By Jessica Hatz and Bharadwaj (Brady) Kachapuram, VMware SASE Product Management
There is a lot going on in retail. Consumers are making purchases both in-store and online and expect personalized omnichannel experiences like curbside pickup and accurate digital inventory from retailers. Store associates are using transformative technology, such as AR/VR applications, to help consumers visualize their next purchase—be it shoes, home improvement items, or even designer clothing. Many corporate retail employees are embracing a hybrid workstyle and working from a variety of locations. Retail IT teams are managing large, sprawling networks that connect corporate headquarters to pop-up shops to fulfillment centers to home offices, as well as the myriad of end-user and IoT devices connecting to the network.
Retailers need to deliver a frictionless experience across the value chain to remain relevant amidst these changes—helping the customer to consume, enabling employees to assist customers, and improving employee experiences.
To deliver effortless retail encounters, retail organizations are increasingly digitizing their businesses, embracing cloud and SaaS, and moving workloads to the edge. 88% of retail executives report that they increased investment in digital first experiences (VMware Retail Executive Pulse, June 2021). A high-performance and secure network is foundational to provide a frictionless experience.
Why legacy networks won’t work
Traditional network architectures for retailers use a hub-and-spoke network to route traffic from store and fulfillment locations through the headquarters, then back out to cloud-based applications and data sources. This means higher bandwidth requirements, network bottlenecks, and poor user experiences—hindering employee productivity and customer experience, with increased costs due to higher bandwidth. Legacy network architecture is also challenging and time consuming to scale. The time and cost can delay store openings.
Security is another key concern for retailers, with 67% of retail executives ranking security and safety as one of the top three business categories perceived to have the biggest impact on revenue (Coresight Research, Feb 2023). Unsecured internet, employees working remotely, and the rapid rise of IoT devices can leave the network open to intrusion. Cybersecurity breaches can result in the potential loss of sensitive customer data, customer distrust, and reputational damage.
SD-WAN and SASE are key to delivering a frictionless retail experience
VMware SD-WAN™ and VMware SASE™ can help retail organizations enhance customer experience. If you are a store associate helping a consumer try-on new clothes via an AR/VR application, your application needs optimal connectivity and low latency to deliver the most value. VMware SD-WAN helps retailers ensure continuous uptime for applications, POS, and scanner systems, while prioritizing critical application traffic with VMware Dynamic Multipath Optimization™ (DMPO), to ensure a frictionless experience for consumers and employees.
Data breaches can damage a retail organization’s reputation for years. VMware SD-WAN and SASE allows retailers to protect their brand reputation by securing sensitive customer data, network, devices, and employees. With PCI-certified VMware SD-WAN, retailers can be rest assured that sensitive customer data is protected from breaches. The comprehensive portfolio of VMware SASE security offerings ensure retailers can protect their employees and infrastructure from cyberattacks.
As retailers seek to improve their bottom line, VMware SD-WAN and SASE can help retailers lower bandwidth and infrastructure costs. Current customers have achieved an ROI of 218% and payback in less than 6 months with VMware SASE (Forrester TEI Report). Finally, VMware SD-WAN and SASE are key enablers for digital transformation in the retail space by simplifying operations. Retailers can now rapidly roll out new stores and proactively fix connectivity issues faced at stores or by remote employees from a centralized location.
