Deliver Digital Experiences with SD-WAN
Retailers are increasingly focusing on their network transformation to give the best digital experience to their customers. With the high cost of legacy MPLS links and the need to deploy experts on-site for network-related changes or adding new sites, SD-WAN is becoming the de-facto technology to simplify connectivity for retail stores.
While SD-WAN accelerates time to market and enables fast turn-up of connections at the site, not selecting the right SD-WAN partner can leave the retailer grappling with the complexities related to the deployment and integration of new network infrastructure into their existing business network.
Adaptiv Networks has extensive experience in helping retailers fill this gap by providing frictionless delivery of SD-WAN services that result in a seamless network transformation at each store using a Network-as-a-Service model.
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1. Automatic Site Failover Provides Business Continuity Across All Store Locations
Retailers are under tremendous pressure to deliver engaging and useful digital experiences to their customers. While consumers still buy from brick-and-mortar stores, the share of online spending is increasing.
From providing high-quality Wi-Fi connectivity to customers, to ensuring that checkout terminals and inventory search abilities provide quick sales, successful digital experiences require abundant, uninterrupted bandwidth. Any network outages can result in lost transactions, unhappy customers, and disruption in overall operations.
Adaptiv Networks builds solutions that maintain always-on connectivity to cloud-applications and other sites while ensuring that all network traffic reaches its destination even when peak operations are higher than expected.
Adaptiv | SD-WAN continuously monitors link health and reacts in a split second to protect branch offices against lost productivity caused by link outages. Patented technology ensures that users stay connected to applications – voice calls, video-enabled signage, point-of-sale terminals – when one of the underlying links fails.
Adaptiv Networks’ SD-WAN meets the high-availability metric of a carrier grade service. The solutions minimize retail site downtime to as little as 5 minutes and 15 seconds per year.
Online spending as percentage of total retail sale is rising:1
2017 – 13.2%
2018 – 14.4%
2019 – 16%
Retailers require uninterrupted connectivity to enable:
- Digital payments systems
- Customer access to digital applications
- Send push notifications
- Integrate front and back-end applications
- Receive real-time updates on inventory
- Seamless delivery of real-time digital signage with audio and video content
- Use innovative VR and AI-driven applications to drive sales
2. Service Level Quality Assurance Delivers Exceptional Customer Experience.
Supporting In-Store Events, Media Coverage, and Digital Engagement
Big brand retailers need service quality assurance from their network providers so that promotional in-store events and any associated media coverage can happen flawlessly. Bandwidth demand ebbs and flows with seasonal activities and promotions, and even planned events, like new store launches, can push unexpected spikes in bandwidth requirements beyond normal day-to-day operations.
During these peak periods, business operations and customer activities in the store and online cannot suffer. A dropped point-of-sale transaction, the inability for a customer to connect to in-store Wi-Fi, or the interruption in a customer loyalty application can negatively impact customer brand loyalty. Add to this the risk of poor reviews posted on social media by this customer, and the store not only loses out on a successful marketing opportunity, but there is also the potential loss of revenue.
To help mitigate these losses, Adaptiv Networks has complete cloud-controlled software-defined wide area network connectivity that manages traffic between retail sites and cloud applications and maintains high-quality customer experiences.
One of the primary enablers of Adaptiv Networks’ solution is its patented ability to actively manage different streams of data for applications at a retail store. This active management ensures that real-time services, like voice and video, get priority over applications like email and internet queries which do not need the same level of handling. Adaptiv calibrates each network connection to avoid oversaturation and ensure that user experiences are excellent, even during peak times.
Adaptiv Networks offers retailers a simple store connectivity solution that ensures quality and reliability. The edge device, cloud gateways, and network orchestration portal are all included as part of the managed service offering.
