Accelerate Your Digital Transformation with Reliant Platform - Reliant Platform Technical Solution Brief
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Accelerate Your Digital
Transformation with
Reliant Platform
Reliant Platform
Technical Solution Brief
450 7th Avenue, Suite 503 New York 10123 917-338-2200 reliant.io
Creating a Web-Scale, Omnichannel Experience in
Retail, Hospitality, and Convenience
With the development of cloud-based services and constant But for many industries, the cloud alone cannot meet the
access to the global network, customer expectations service requirements that many businesses—and their end
in every industry have changed dramatically, forcing customers—expect. Particularly in the retail, hospitality, and
businesses to respond or lose customers. Customers now convenience store industries, cloud-based architectures
expect a frictionless experience with every company they cannot provide the performance needed at the local
work with, whether in person, from their home or business, store. But the same challenge applies to any customer-
or their mobile device. They expect their purchases to be facing industry today. Cloud-based services also depend
delivered immediately, in whatever form they want: in-store, on a continuous connection to the network. But in a retail
delivered, or picked up. And as the environment continues or hospitality environment, the loss of connection to the
to evolve—as people change the way they work, play, eat, internet, a sudden drop in bandwidth, or increased network
and buy—companies of all types need the ability to respond latency can bring a restaurant or store to a dead stop. And
immediately, using the latest in technology to keep up with if customer-facing services stop, customers may walk. Any
their customers’ demands as well as their competitors’ unanticipated downtime can translate directly into lost sales
offerings. Implementing process improvements such as and revenue. Even the occasional failure to meet customer
agile operations and a DevOps methodology, along with expectations can damage a business’s reputation, resulting
accelerating migration to cloud and edge computing, have in hard-won customers choosing another supplier who can
become immediate requirements, forcing realignment of better meet their needs.
IT priorities and budgets to expedite the delivery of the
Businesses such as retail, convenience, and hospitality
infrastructure required to develop, deploy and manage the
require continuous operations without continuous network
new services customers demand.
connectivity. They therefore need a service delivery
The migration to cloud-based architectures has changed architecture that meets their operational requirements—and
the way many services are delivered. From web-based the expectations of their end customers. These heightened
security and email to online banking or entertainment, expectations have resulted in the rapid adoption of edge
cloud service delivery has allowed organizations to provide computing, especially in the retail and hospitality industries.
additional functionality and features to their customers Edge computing moves the compute resources needed
faster with a lower cost. to support new IoT devices and “always-on” services to
the local restaurant or retail location. While leveraging the
From the CEO down to the end customer, expectations cloud’s central control capabilities, edge computing allows
have been set that consumers share a common experience companies in the retail/hospitality industries to bring the
regardless of format, channel, or location. The ability to pivot same type of webscale services and applications to the
quickly as operating requirements and consumer behaviors edge of the network. By placing application compute power
dictate is now a fundamental business requirement, at the customer location, edge computing has become
demanding all IT organizations operate with a different the optimal way to deliver the services and applications
mindset. As new systems, applications, and features need required by retail and restaurant consumers in the new
to be tested or deployed, IT must be able to deliver new digital environment.
initiatives, applications, and consumer experiences reliably
across all locations much faster than ever before.
2 © Copyright 2021 Reliant
Reliant Platform
Reliant Platform Manager
Control
Plane
Web GUI & API Orchestration for Edge Platform
Edge Application & Configuration Management
Management Plane
Configuration Management Servers
Monitoring Servers
Control Plane
SIEM/LOG/Big Data Analysis
Configuration
Control
Log/Data Collection Servers
Plane
Management
VPN Servers
Orchestration
Reliant Edge Platform Event Based
Monitoring
Local Applications: Container-Based Microservices
and VM-Based, Linux or Windows
Data Collection
Hypervisor Services: Docker Containers, Whole OS and Logging
Virtualization of Linux or Windows
Network Services: IP Segmentation, Routing,
DNS, DHCP, PXE, NTP, VPN
Operating System: Linux
Control
Commercial Off-the-Shelf X86 Hardware
Plane
CPU | GPU | RAM | STORAGE | I/O Interfaces |
Out-of-Band Management Interface
© Copyright 2021 Reliant 3
Edge Computing:
The Edge Reflects the Cloud
While the term “Edge Computing” has Edge computing does not compete
been receiving a great deal of coverage with the cloud; rather, it complements
in IT circles lately, the concept of edge it. Edge infrastructures are a natural
computing has been around for decades, evolution of the cloud. Edge computing
dating back to client/server architectures. delivers the agility, reliability, and
The fundamental requirement driving scalability of the cloud without the
the adoption of edge computing today limitations of unpredictable bandwidth,
is to deliver processing power where it is lost connections to the network, or
most needed. In the retail and hospitality delays caused by remote processing.
