According to ZD net, Dell offers a cloud solution for retail companies.  This solution will help retail companies transform retail operations, in-store and in-data center.

The reason Dell is approaching the retail vertical is clear.  “Retail companies typically have a patchwork quilt of end point systems that include cash registers, handheld scanning devices, desktop systems, laptops and a mix of networking and system technology to support sales, inventory control, human resources, pharmacy and other departments found in their stores.”  Thus, they are typically a mess, and they can’t spend much money to make things less messy.

Cloud computing provides retail with a way to centralized most of their processes and data operations, and do so at only a portion of the costs paid over the years.  However, cloud computing is a change.  Change is expensive and risky.

What Dell is trying to do is provide a set of tested virtualization, cloud-based, and cloud-like technologies that will drop right into place.  They are pre-configured and created specifically for the retail vertical.  Thus, they reduce the time to deployment and much of the risk.

I suspect we’ll see a number of these types of solutions this year.  Those looking to adopt cloud computing are still very much confused by the hyped and misinformation out there.  Providing ready-made solutions will appear much more attractive.  You can count on seeing the same approach for other verticals as well, such as healthcare and finance.