Imagine a future completely connected — houses and buildings full of automated devices that could seamlessly communicate with each other and with humans, creating smarter, more efficient environments for work and leisure. This, of course, is not actually science fiction, and it's not the future. It's present-day reality — thanks to the ongoing expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) in our homes, workplaces, and stores, especially in Asia. In fact, according to IDC, the spending on IoT in Asia Pacific is expected to reach US$ 288.6 billion in 2021, driven by the need for better connectivity amidst the pandemic.
When deployed in a retail store, IoT can deliver greater business intelligence through real-time data collection and analysis, helping retailers provide an exceptional end-to-end customer experience. A Microsoft report found IoT is "almost universally adopted in retail and considered critical to success," and 67% of retailers surveyed said they wanted to go even further with their IoT.
Yet challenges remain. Some of the barriers to continued IoT expansion include scarcity of resources, budget constraints, and security, according to the retailers Microsoft surveyed. There's no single solution to these challenges for all retailers. But it may be useful for some to revisit their networking infrastructure setup and determine whether upgrading legacy systems to a more modern configuration, such as software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN), can help move them toward the next level of their IoT goals.
Modernized network configurations like SD-WAN have the flexibility and bandwidth to securely support new IoT initiatives as well as business-critical processes like payments and inventory systems. SD-WAN streamlines network management operations by separating the way a network is controlled from its hardware, allowing data traffic to be dynamically segmented and directed. This alleviates network congestion, providing higher reliability and uptime, even when the same network has to support multiple bandwidth-heavy IoT applications in addition to other systems.
SD-WAN can help offset — or even solve — retailers' IoT challenges around resource scarcity, budget and security in three key ways:
Instead, retailers can replace legacy networks with SD-WAN, and use broadband to gain better connectivity, and reduce operational expenses. Internet circuits are typically one-third to one-half the cost of comparable-speed MPLS links, so retailers thus increase WAN bandwidth without significantly increasing WAN spending. What's more, retailers can save money they would spend on ancillary network security measures choosing an SD-WAN that offers some of the security protocols mentioned above. With these cost savings, retailers may be able to reallocate budget previously used to support a legacy network toward new IoT initiatives.
With SD-WAN as a secure, reliable networking solution, retailers may be better positioned to add more IoT applications, such as:
The ways in which retailers can deploy — and are deploying — IoT are nearly limitless. Fortunately, the barriers they face in expanding their IoT environments are not. Replacing legacy networks with SD-WAN offers a way to simplify, secure and scale network connectivity while reducing operating expenses and managing IT resources — helping retailers in Asia reach the next level in their IoT journey.
John Tait is Global Managing Director of TNS' Payments Market business. He is responsible for identifying and driving growth across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific regions, and is focused on meeting the unique requirements of TNS' customers.
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