industries, this comes down to the For this reason, the retail and hospitality
consumer interfacing with applications industries have been some of the leading
and services inside the four walls of the users of edge computing. By placing
local store or restaurant. compute power at the local premise,
edge computing architectures can
The explosion of cloud-based services deliver high-performance services, near-
has given consumers unprecedented zero latency, and non-stop performance
access to information and services, in case of lost network connectivity.
and cloud-based applications will
continue to grow as they are ideal for Reliant Platform makes use of the best
distributing web services on a global of both cloud and edge. The cloud-
level. But the cloud alone has limitations, based Reliant Platform Manager gives
namely unpredictable bandwidth and companies a central, scalable, and robust
latency and the need for a continuous platform for managing their remote
network connection. The centralized operations. At the same time, Reliant
implementation of the hyper-scale Edge Platform delivers the compute
cloud, along with the growing number power, applications, and services
of IoT devices deployed on-premise necessary for non-stop operation at
at the edge of the network, has driven remote locations. With edge computing,
rapid adoption of edge computing services continue to function in a network
architectures. Edge computing places outage, allowing continuous service.
content, data, and processing closer When internet connectivity resumes,
to the services end-users consume. Reliant Edge Platform syncs with the
This is critically important in the retail central Reliant Platform Manager to
and hospitality industries, where new upload data and receive new instructions.
services and applications require high- By leveraging the best of both cloud
compute applications, immediate and, Reliant gives its clients the ability
response leveraging “actionable data,” to deliver the frictionless, omnichannel
and “always-on” availability. experience their end customers expect.
Reliant Platform: • Configuration Management. By leveraging an open
architecture that can interface with different APIs and
Combining the Best configuration templates, Reliant dramatically simplifies
configuration, making it easy to manage and enforce site-
of Cloud and Edge specific parameters within mission-critical applications,
Architectures
whether for one store or ten thousand.
• Orchestration. Whether for applications or networked
IoT devices, Reliant Platform allows for updates or
configuration changes at both the local and global levels.
By automating orchestration processes, Reliant simplifies
Reliant Platform combines the best aspects of cloud
IT operations, allowing precious IT resources to focus on
and edge computing to provide the optimal turnkey
developing new services.
approach for competing in the fast-moving retail and
hospitality environment. Reliant Platform is an off-the- • Monitoring. Reliant Platform monitors all services’
shelf, hardware-agnostic software solution optimized for availability and performance at both the local and global
the retail, hospitality, and convenience store industries, level, sending alerts locally and to the central Platform.
but applies to any industry with consumer engagement, These alerts can be as simple as tracking configuration
including banking, healthcare, and others. It delivers changes or third-party application utilization to providing
all of the functionality needed to create a frictionless, notification from the built-in high availability software in
omnichannel experience for consumers, whether for ten the event of hardware, network, or software failure.
or 10,000+ locations.
• Data Collection. Reliant Platform can gather data from
Supporting both container-based microservices and every hosted application, service, or device it manages.
whole-OS virtualization (See diagram on page 3 for an This data can be invaluable for developing operational key
overview of the Reliant Platform Architecture), Reliant has performance indicators regarding improved workflows,
developed a next-generation, API-capable centralized reduced process times, and improved operational
platform that allows restaurants, retail locations, and efficiencies. These system logs are gathered locally and
convenience stores to integrate, configure, deliver, and can be redirected for analysis by local applications or
manage applications. Reliant Platform also contains the forwarded to the cloud for additional in-house or third-
networking and technical security control capability party analysis.
