For retailers, meeting growing customer demands can be challenging when factoring in ever-increasing network complexities. Connecting stores, distribution centers and warehouses is a necessity in order to provide improved customer experiences. To enable this, many retailers are turning towards SD-WAN – soon to become the standard deployment for enterprise networks.1
Benefits include:
Better network security
Many legacy WANs don’t have standard security features built-in, so they can’t adequately protect the network. SD-WAN encrypts network traffic which increases security when sending sensitive customer information to dispersed locations.
More flexibility
Bandwidth and network updates can be adjusted depending on needs. This allows retailers to add services at different sites without using any legacy systems or sending a person to the location.
Reduced maintenance
SD-wan reduces the amount of on-premise hardware which decreases the cost of maintenance and downtime.
SD-WAN Points of Failure
SD-WAN does provide many benefits, however running on larger software stacks they require constant firmware updates which can introduce points of failure, leaving retail organizations vulnerable to potential downtime with each deployment. Smart Out-of-Band by Opengear supports SD-WAN deployments. Ensuring secondary access to the router to reflash or power cycle, NetOps staff are able to remotely get the network back up and running. Understanding that branch networks are critical piece to many retailers business strategies, Opengear ensures that if downtime does occur, POS, security systems and other in store devices continue to run seamlessly.
Adding Smart Out-of-Band during SD-WAN deployments:
Diagnoses the issue
If a disruption occurs and the internet link isn’t connected, outages are detected immediately. Lighthouse Centralized Management enables administrators to identify and manage the network remotely without having to roll a truck to a remote retail site.
Allows for always-on access
Failover to Cellular ensures uninterrupted availability for remote networks with 4G LTE. Retailers are able to continue business as usual while the primary internet connection is down.
Decreases costs
A Smart Out-of-Band solution costs less to deploy and operate. A truck roll and a few hours offline can cost a retail organization thousands of dollars.2
Trust your SD-WAN deployment to Opengear, ensure guaranteed access with Smart Out-of-Band.
1 https://techblog.comsoc.org/2017/11/19/gartner-group-sd-wan-early-findings-yield-surprises/
2 http://www.ihiji.com/whats-it-really-cost-to-roll-a-truck/
