SDN in Retail Stores
As retail continues to evolve their O2O experience, retailers need to support modern technology both in-store and online. Many retailers are focusing on the customer experience across channels and the rapidly changing behaviors of consumers themselves. To accommodate this shift, as well as to provide the flexibility to take advantage of opportunities that lie ahead, retailers need a robust wireless and wired network infrastructure. This may range from managing mobile/fixed point of sale systems, in store sensors, digital-signage management, configuring secure Wi-Fi guest access, to tracking RFID tags that monitor in-store stock and connect to key systems that enable inventory and supply-chain optimization.
1) Branch expansion / updates
Retailers often have to update the technology in their shops, update self-service kiosks, connect new locations, disconnect old locations etc. In the past, such actions over WAN would have taken a significant amount of time and cost. With SDN capabilities, network upgrades, new connections, new segments or changes can all be deployed remotely. In addition, data center/central office security and compliance policies can be extended to stores efficiently through a single control plane. Similarly, where a device using an old OS version or a banned application attempts to connect to the network, the device can be forced into quarantine or directed to an update site.
2) Managing new staff
Retailers tend to have a high staff turnover, high proportion of short term/casual workforce, high number of store specific devices. Keeping up with users across large geographies can be very complex. By linking HR events to network access policies, retailers can ease the user onboarding, for example by combining user and device databases with user access policy rules, information about that new employee is automatically translated into operational instructions for the network infrastructure, the results include major efficiency improvements, cost savings, and better network security and performance. The SDN controller can apply business rules—for example departmental access permissions, degree of mobility, expected hours of access, and so on—to the user information, in order to derive access rules to apply to the in store edge switches and WiFi access points.
