130 lines
5.8 KiB
Markdown
130 lines
5.8 KiB
Markdown
**Drop 4 – Edge Workloads That Win Hearts (and Wallets)**
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*Series: “Edge Renaissance—putting compute (and the customer) back where they belong.”*
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---
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### ☕ Executive espresso (60‑second read)
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* **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.
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* **Inference beats bandwidth.** Run vision AI and replenishment logic on‑site; sync only insights, not 4K video.
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* **Start with two workloads:** one that boosts revenue (conversion, AOV) and one that cuts friction (queue time, NPS). Prove value fast, then expand.
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> **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.
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---
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## 1️⃣ The three buckets of edge value
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| Bucket | Customer moment | KPI it moves | Typical edge workload |
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| ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------- | --------------------------------------- |
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| **Sell faster** | PDP shows “2 left—aisle 7” in real time | Conversion %, AOV | Live inventory API, dynamic promos |
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| **Serve smarter** | Associate gets a “need help?” ping from vision AI | NPS / CSAT, queue length | Vision analytics, foot‑traffic heatmaps |
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| **Stay open** | WAN dies, kiosks & POS keep humming | Lost sales avoided, uptime | Offline‑capable POS, local auth/caching |
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---
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## 2️⃣ Workloads to push down first (and why)
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```
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1. Live inventory & BOPIS promises
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• Pain: Cloud round-trips add 100+ ms → stale or missing stock data.
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• Edge fix: Containerized /inventory API next to the ERP sync process.
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• KPI: +X% PDP click‑to-cart, lower cancellations.
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2. Vision AI (shrink, planogram, queue detection)
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• Pain: Streaming 4K video to cloud = $$$ + latency.
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• Edge fix: GPU or CPU inference on-node; send events only.
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• KPI: Fewer walkouts, faster line opens, compliance hits.
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3. Dynamic pricing / digital signage
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• Pain: Central scheduler pushes daily; no real‑time react.
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• Edge fix: WASM function reads local demand + margin rules.
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• KPI: Margin lift, sell‑through on perishable items.
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4. BOPIS / ship-from-store orchestration
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• Pain: Picker waits on distant APIs; SLA slips.
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• Edge fix: Local microservice allocates orders, talks to robots.
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• KPI: SLA hit rate, pick time, labor cost.
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5. AR/3D asset serving in-store Wi‑Fi
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• Pain: Heavy textures → slow over WAN/CDN.
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• Edge fix: Cache on Ceph; deliver from 50 feet away.
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• KPI: Engagement time, demo-to-purchase rate.
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```
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---
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## 3️⃣ Customer-first framing for each workload
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| Customer pain they notice | Edge pattern that fixes it | Tech blocks on Proxmox |
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| --------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- |
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| “Why is pickup 2 hours away?” | Local promise engine using fresh stock feed | LXC API svc + Ceph queue |
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| “This kiosk is frozen…again” | Offline-first UI + local auth/cache | Nginx cache + SQLite replica |
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| “No associate when I need one” | Vision AI triggers help alerts | CUDA/ROCm container + MQTT |
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| “Page keeps spinning on my phone” | In‑store CDN for JS/images/API | Varnish + WASM workers |
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| “Price on sign ≠ price in app” | Signage & app both hit same local rules engine | Shared container, REST API |
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---
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## 4️⃣ How to choose *your* first two
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Create a quick 2×2:
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```
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↑ Revenue impact
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(A) | (B)
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Implementation |----------------→ Ease / Speed to deploy
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effort |
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(C) | (D)
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```
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* **A:** Big money, easy win → do now
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* **B:** Big money, harder → start POC in parallel
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* **C/D:** Low money → bundle with others or defer
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Most retailers land “/inventory API cache” in A and “vision AI queue detection” in B.
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---
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## 5️⃣ Pattern: inference local, learning central
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1. **Train centrally** (cloud GPUs, big data lake).
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2. **Package model** (ONNX/TensorRT) and ship to stores via GitOps.
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3. **Infer at the edge** (no raw data exfil).
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4. **Return features/metrics only** for future re‑training.
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Same principle works for recommendation engines, fraud checks, demand forecasting.
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---
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## 6️⃣ Guardrails & governance
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* **Version control everything**: models, edge functions, Varnish configs—Git is the source of truth.
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* **Secret management**: Use Vault/Sealed Secrets; no API keys in containers.
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* **Observability**: Batch logs to central Loki/Elastic; alert on drift (latency, miss rates).
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* **Compliance**: Keep PII local where possible; roll‑ups only leave the site.
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---
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## 7️⃣ This week’s action list
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1. **Baseline latency & KPIs** for target workloads (e.g., PDP → add‑to‑cart time, queue length).
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2. **Pick 2 workloads**: one revenue, one experience. Write a 1‑pager each: pain → edge fix → KPI.
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3. **Build thin slices** on the pilot cluster:
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* `/inventory` API cache container
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* Small Varnish edge function injecting a promo
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4. **Instrument results** (TTFB, conversion lift, queue minutes, etc.).
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5. **Socialize wins** with a single chart: “100 ms faster → +X% revenue” or “0 outages during WAN blip.”
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---
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### Next up ➡️ **Drop 5 – Governance at the Edge: Security, Compliance, Resilience**
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We’ll tackle the scary stuff: patching 500 closets, PCI scope, cert rotation, and what happens when a node dies at 2 AM.
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*Stay subscribed—your edge is about to get audited.*
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