Drakes Supermarkets overhauls IT systems with Nutanix
Australia’s Drakes Supermarkets is using Nutanix tech to support its new $125 million automated distribution centre in Adelaide, including robotics technology, warehouse management, Point of Sale and ERP systems.
Drakes, which operates more than 60 stores across South Australia and Queensland, has replaced its ageing IT environment with Nutanix Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI).
“We’ve seen our warehousing and IT requirements more than double in the past few weeks, but we’ve maintained 100% availability across all of our systems,” says Drakes IT Manager, Phillip Romano.
“We can now focus on taking care of our communities’ shopping needs, getting those staff who can do to work remotely, and hire new staff directly from the increasing pool of unemployed Australians.”
The retailer is aiming to expand the HCI environment across all stores and wholesale arms. It also wants to leverage the Nutanix Xi IoT edge intelligence platform – which uses artificial intelligence to provide real-time data insights – along with video analytics, to create new personalised experiences for customers. It is also considering migrating to the company’s AHV hypervisor to support its 250 virtual machines.
“While consumers are currently flooding into supermarkets, the retail industry as a whole continues to experience unprecedented levels of pressure, competition and consolidation,” says Romano.
“To remain competitive and retain customer loyalty, we need to drive efficiency and create personalised experiences. We see Nutanix and (local IT partner) Nuago as key to building the technology and infrastructure we need to do that.”
Be kind
Last month, Drakes took to social media with a timely reminder of the abuse that retail staff deal with on a regular basis.
“Whatever happened to common respect? With the hysteria of coronavirus turning people into toilet paper hoarders, our team are copping abuse as stocks are depleted. Abuse against retail workers has got to stop!” John-Paul Drake, Director at Drakes Supermarkets, said in a LinkedIn post.