needed to operate edge computing at scale. The Platform’s
management and configuration software, located in the • Local Hosting of Machine Learning Algorithms.
cloud, lets clients manage not only the configurations of their With the large number of services running at any
edge nodes but applications hosted on the edge platform single location, vast amounts of data can be created,
and adjacent IoT devices, enabling a smooth migration from amounts that can easily overwhelm any manual human
a monolithic design approach to an agile development analysis and become impractical for real-time ‘decision’
methodology as time, resources, and expertise allow. based inferences from the cloud. Retail and hospitality
merchants can leverage this valuable data as input for
Specifically, Reliant Platform integrates and manages the third-party machine learning applications either locally
following essential functions: or globally.
• Application Delivery. Reliant Platform’s primary Designed to be used across different public and private
purpose is to manage multiple diverse applications, clouds, along with varying network architectures, Reliant
treating each one as an individual “service” deployed at a Platform software runs on standard, commercial off-the-
store or restaurant. Controlled with a single, intuitive user- shelf (COTS) hardware, allowing clients to select the optimal
interface, Reliant can host edge applications as diverse as hardware for their needs. Reliant software is also cloud-
Point of Sale, order management applications, contactless agnostic. The Platform can run in Reliant’s secure cloud,
payment services, or immersive content delivery, as well the client’s private cloud or data center, or a third-party
as provide network and security functionality at the edge. cloud of the client’s choosing.
© Copyright 2021 Reliant 5
Key Components of Reliant Platform
Reliant Platform consists of three major components
integrated into a single solution: Reliant Platform Manager,
Reliant Management Plane, and Reliant Edge Platform.
Reliant Platform Manager
Reliant Platform Manager serves as the client’s primary
interface to Reliant Platform. It provides an intuitive,
web-based interface that allows the user to manage all of
the services delivered by Reliant Edge Platform. Supporting
both interactive users and API access, Platform Manager
is a multi-tenant portal hosted in Reliant’s cloud for edge
platforms.
At its base, Reliant Platform Manager acts as an abstraction
layer between the user and the actual applications that
run in the remote locations. It treats all applications
and functionality as “services” that IT can manage. For
each service, Reliant provides a centralized interface
for application delivery, configuration, orchestration, Docker containers. Legacy applications can be supported
monitoring, and data collection for both new and legacy via the built-in virtualization functionality, allowing legacy
functionality. The services delivered can be as diverse applications to run on virtual machines alongside new
as a legacy POS system, a new “contactless” payment applications. The flexibility provided by Reliant Platform
service, content displays, self-service ordering systems, Manager provides for a company to make the transition
or process and inventory management systems. Reliant from older, monolithic applications to the new digital
also coordinates the myriad of remote IoT devices along environment seamlessly and at their own pace, helping
with the data such devices generate. Additionally, Reliant ease and accelerate the digital transformation of IT.
treats both networking and security as separate “services,”
reducing the load on local IT resources. Reliant Management Plane
Reliant’s Management Plane links edge nodes to
With built-in configuration tools and API support for third-
Reliant Platform Manager, translating the operations
party solutions, Reliant vastly simplifies the scale of effort
performed on Reliant Platform Manager directly into the
required to deploy, manage, and monitor services. Support
configuration and orchestration actions each application
for manual and automated orchestration gives engineers
requires. The Management Plane executes configuration
the flexibility they need to implement and manage services
and orchestration tasks for edge services, allowing IT
much faster and with far fewer resources than traditional
engineers to access any service at any single location to
methods. Whether deploying new functionality or
make detailed changes (for example, adjusting network
modifying existing applications, Reliant gives engineering
settings for a specific location) using simple commands.
the tools needed to orchestrate change at a single store
The Management Plane then translates these commands
or thousands of locations.
into precise API or CLI configuration instructions to
Reliant has partnered with best-of-breed hardware, manage each service. Dedicated on a per-client basis, the
software, and service providers to create a complete, Management Plane typically resides in virtual machines on
end-to-end solution for remote service management in servers located in the client’s cloud or data center. Servers
the digital store or restaurant. For example, for building may also be based in Reliant’s cloud or at a third-party
new container-based applications, Reliant has integrated cloud provider.
