1
Deliverables: Audit evidence automation, SLO dashboard, budget ask for scale

PHASE 3: Scale 90 (12–16 weeks)
Goal: Industrialized rollout kit; 3 waves of 30 stores
KPIs: 95% stores on latest bundle, <0.1% rollback rate
Deliverables: Playbook v1.0, board update, expansion roadmap (300+)

2️⃣ Quick‑math ROI you can defend

Inputs (example):

  • Online revenue = $500 M/year, base conversion 2.5%
  • Latency cut = 100 ms → +7–8% conversion (industry studies)
  • Cap‑ex per store cluster (Good/Better tier) = $5–6 k (4‑yr life)
  • CDN/egress avoided = $0.045/GB × 100 TB/mo ≈ $4.5 k/mo

Back‑of‑napkin:

Revenue lift:  $500M × 7% = +$35M/year
Hardware:      90 × $6k =  $540k  (=$135k/yr amortized)
CDN savings:   ~$54k/yr (after expansion)
ROI (Year 1):  (~$35M + $54k) / $675k ≈ 51×

Swap in your numbers; the order of magnitude rarely changes.

3️⃣ People & process: who does what?

CORE EDGE PLATFORM SQUAD (8–10 FTE)
• Platform Lead (1) – roadmap, budget, exec comms
• SRE/Automation (2–3) – CI/CD, GitOps, patch waves
• Security/Compliance Eng (1–2) – policy as code, audits
• Edge App Owners (2–3) – /inventory API, promos, vision AI

REGIONAL / STORE TECH PARTNERS (as‑needed)
• “Smart hands” for racking, swaps
• Local networking tweaks

BUSINESS STAKEHOLDERS
• Digital Product, Merch, Ops – define the CX wins
• Finance – track realized savings & uplift

Rule: Central team builds the pattern, sites pull it. No snowflakes.

4️⃣ Operate like a cloud, even if it’s a closet

Your top 6 SLOs (track weekly):

  1. TTFB p95 (ms) for key endpoints (PDP image, /inventory)
  2. Cache hit rate (%) on Varnish/Nginx
  3. POS/API latency (ms) during WAN events
  4. Patch drift (# stores on N‑2 or older)
  5. Backup success rate (%) (PBS snapshots)
  6. MTTR for node failure (mins/hours)

Dashboards: Grafana/Loki summaries pushed centrally nightly; alerts on trends.

5️⃣ Board‑ready narrative (5 slides)

  1. Why now: Latency is a silent tax; we’re over‑spending on cloud/CDN; Amazon wins on speed.
  2. What we’re doing: Put compute and delivery where customers are—stores & DCs—using Proxmox on commodity gear.
  3. Proof: Pilot results—100 ms faster → +X% revenue, $Y saved in egress, 0 outages on WAN loss.
  4. Plan & risk: 0‑5‑30‑90 rollout, governance pillars, automated compliance.
  5. Ask: $Z cap‑ex, 10 FTE cross‑functional team, payback <18 months.

6️⃣ Risk register (and the auto‑mitigations)

Risk Mitigation baked in
Node dies in peak hours Ceph 3× replica + live‑migration
Patch breaks store Canary waves + fast rollback via Git tag
WAN outage Local DNS/APIs, queued sync jobs
Audit fails Automated evidence exports; policy‑as‑code
Drift / config sprawl Immutable bundles, Git as SOoT

7️⃣ Timeline & dollars (visual you can paste)

Q1  Prep & Pilot (5 stores)       $  75k  (gear + labor)
Q2  Prove @ 30 stores             $ 180k
Q3  Scale wave 1 (30 stores)      $ 180k
Q4  Scale wave 2 (30 stores)      $ 180k
-----------------------------------------
YEAR 1 CAP-EX / OPEX              ≈ $615k

Projected Year-1 Upside           $35M+ revenue lift + $54k cost saved

(Adjust “gear” line if you choose GPU nodes or higher tiers.)

8️⃣ This week’s action list

  1. Finalize KPIs & baselines (latency, conversion, uptime).
  2. Draft the board deck with the 5‑slide narrative above.
  3. Lock the pilot scope: 2 workloads, 5 stores, 8‑week clock.
  4. Stand up the repo & CI/CD (even if empty) to anchor governance.
  5. Book the Phase‑gate reviews now (Pilot exit, 30‑store exit).

🎁 Series wrap & what’s next

  • Appendix pack (on request): BOM spreadsheet, CI pipeline YAML, audit evidence script.

  • Office hours / webinar? If there’s interest, I’ll host a live walkthrough.

  • Spin‑offs:

    • “Edge ML Ops: packaging & shipping models to 500 sites”
    • “From closets to parking lots: EV chargers & edge compute”
    • “Design patterns for zero‑trust store networks”

Thank you for riding along. This wasn’t about “new tech”—it was about rediscovering what made the Internet (and great retail) work: put value as close to the customer as you can, and don’t pay rent on distance.

Hit follow, drop questions in the comments, or DM for the appendix. Your closets are ready to scale.