A Singtel Whitepaper. A modern networking infrastructure unleashes innovations in retail operation and customer service

Transcription

1 A Singtel Whitepaper A modern networking infrastructure unleashes innovations in retail operation and customer service

2 Promotions Stock Availability Smart retailers that want to cover all bases are going omni-channel, bringing together their in-store presence with their online and mobile presence. Delivery Options Shopping Cart Payment Method Customer Service

3 Retailers find their innovation competitive edge with Singtel ConnectPlus Software-Defined Wide Area Networking Service Executive Summary Retail is an ever-changing environment as merchants try to stay on top of what consumers want. Competition is so fierce and it seems to come from every direction. Physical stores compete not only with each other, but with online stores that promise same-day or next-day delivery. In this rapid pace environment, any little innovation can give a retailer a real competitive edge. And likewise, the lack of innovation can lead to stagnation and the retailer's loss of relevance. Smart retailers that want to cover all bases are going omni-channel, bringing together their in-store presence with their online and mobile presence. They have to. Customers, especially the coveted age group, expect a multimedia, integrated experience that allows them to shop when and how they want. Order online and pickup in the store. View in-store inventory via mobile apps. Use apps and "magic mirrors" to shop virtually, trying different colors or styles before making a purchase. And retailers are using technologies like beacons to recognise and track customers and push offers and coupons that might seal the deal. Retailing is transforming before our eyes. need to leverage the network for real-time retail, guest WiFi, mobile point of sale (mpos) and so much more. But the reality is, for most retailers, the underlying networking infrastructure is complex and inflexible, and it doesn't provide enough bandwidth to support today's critical applications. A constrained network restricts the pace of business innovation and puts the retailer at a competitive disadvantage if it can't execute quickly. New software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) technologies are available to increase the capacity and flexibility of the infrastructure. These technologies vastly simplify the network for operational cost savings and ease of use to enable the retailer to support new applications and offer improved customer services. This paper discusses how Singtel's ConnectPlus Software-Defined WAN (C+ SD-WAN) service makes it easy for retailers to provision new stores, improve the performance of in-store applications, increase security for IT applications, and vastly simplify networking operations. With a much more flexible network, there are no barriers to what's possible. Information technology (IT) has a big impact on how a retailer operates. Modern retailers are very dependent on the Internet for local in-store applications. They Singtel Whitepaper - A modern networking infrastructure unleashes innovations in retail operations and customer service 2

4 Technology aids the store associates as well, with guided selling tools, applications to identify loyal customers and know what's already in their closet, and mobile POS to speed customers through the checkout process.

