Does Your Edge Strategy Include the Essential Ingredients?
The hospitality industry is using technology to drive innovation into their restaurants faster than ever before. This is necessary to meet the demands of the new, connected consumer for convenient services such as online ordering with tracking and quick delivery, in-store pickup, supporting kiosks, and mobile apps for loyalty. CIOs, CTOs, and organizations understand that to successfully execute on these new services, a NextGen kitchen and streamlined operations are vital to a restaurant’s success.
In order to implement this new technology, there is the need for an edge computing platform that provides centralized management empowering IT teams to support this digital transformation and moving applications required by end-users closer to the edge of the cloud. A cloud + edge infrastructure ensures minimal application latency, cost control, and continuous operations across key applications whether on or offline in the event of interruptions.
It’s no easy feat. Many large-scale operators cannot replace their entire infrastructure in one step, requiring the ability to manage both legacy and IoT applications as well as potentially multiple operating systems on a single platform during the transitional period. It is imperative to have a strategy that includes Edge Computing to scale and deliver quickly, providing new customer experiences and supporting your local operations both in back and front of house.
Let’s look at some of the top essential ingredients to consider in your Edge Strategy.
- Identify what applications require continuous operations whether online or offline and the impact this has on your business if not accessible. Those mission-critical applications include: IoT for NextGen kitchens, customer experience enhancements like buy online and pick up in store (BOPIS) orders, kiosks, frictionless payments, digital menu boards, and mobile Point of Sale devices.
- Define what containerization tools are used to move applications to your network of locations. Tools such as Docker are integrated into the Reliant Platform and are used to deploy and orchestrate containers that house the necessary components of applications. Our platform provides a standard process to deliver container-based systems to all locations.
- Define the level of security and compliance required for data collection and usage at remote locations. Data is becoming more strategic in driving operational business decisions and delivering experiences. The requirements for data compliancy and security are necessary to protect your brand.
- Determine how you want to monitor and collect performance related metrics and KPIs from your edge infrastructure to better establish a proactive management framework as opposed to a more reactive legacy infrastructure.
- Define OS virtualization requirements across your brands and locations to easily manage distinct versions and existence of isolated instances. Ensure you have a centralized management platform to control and manage multiple versions and updates.
- Identify interoperability requirements as you deliver new technology while still managing legacy applications and operating systems. Deciding how to best phase in new technology and manage all solutions and hardware platforms can become complex requiring many staff hours without a platform that is hardware and application agnostic supporting the entire enterprise.
Whether you build or buy, a proven platform that aligns to your strategy and already has the tools incorporated into the platform can accelerate digital transformation. The question may not be to “build or buy,” but rather what can you gain by implementing a platform that provides a faster time to market and lets you focus on true digital transformation that your restaurants require?
Reliant is a Gold Sponsor at MURTEC 2020. Stop by booth #13 and meet the executives to learn how the leading Hospitality Edge Computing Platform can provide your business with comprehensive application delivery, orchestration, monitoring, security and data collection while streamlining the management of IoT, mobile, and legacy solutions.
About Reliant
Reliant is the leading provider of an Edge Computing platform for hospitality. Reliant Platform centralizes, automates, and controls the delivery and management of in-restaurant applications and infrastructure bringing data and solutions to the edge of the cloud. Experience speed in delivery, reduced latency, continuous operations, and achieve faster digital transformation.
About the Author
Richard Newman is CTO of Reliant Solutions. Reliant is a provider of an Edge Computing platform for hospitality. Reliant’s Platform centralizes, automates, and controls the delivery and management of in-restaurant applications and infrastructure bringing data and solutions to the edge of the cloud. Experience speed in delivery, reduced latency, continuous operations, and achieve faster digital transformation.