Cox Communications views its numerous nationwide points of presence and extensive fibre network as competitive advantages in the developing market for enterprise edge compute solutions. The retail industry has been chosen by the ISP and cable juggernaut as a promising place to start.
According to Sheraline Barthelmy, head of product and marketing at Cox Edge, “there is clear conviction that retail is on the front line of being able to adopt edge from a personalization and brand loyalty point of view.”
Virtual dressing room mirrors, self-checkout, and smart shelves that change prices and promotions based on real-time data are some use cases for the retail sector, according to Cox.
Video intelligence is set to enable several use cases, Cox’s team reported after attending the National Retail Federation’s NRF 2023 show in New York. They said cameras and sensors were in use throughout the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, as retailers demonstrated applications that use video to gather data about where customers are spending time, and which products are catching their attention. Barthelmy noted that most of the applications retailers are using seem to leverage artificial intelligence (AI).
Retailers are combining anonymized video, geofencing and geolocation data, and AI to provide customers with better recommendations, according to Amir Sheikh, lead enterprise architect at Cox Edge. Retailers use these four to significantly increase their business: “AI, video analytics, operations optimization, and immersive shopping,” he said. They employ edge computing in order to complete this in almost real-time.
Because of a lack of post-pandemic hardware, Sheikh stated that “their on-premise infrastructure is falling behind.” Many retailers, he claimed, desire to adopt cutting-edge AI applications but are unable to upgrade their own servers as quickly as they would like.
Sheikh stated that “they want a quick ROI.” Retailers have adapted to the faster time to market in the post-COVID environment.
Retailers, according to Sheikh, are looking for ways to Cox Communications views its numerous nationwide points of presence and extensive fibre network as competitive advantages in the developing market for enterprise edge computing solutions. The retail industry has been chosen by the ISP and cable juggernaut as a promising place to start.
Cox Edge, which was first introduced in 2021, combines physical and virtual machines with database, container, security, and streaming analytics capabilities. Sheikh claimed that the group presents its solution to clients as one option among many. He declared, “We do not intend to pitch edge.” I enjoy learning from retailers about their justifications for requiring an edge solution.
The next step for Cox is to “better understand what we need to offer above and beyond infrastructure,” according to Brendan Wilson, director of the market activation and customer success at Cox Edge. Wilson expressed his confidence that retailers have an edge in play. Cox, however, is not going to the application layer. Wilson stated, “We will not create applications around video intelligence.
Wilson stated Cox would continue its experience in the retail space to other verticals, including gaming, hospitality, healthcare, financial services and manufacturing.
Cox announced earlier this month that it had acquired Logicworks, an integrator that aids businesses in moving workloads to AWS and Microsoft Azure and running them there.
Sheikh said, “They manage the workload so now we can work with brownfield customers. Where brownfield customers want to transition from cloud to edge cloud, Logicworks adds value.
Cox’s continued independence from the cloud, according to Barthelmy, is one of the benefits of Cox Edge. According to her, hyper scale cloud providers are focusing more on large enterprises with edge solutions and less on small and medium-sized businesses, which presents a chance for Cox Edge.