5 IT and the Retail Landscape Today Limitations of Current Retail WAN Solutions Technology is enabling so many exciting innovations in retail today. Customer-facing innovations provide a more engaging shopping experience when people can use their smartphones to quickly check in-store inventory for a product they want, or pull up a chat session with a remote product expert, or sample clothes in a "magic mirror" that projects virtual clothing onto the customer's onscreen image. Beacons beam customised offers directly to shoppers, while digital signage grabs their attention. Many merchants find their wide area network (WAN) to be restrictive, inflexible and complex. A typical retail WAN configuration has one or more Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) lines going from a central data centre to each store location. This hub and spoke type of configuration provides reliable and secure private communications between the corporate office and individual stores. However, this architecture was never designed to support modern needs such as cloud-hosted applications, in-store WiFi, digital signage, collaborative video, surveillance and security services, and so on. Technology aids the store associates as well, with guided selling tools, applications to identify loyal customers and know what's already in their closet, and mobile POS to speed customers through the checkout process. What's more, unified commerce, also called omni-channel retail, is unifying the web, mobile and in-store experience. So much is happening to radically reshape the retail experience all around the world. Unfortunately, few retailers have the type of networking infrastructure that can fully support what they want to do within a reasonable time and cost. Technology-driven innovations even something as simple as in-store guest WiFi demand a high amount of network bandwidth. According to a recent Boston Retail Partners benchmark survey, 40% of the merchants in the survey plan to increase bandwidth in the year ahead. The additional capacity is required to support real-time retail and other critical applications needed to be more competitive in a dynamic marketplace. Traditional WAN configurations have several drawbacks for retailers: There is often a long lead time to install a new MPLS line due to high-touch configuration requirements. A retailer may have to wait months to get a line installed, which limits flexibility. For example, a merchant can't quickly open a new store front or even a pop-up kiosk to capture business during heavy shopping periods like back-to-school and holidays. The network offers no segmentation by default, which makes it difficult to roll-out secure guest WiFi access. The alternative is to install additional equipment, increasing unnecessary costs and complexity to the network. Visibility into line conditions is limited, making it difficult for a retailer's IT personnel to understand application performance issues. Application traffic that needs to go to the Internet (for example, web-based unified commerce) may be getting backhauled through a retailer's data centre before going out to the Internet. This routing inefficiency causes performance issues with the applications. Some companies might supplement their WAN with a broadband connection in specific stores to support local applications. Such traffic is completely isolated from the WAN, making it more complex to manage applications over multiple network services. Moreover, traffic on this line may be at risk due to inadequate security. In short, a traditional WAN architecture was well suited to a retail model of a bygone era. A new approach to wide area networking is needed today and for the future. Singtel Whitepaper - A modern networking infrastructure unleashes innovations in retail operations and customer service 4

6 A retailer can add much-needed bandwidth to the individual stores via low cost broadband connections. This gives the retailer the flexibility to open a new location in days, not months, and to add new in-store services whenever it wants.

7 The Modern Approach to Infrastructure: Software-Defined Wide Area Networking The modern approach to a new network infrastructure is called software-defined wide area networking, or SD-WAN. It utilises a software overlay on top of the existing infrastructure. This overlay contains all of the routing and switching intelligence that has traditionally been built into a complex array of hardware devices in the remote locations and the data centre. The software overlay controls the flow of traffic and manages performance across the entire network. Benefits of SD-WAN Guest WiFi can be pushed to a broadband connection, and electronic payments traffic can be kept isolated on its own network segment to comply with requirements of the PCI DSS. In addition, latency sensitive applications such as voice calls on IP phones and surveillance video from IP cameras can assigned to the correct level of Quality of Service (QoS). SD-WAN is agnostic to the underlying transports, which enables retailers to add broadband into the networking mix via cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), Long-Term Evolution (LTE), or whatever the preference is. A retailer can add much-needed bandwidth to the individual stores via low cost broadband connections. These lines can be installed by local providers, typically with minimal wait time. This gives the retailer the flexibility to open a new location in days, not months, and to add new in-store services whenever it wants. SD-WAN provides a capability called "service chaining" where network services such as firewall and intrusion prevention can be added. An administrator can set policies to direct specific traffic through these services, for example, one that requires all incoming Facebook traffic go through a firewall before entering the store's network. This provides a tighter security framework to help protect the network from malicious attacks that are so pervasive in the retail industry today. How SD-WAN works Springboard to an advanced network The SD-WAN utilises an edge device, a type of router, in each store location. With plug-and-play simplicity, this device is easy to install, even by a non-technical person. Device configuration is done remotely, typically via templates, so no technician is required at the store for installation. This simplifies operations because the retailer doesn't need to configure complex routers and switches for each store location and may even be able to remove old networking equipment that's no longer needed. Centralising and simplifying policies for all network traffic can greatly reduce operational costs, and for the first time gives IT teams the visibility into application performance over the various communication lines. This helps them identify line problems or other network issues, and aids in traffic steering and capacity planning. The SD-WAN is controlled centrally through a single pane of glass for all of the connections, whether they are MPLS, broadband or even metro Ethernet. An administrator applies routing and security policies through this central controller and they are enacted across the entire network. Various traffic types can be routed as preferred, based on the criticality of the traffic. For example, the administrator can specify that Internet voice (VoIP) traffic always travels over MPLS because it needs the highest quality line. The network can be full-mesh via IPsec tunnels which enables applications like store surveillance monitoring and store-to-store communication. Also, for greater efficiency, traffic going to the Internet doesn't need to be backhauled to the data centre. Singtel Whitepaper - A modern networking infrastructure unleashes innovations in retail operations and customer service 6

