HPE promises retailers more reliable in-store experiences – even when the network is down

When you think of retail infrastructure, it’s highly unlikely that you think of HPE. Surely its tech is for enterprises, campuses and factories? Not to mention creating the world’s fastest supercomputer. But the company is also a familiar sight at NRF: Retail’s Big Show, announcing its “Edge-to-Cloud” strategy last year and this year promising retailers “faster insight, smarter operations, and more reliable in-store experiences”.

This is its first year at the show since its acquisition of Juniper Networks in July 2025. With that in mind, it’s offering retailers solutions that combine HPE Aruba Networking CX switching and Mist AIOps, together with HPE Nonstop Compute solutions.

“In modern retail, a single lost transaction is a lost customer or a damaged reputation,” said Sujai Hajela, EVP & GM, Campus & Branch, HPE.

“HPE is raising the bar for retail by combining resilient edge connectivity, self-driving AI-native operations, and fault-tolerant compute to give retailers the insight, automation and assurance they need to meet existing and future shopper demands.”

He added: “This unified foundation combines key HPE solutions to help retailers deliver continuous operations and consistent performance at scale, building trust in the next era of retail, where every transaction counts and every experience matters.”

Greater business insight, greater security

By using the Marvis virtual agent, HPE believes that retailers can “move from reactive troubleshooting to proactive decision-making” on their networks. This is one of the reasons it believes that customer experiences will be improved.

HPE also has its eye on the thousands of edge devices sitting in retail environments. Think point-of-sale terminals, digital signage, cameras and sensors. New 8-port models in its HPE Aruba Networking CX 6000 Switch Series are here to help, and on show at NRF.

Then we come to HPE Nonstop Compute, which “delivers continuous, fault-tolerant solutions for backend payment processing, inventory management, and other mission-critical applications” according to HPE.

Even during network outages, it claims the platform will keep applications running.

If all this sounds like technology your retail business could take advantage of, the good news is that both the HPE Nonstop Compute solutions and the HPE Aruba Networking CX 6000 Switch Series are now available.

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