Docker’s lightweight container architecture into Reliant
Reliant Edge Platform
Platform, allowing clients to create microservice-based
applications. Users can quickly move existing Docker- Reliant Edge Platform is the in-store component of the
based applications onto Reliant Platform – or work with Reliant solution. A virtualized application delivery and
Reliant to port existing microservices applications over to management system, Reliant Edge Platform delivers the
6 © Copyright 2021 Reliant
DevOps and Agile Development
Speed Time to Market
Agile development and the DevOps methodology The advantages of this approach are many and
evolved in response to the inefficiencies of various. Instead of being slowed down by the large
writing, deploying, and supporting monolithic and infrequent upgrades necessary to support
applications. These applications were initially monolithic applications, software built with a
designed to run on mainframes, and many large DevOps process creates a fast development
applications remain in use today even as more culture, frequent updates, and feature releases
flexible computing models have evolved. But the measured in days or weeks instead of months or
downsides of monolithic software development years. Because many applications can reuse a
are significant. Large applications take a long time single microservice, their use avoids duplication
to bring to market. In a monolithic engineering of effort. Creating new features is simplified by
environment, writing, testing, deploying, and modifying individual containers or creating new
supporting such software are typically handled by ones. Testing is far less complex as only the
different functional groups. Coordination among modified container requires testing before insertion
these engineering “silos” slows delivery times. And into the main application. Even security and
as increasingly strict regulatory requirements have compliance checks can be built using containers
been put in place in many industries, ensuring and integrated into a multitude of applications.
security and compliance has added even more
time to the overall engineering process. This A DevOps methodology demands far fewer
monolithic engineering methodology makes operations resources to manage and orchestrate
fixing bugs or adding new features tedious, time- change. Whether implementing new features or
consuming, and expensive procedures. initiating bug fixes, engineers can modify a single
container and install the new code into production
In today’s cloud and virtualized computing across thousands of servers using automation
environment, a more efficient way of developing tools. In the case of a failure, operations can restart
and managing software has evolved that takes individual processes instead of rebooting entire
advantage of the flexible access to compute applications. Orchestration is a critical piece in
resources today’s environment supplies, the CI/CD process, allowing frequent and regular
specifically processing, memory, and storage. The changes to the main application. The result is
DevOps and Continuous Integration/Continuous streamlined development, faster time to market,
Delivery (CI/CD) processes have created a much and lower costs.
more efficient way to deliver new services and
applications to market. “Move fast, fail fast” has For these many reasons, Reliant built its Reliant
become a driving philosophy of agile operations. Platform using a container-based DevOps process.
Given that agile development represents the cutting
At its heart, the DevOps methodology relies on edge in software design, Reliant also integrated
an entirely different way of writing software than the tools to develop and support containerized
that used in building monolithic applications. applications directly into Reliant Platform. As
Instead of creating a single application with more companies transition from a monolithic
millions of lines of code, software processes are development process to a DevOps model, having
broken into what are called “microservices.” Each the flexibility to support legacy applications and
microservice is designed to perform one specific container-based applications provides a significant
function and can call for whatever processing, benefit. Reliant Platform allows companies to make
memory, or storage resources it needs to fulfill the “digital transformation” at a pace their business
its purpose. These microservices are held in virtual and expertise allow.
“containers” and stand on their own. Microservices
can be coupled or grouped into Kubernetes or
Docker Swarms to perform more complex tasks.
These “building blocks” form the basis of modern
software development.services and manages the devices configured by Reliant architecture provides application configuration at the store,
Platform Manager and processed by the Management group of stores, or chainwide level. Extensive flexibility
Plane. Reliant Edge Platform then executes and monitors at the group level allows a client to deploy significantly
these services at the local store or restaurant. These different hardware and software configurations for different
applications can be containerized, microservices-based, types of stores.
or can be legacy applications running on a virtual machine.