8 The new infrastructure is all about transformation, leveraging cutting edge cloud technologies to support fast-growing businesses.

9 Deploying SD-WAN in a Retail Environment A typical established retailer may operate dozens of stores across a city or region, with some in the heart of the city central and others located at locations that are further away. In such a scenario, SD-WAN could first be deployed as a pilot within a couple of smaller outlets, with the successful rollout eventually being replicated across the rest of the stores. This allows the retailer to lower operating costs, increase speed of deployment and deliver more innovative applications for a better customer experience at its outlets. Bandwidth-intensive applications such as digital signage and video collaboration can be cost-effectively supported, while services such as guest WiFi can be securely segmented from payment terminals for PCI compliance. The alternative in lieu of an SD-WAN deployment would be to rely on a traditional network switch, firewall and router setup, for which the cost and complexity of having to individually configure and manage could prove a problem. Skilled networking professionals may need to visit individual outlets when configuration changes are required, with long lead times required for troubleshooting or routine network maintenance. Moreover, adding bandwidth to the stores through traditional leased lines or increasing MPLS capacity in order to support new cloud applications can be cost prohibitive. On its part, Singtel's C+ SD-WAN offering provides multiple logical segments that can operate on a hybrid network incorporating high speed Internet and MPLS lines. Though managed centrally, each segment is tagged with a different policy and has differing topology based on their underlying applications such as Guest WiFi, store-specific applications and surveillance, among others. An SD-WAN segments sensitive payment and retail data from less critical parts of the network, and is implemented in a way that vastly reduces complexity while also providing the ability to easily add more logical segments from a central console for future needs. The new infrastructure is all about transformation, leveraging cutting edge cloud technologies to support fast-growing businesses. Whether it is a growing local retailer, or one looking to expand in the region, it puts them light-years ahead of the competition to define the future of retail technology and delight customers with technology-driven innovations. Singtel Whitepaper - A modern networking infrastructure unleashes innovations in retail operations and customer service 8

10 Conclusion Retail is a fast-paced, dynamic industry, and the competition to find any advantage is fierce. Those retailers that don't keep pace will lose market relevance.

11 ConnectPlus SD-WAN Helps Retailers Simplify Management of Their Networks Singtel and Viptela are partnering to provide ConnectPlus SD-WAN (C+ SD-WAN) to help retailers transform the way they manage their networks. Based on Viptela's SD-WAN technology and Singtel's strength as a global carrier, C+ SD-WAN offers a holistic, hybrid solution to manage MPLS and the Internet as a single network. With this new managed service, retailers can easily scale, deploy, manage and secure their WAN according to business requirements. Hosted in Singtel s private cloud, the managed service offers a SD-WAN overlay that seamlessly integrates with Singtel's global network across 362 cities. Retailers can assured of reliable connectivity and flexible service management they need with just one provider, while having full control over their networks. Conclusion Retail is a fast-paced, dynamic industry, and the competition to find any advantage is fierce. Technology innovations are driving numerous changes to operations and customer service. Those retailers that don't keep pace will lose market relevance. What's needed now is a modern technology infrastructure to support the innovations. In this regard, SD-WAN is the way to go. It enables rapid deployment of new stores and new services designed to delight customers and streamline operations. Singtel Whitepaper - A modern networking infrastructure unleashes innovations in retail operations and customer service 10

12 Copyright 2017 Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (CRN: D). All rights reserved. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. March 2017