Walk into any retail store today and you can probably notice they’ve implemented one or more IoT devices such as handheld POS systems, electronic shelf labels, and a variety of modern security tools. However, what many of us don’t see is the amount of data being processed due to the digital transformation that retailers find themselves undergoing in recent years. Consequently, an increasing amount of importance has been placed on modernizing data centers for a more simplified and integrated approach to IT operations. No longer defined by physical facilities, data centers have become a core part of an infrastructure that needs to be resilient, flexible, and secure. Shifting from a centralized to a distributed modern edge-to-cloud data center network can benefit retail organizations and their customers while aligning to a few common industry priorities:
- Customer Loyalty - Customers expect real-time information, personalization, and choice, whether they're browsing, buying, or making a return. Having the right data is essential to obtaining a 360° view of the customer and their preferences. The first step in being able to derive these types of insights is having the right infrastructure in place to collect, store, and segment the data effectively, in a non-evasive manner.
- Securing Sensitive Data – As the digital transformation in retail continues, unfortunately, so are the threat of various types of cyber-security threats. Retailers need to ensure point-of-sale, scanners, IoT and other devices are secure in real-time with role-based policies across corporate, store and warehouse locations. Combined with artificial intelligence, retailers can take a more proactive approach and respond to potential incidents in real-time.
- Operational Efficiency – With evolving IoT devices, increased security threats, and ever-changing customer expectations, retailers need to be able to respond quickly to risks at all levels. The risk of a system outage could jeopardize anything from supply to frontline workforce tools. The ability of retailer's data center to align with strategic innovation can help retailers seamlessly meet the operational demands of today's digital era.
With HPE Aruba’s data center network solutions retailers can evolve from sprawling, costly legacy systems to a unified, more efficient data center.
HPE Aruba Networking – delivering a modern data center network solution for retailers
Distributed architecture
Retailers have enough to worry about with the industry landscape rapidly changing and more data than ever at their fingertips. HPE Aruba Networking distributed architectures implement software defined services that improve security posture, optimize network performance, and simplify network provisioning. By distributing intelligence closer to workloads, HPE Aruba Networking’s CX 10000 series switch achieves far better results—as compared to “traditional” approaches.
Intrinsic security
It’s becoming infinitely more difficult for retailers to secure data and see into blind spots as data grows and sprawls across on-prem and cloud footprints. With switches that provide built-in security capabilities, customers can apply policies consistently across both users and workloads. Dynamic segmentation reduces the risk exposure associated with east-west traffic patterns—which traditional approaches of physically separating network traffic cannot. The CX 10000 is the first and only solution that combines network and security operations into one platform, providing retailers with the necessary network security to protect their corporate and customer data.
Unified orchestration
HPE Aruba Networking innovations around cloud-based orchestration offer a single pane of glass for multi-site, multi-geography branch, campus and data center network management. This benefits organizations with limited technical resources by not having to staff and fund dedicated on-site IT resources. Moreover, overall end-to-end network and security policies can be vastly simplified with consistent global policies that span various locations and network fabrics, with fully stateful services that are delivered inline, at scale, with wire-rate performance, critical mission workloads are managed securely. Applying advanced intelligence to modernize data center operations, retailers can overcome the challenges of inefficient, costly, and complex legacy systems by making the transition to a unified, intelligent, and automated data center network.
Your data center, your way
Securely connect all your enterprise domains, edge-to-data center-to-cloud and enjoy the benefits of working with just one vendor. HPE Aruba Networking pre-engineered solutions integrate compute, storage, and networking infrastructure to help reduce the time, risk, and cost of standing up complex IT solutions. We help retailers gain predictable economics and retain flexibility to meet changing business needs and enable them to move faster—with 80% faster deployment times1.
Retail’s digital transformation is underway, and with it, the need to address ever-increasing data volumes that must be processed, secured, and analyzed. HPE Aruba Networking is advancing today’s distributed data centers with security-first networking modernization solutions, empowering retailers to evolve their data centers to meet the increasing demands of modern applications. With HPE Aruba Networking data center solutions, retailers gain full visibility and know with confidence that each application gets the right mix of network services and security. For more information, please visit our data center networking hub.
More resources:
- Airheads DCN Tech Corner
- GigaOM data center switching report
- Frequently asked data center questions
- Data center security
- A simplified data center architecture for retailers
1.“The Total Economic Impact of HPE GreenLake”, Forrester, 2022.