Reliant Edge Platform also supports a high-availability
Reliant Edge Platform provides the software, compute
configuration option, operating in either dual-server or
power, security features, and network interfaces needed
clustered high-availability configurations. Battle-tested
to deliver and manage the edge services with the speed,
failover software ensures that a failure in one server won’t
agility, and security required at the remote location. By
bring operations to a halt. In the event of either a single
bringing compute resources to the local store or restaurant,
hardware or network interface failure, Reliant Edge Platform
Reliant allows retail and hospitality companies to implement
transfers the primary function to a secondary server. It
services previously unavailable with cloud-only solutions.
then sends a failure notice to local and global operations
In addition to providing the networking and security to initiate a process restart or a hardware replacement.
functions needed at the local level, Reliant eliminates the When the repair is complete, the function then transfers
need for a continuous connection to the network. If the back to the primary server. This same process can be used
network connection goes down, Reliant Edge Platform to upgrade local services or perform system upgrades
continues to operate, keeping all services up, and the without shutting down operations. Operations engineers
business running. When the network connection resumes, can transfer primary functions to the secondary node,
Reliant Edge Platform sends any log information or data upgrade the primary, and switch back—with or without cloud
collected to the Management Plane and Reliant Platform connectivity. If the update is successful, Ops can then install
Manager to update the current status at all locations, the same updates on the backup server. If a failure occurs
syncing global applications. Reliant Edge Platform also during an upgrade process, the secondary server maintains
provides a secure, intuitive, and easy-to-use local web operations until the problem is resolved. The result is zero
interface that can be accessed by authorized personnel operational downtime and zero data loss. Reliant software
locally inside the retail store, restaurant, or remote location is also hardware agnostic: Reliant Edge Platform can run on
should cloud connectivity fail. This browser function allows
for the local operation of client-selected Reliant Edge
Platform functions while offline from the cloud and internet.
These functions can include but are not limited to alternate
failover connectivity, whole OS/VM backup and restore
functionality, application/virtual machine restarts, network
troubleshooting tools, local system failover for scheduled
maintenance, and local system status across all locally
hosted applications.
In many cases, the hardware and software that comprise
Reliant Edge Platform are identical at each location, making
it easy to scale operations as new sites open and supporting
economies of scale to increase as the business grows. For
clients with differing square footage requirements—which
could include a mixture of kiosks, trunk show locations,
mall stores, and free-standing large-format locations—
clients can run appropriately-sized hardware to deliver
the applications and services as required for the space—
all under Reliant Edge Platform. Reliant’s “plug-and-play”
design also simplifies the initial roll-out process, whether
at ten or 10,000 locations. And if a particular location has
unique needs, any specific service or site can be configured
remotely by Reliant Platform Manager. The Reliant
8 © Copyright 2021 Reliantclient-provided x86-based hardware or be delivered as a implementation and management. Reliant Platform is also
bundled hardware/software solution, allowing maximum available as a fully managed service.
flexibility in selecting hardware suppliers.
While some large companies consider designing an
Installing Reliant Platform in-house application and service delivery platform, this
Reliant has designed the Reliant Platform for maximum is a significant undertaking. Reliant designed its solution
flexibility and ease-of-use. The detailed installation using a containerized, microservices-based software
process depends on the level of expertise of the client. architecture and an agile development process. Given
Typically, however, installation starts with a lab-based the specific technical expertise required, along with the
proof of concept, in which Reliant works with the client time needed to develop equivalent functionality, most
to bring a collection of business-critical and customer- prospective clients choose to hand over the heavy lifting
facing services online in a controlled, monitored, and of platform development to Reliant. By leveraging Reliant’s
managed environment. Reliant offers comprehensive investment in creating its service delivery platform, clients
design, integration, and support services varying from can focus on developing new services and managing their
user- and technical engineering-level training to full system core business
© Copyright 2021 Reliant 9Reliant: Driving Digital Transformation in Retail,
Hospitality, and Customer-Facing Industries
The retail and hospitality industries—and almost any and simple deployment of cutting-edge IoT devices.
industry engaging directly with customers—are under Also, the data gathered at each store can be analyzed
increasing pressure to transform their businesses digitally. locally or remotely, providing valuable insights into both
Expectations of consumers have changed. The ubiquitous internal performance and customer satisfaction. Users
access to web-based, service-oriented architectures reported needing 1/100th to 1/1000th of the network
created by near-constant connectivity to the cloud and storage resources required using a cloud-based
has led customers to expect frictionless, immersive, architecture.