- High bandwidth
- Wi-Fi connectivity for customers
- High quality voice calls
- Uninterrupted video
- Unified communications
- Quick payment processing
- Real-time updates on operational metrics
- Immersive AR/VR experiences
3. Multi-Link Aggregation Enables Flexible Connectivity Options
SASE is a relatively new networking term that’s generating plenty of buzz in the IT community. But, what is it and why is it important? The term SASE was coined in 2019 by Gartner to describe a new networking model that combines SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) with cloud security. SASE (secure access service edge) is pronounced ‘sassy,’ and include several security features:
- Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)
- Web Filtering
- Secure Web Gateway (SWG)
- Firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS)
Up to eight links can work as a unified managed circuit to provide the necessary bandwidth to reach cloud applications and other SD-WAN sites.
4. Network-as-a-Service Solution Empowers Retailers Without On-site IT Skills
Retailers often have minimal or no on-site IT skills at their store locations. With dynamic network needs, they face the challenge of operating and managing SD-WAN connectivity efficiently. Whether it is adding new sites or increasing the store’s bandwidth, retailers need connectivity solutions that are easy to activate and manage. They also need on-demand access to easy-to-interpret network metrics that provide insights into the quality of the connectivity, store network uptime, and application performance.
To help the retail sites, the Adaptiv Cloud portal provides frictionless, real-time access to current operating metrics to monitor connectivity performance. Real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities deliver visibility and control to identify performance issues of speed, latency, jitter & packet loss, even on local loops, where most of the SD-WAN problems occur.
Adaptiv conditions the broadband connections so that they deliver predictable cloud performance across all applications at the retail site, prioritizing real-time cloud services, and managing end-to-end connectivity to provide low-latency access to business cloud applications. With a certified SD-WAN service provider operating the network, retailers spend more time focusing on business growth.
The Adaptiv Cloud portal is used by the service provider to remotely provision, monitor and manage each store location for operational efficiency. Retailers can also login to view real-time analytics and interactive charts showing network, link and application performance.
5. Cloud-based Centralized Remote Management Helps to Plan Ahead
Planning for network capacity is critical to the success of retailers’ business operations. A retailer stands to lose productivity and revenue if they must wait three to six months for a communication services provider to install new connectivity. To avert these potential business impacts, business managers need information that helps them understand their current bandwidth usage and how their network connectivity is supporting their growing success. Beyond the business network insights, cloud-based remote management of the store’s networks is necessary to efficiently implement store network policy changes and bandwidth upgrades.
The Adaptiv Cloud portal provides retailers the insights they need to make educated decisions about their business connectivity. Do they need more capacity to support new video-based advertising screens in the store? Is their network capacity sufficient to handle a new security system? Can their network handle the bandwidth needed for the real-time broadcast video planned for the launch event of a new site? Adaptiv Networks’ solutions are providing answers to these questions for retail outlets.
The Adaptiv Cloud portal also provides the remote management capabilities retailers need to minimize time and cost for implementing network changes and upgrades once the decisions are made. Whether the retailer uses their in-house IT staff or relies on their Managed SD-WAN provider, the Adaptiv Cloud portal accelerates network deployment cycles. Many tasks that previously required truck rolls and days or weeks to complete can now be performed within minutes.
Adaptiv Networks has made these scenarios real for retail customers. Whether they are actively managing their network connectivity or relying upon their managed service provider, they have the data to make educated and informed decisions about their business connectivity. Adaptiv Networks delivers the solutions that retailers need today.
Adaptiv Networks’ solutions enable remote management of network policies at all store locations without the delays and costs associated with on-site provisioning. The result is that the managed service provider can quickly implement store network policy changes and bandwidth upgrades to any site as needed.
Insights retailers get on Adaptiv Cloud portal:
- Bandwidth utilization of new applications on the network
- Impact of slow or inconsistent connections on business operations
- Efficiency of different types of links used by retail sites
About Adaptiv Networks
Adaptiv Networks is the creator of powerful, software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WANs) for the most challenging locations requiring high availability for business-critical application traffic. Businesses rely on Adaptiv Networks’ Cloud-Managed SD-WAN to provide secure, high-performance, and highly reliable networking for their voice, data, and video communications needs. Adaptiv Networks serves more than 250 customers, with more than 2,500 sites deployed through 30 partners.