and omnichannel services at their local store, branch,
• Greater Agility: Success in the retail, hospitality,
or restaurant.
and convenience-store industries often depends on
Studies of companies that have made the migration from how quickly a company can respond to the changing
a cloud-based architecture to an edge-computing model demands of their customers. Reliant Platform’s design
have shown significant and measurable benefits in terms enhances a client’s agility by making it simple to deploy,
of lower total cost of ownership (TCO), higher reliability, upgrade, and manage services. With edge computing,
smarter stores, and greater agility: users spent 75% less time managing and maintaining
applications and reported 46x more code deployments—
• Lower TCO: By centralizing management onto a single both direct measures of an organization’s ability to
web-based platform, clients have shown increased respond in a fast-changing business environment.
IT productivity by automating repetitive tasks and
streamlining back-office infrastructure. Users reported Reliant has leveraged the best of the cloud with new
a 3.1x reduction in the time required to deploy new developments in edge computing to help their clients
services, a 33% reduction in time needed to make deliver high-compute, web-scale services to their end
configuration changes, and a 24x improvement in customers, whether in person, for pick-up, or delivery.
recovery from failures. All of these lead to increased IT The explosion of IoT devices has enabled the delivery
efficiency and lower TCO. of services companies previously could only dream
of. But these new services must also work alongside
• Reliability: Given the basic edge-computing legacy applications. One of the most difficult challenges
architecture, store operations can continue to operate in implementing such an infrastructure is managing a
if they lose their internet connection, resulting in an wide variety of services, specifically application delivery,
average of 2.7x fewer failures overall and far faster configuration management, orchestration, monitoring,
recovery from hardware, network, or software failures. and data collection. Through virtualization, container
The fault-tolerant capability built into Reliant Edge orchestration, and an integrated DevOps infrastructure,
Platform guarantees 100% uptime, maintaining customer Reliant Platform simplifies the delivery and management of
satisfaction and uninterrupted sales. new services while providing the security and network and
• Smarter Stores: Edge Computing pushes processing compute infrastructure required for non-stop operation.
to the edge wherever possible, allowing for simpler Reliant makes the complicated simple.
deployment of new services, faster customer throughput,
10 © Copyright 2021 ReliantAbout Reliant Reliant is a leading provider of an Edge Computing platform for Retail and Hospitality. Reliant Platform centralizes, automates, and controls the delivery and management of applications and infrastructure, bringing data and solutions to the cloud’s edge. Experience speed in delivery, reduced latency, continuous operations, and enable faster digital transformation. The Reliant Platform converges new and legacy systems into an integrated, scalable system through virtualization, centralized management, and comprehensive monitoring, providing controls, data security and compliancy delivered to the stores and restaurants. Our clients are leading chain retailers and restaurant operators scaling from 25 to 1000’s of locations. With Reliant professional services and managed services, retailers and restaurants can implement and support your next generation of mobile, IoT, agile development, and customer-engaging applications with less overhead and IT burdens. The Reliant team brings deep industry business knowledge combined with technical expertise to deliver winning solutions for the business and IT alike. We deliver implementation services around applications, payments, PCI security, IoT applications, interactive technologies, POS, Mobile, and converged cloud infrastructures. Our 24/7 managed services are designed to support our customer’s applications and infrastructure. To learn more about Reliant Platform, visit www.reliant.io Footnotes: 1 “Customers at the Back of the Line Are Anxious—Can You Keep Them from Leaving?” Harvard Business School, 2/12/18. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/switching-queues-just-makes-customers-wait-longer-but-they-do-it-anyway 2 “How Patient Wait Times Affect Customer Satisfaction,” Fierce Healthcare, 9/23/19, https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/sponsored/how-patient-wait-times-affect-customer-satisfaction 3 Independent survey by Enterprise Strategy Group, October 2016, https://www.interop.com/research-reportsInterop ITX – 2017 State of DevOps Report, https://www.interop.com/research-reports 450 7th Avenue, Suite 503 New York 10123 917-338-2200 reliant.io
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